Thinking about a greenhouse…

We’re going to bring some of our surprise pumpkins to sell at tomorrow’s plant sale, along with some yam bulbils and a few other rare bits and pieces.

The homestead is just starting to come together.

As plants grow and multiply, we’ll have more abundance to trade, sell and give away. When you first start, it feels like you’ll never get there.

Then, after a few years if you’ve really been pushing it and all goes well, you have wheelbarrows full of extra.

God provides abundantly.

Think about how one tiny seed in an orange is capable of growing into a 25-foot tall tree, covered with oranges, all of which contain seeds capable of the same incredible feat!

This year we would like to make cane syrup; however, I’m not sure we’ll have enough canes to make syrup, and to expand our plantings, and to use in the plant nursery for growing potted plants we can offer for sale in the spring.

Yet if we plant half of our harvest this fall, next fall we should have more than enough for everything we wish to do!

August was exceptionally hot and dry, which has slowed everything down. We don’t irrigate via anything other than occasionally carrying around a hose, so when we don’t get rain, harvests decrease. One day we hope to install a well, but until then, the sky is our source of water.

We are working on the purchase of a good greenhouse right now. Once that is installed, it will make the rapid duplication of plants much easier. Currently, we have to wait until later in the year to do much propagation of certain species, such as cassava, Tithonia diversifolia, African blue basil, sugarcane, chaya, etc., since the freezes of winter take them down to the ground. We’re also limited on the time we have to propagate nitrogen-fixing species. Getting some year-round growing will greatly help, plus it will allow us to have a lot of plants ready to sell in the spring.

We had a cheap greenhouse which lasted for two seasons before a windstorm destroyed it.

It’s just expensive to get a good greenhouse, which has held us back. My friend Carolyn keeps sending us a few dollars here and there for the “greenhouse fund,” and she’s pretty much guilted me into pulling the trigger at this point.

We really don’t like spending money. The price of everything keeps rising while our income has not.

It’s probably going to pay for itself, though, provided we can build our nursery up for 2024 and have some solid spring sales.

And speaking of that – are you coming to the plant sale tomorrow?

We’ll try to have some interesting things there that make it worth attending.

See you Saturday.