Exciting event of the day: Transplanting the avocado trees that arrived safe and sound from California yesterday! We ordered 4 tree for now, experimenting with how they do this winter in Phoenix greenhouse. If still kickin' in the spring time, more will definitely be ordered. They're all cold-tolerant to 25 degrees or so, thus we have some decent wiggle room, as Phoenix never dips below 40. This is all part of the next tropical succession - mangoes, avocados, papayas, guavas, etc. Not a bad time to be apart of this operation!
Process of transplanting today: 1) Free tree of all packaging 2) Cut bottom of plastic pot and up the sides until the rim 3) Place 5-gal. pot inside of 10-gal. pot that has 3 inches of manure/potting soil/mycelium mixture already mixed 4) cut the pot up to the rim so that, essentially, you have cut pot vertically in half 5) Carefully remove one half of pot at a time minding the root ball 6) Once the tree is now sitting in 10-gal. pot, back fill with more of the potting mixture, adding worms and compost tea and compacting soil a bit 7) Stake tree and voila! Our avocados will await their transplant into the ground for 2 months.
The other day I cleaned out the aquaponics tank out with Karen, our editor. In 85-degree heat and 95% humidity, it was a sweaty job! We transferred water lettuce and water celery to water buckets (there was water involved, yes) and cleared out all the grime, watering the nearby beds with a hose connected to the bottom of the tank as we worked. For now we've decided to just keep the tank full for thermal mass benefits, since we don't have any fish. However, to utilize vertical space, we placed a wooden flat on top of the tank and are now keeping all tropical bedding plants there. Karen and I then worked to cut back the lablab vines that had aggressively spread along the passion fruit trellis. We collected the beans and separated the dried from the fresh for later propagation and eating, respectively.
Karen is the latest addition to Team CRMPI. She has been working (very diligently!) with us on the book project and hurray it is finally moving! No doubt, our system for writing is laborious, but as long as it works for everyone involved, we're sticking with it. Our sample chapter is "Multiple Functions in the Greenhouse" so Jerome walks through the greenhouse with recorder in hand and talks out each feature and its associated functions. I then transcribe this information and revise it with him. We then send it to Karen for editing and sprucing up. Well, the hope anyways is that this will result in a snazzy sample chapter that'll win us a book contract to be launched in 2011. Fingers crossed!
The stack of articles that has been written about Jerome and his life's work is impressive, plus the number of time he has been noted in a book or invited to speak on a panel... He has single-handedly earned CRMPI a world-renowned reputation within the Permaculture sphere. I mean, he couldn't have done it without all the generous help from volunteers, interns, neighbors and students but he was essentially the catalyst for the sustainable food production movement in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado. Nowadays there is a slew of non-profits in this valley (almost too many!), many of which are working towards greater food self-sufficiency. Personally, I'd like to work towards collaborating with them, in order to gain more resilience for us all and to share resources and ideas. Hmmm... something to work on.
Every day is a flurry of phone calls, e-mails, running in and out of the greenhouse, hosting volunteers, holding meetings, cooking, visiting the bunnies, a trip to the composting toilet, a cup of tea, transcribing for the book project, recording greenhouse temps, writing up invoices, ordering plants, planting seeds, spraying kelp extract, lying in the hammock, taking in this gorgeous country, a heated debate, attempting a grant proposal, filling up water jugs at the spring, washing dishes, watching a bit of "news" via John Stewart, making a fire, a dash to the sauna and finally, a quiet evening reading to myself.
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