Banana Circle in the Sand

I have been doing extensive reading about banana circles, and how the bananas thrive with the composting pit in the center filled with organic materials which are decaying constantly and providing organic food to the bananas.  Here's the result of many days of digging...  I hit water!  

I expect that the water is at the same level as the pond which is replenished with well water.  The well water is high quality, low sodium, and the plants love it.

Peafowl on the Roof

We often look up and see this beautiful sight:  pea friends on the roof, watching over P2.

Raccoon Tracks

We had been keeping the level of the main pond high, but it was creating too much of a wetlands around the pond.  We're looking to do some planting of majesty palms on the south west corner of the pond, so we needed it to dry up a bit.  After cutting back on the well which feeds the pond, we found beautiful raccoon tracks in the mossy soil that was revealed where the wetlands dried up.

More Animal Tracks

FOOTPRINTS TELL THE TALE 
Raccoons, opossums, coyotes, deer, wild pigs and more run wild at night, their footprints in the mud are the only clues they leave behind. By morning they're all back in their burrows for a nice nap through the day.

Are these deer tracks?  Feral hog tracks?  I'm just not sure...

More raccoon tracks

Bananas and Banana Circle

The banana circle is almost ready... lots of digging took place at this sandy hole.

A couple of the banana trees...  a Home Depot banana on the left, and a Mona Lisa banana on the right.

This is an instant raised bed:  Big Bag Bed.  It will soon be planted with Mark's carrots and onions.

The banana plantation is shaping up nicely.

More early banana circle pictures.

This is the magic well that provides us water for the land.

Peacocks on the Roof

NEW PREDATOR GENERATOR, NOV 27

We bought a new Predator 4000 generator from Harbor Freight. There was an optional wheel kit but we bought a 4-wheel garden cart to transport the generator around our property because we had one we've been using for hauling stuff around and really liked it. 

The cart was only $56 after we applied a 20%-off coupon, so far we think the cart is equal to the much more expensive garden cart we previously bought at Northern Tool ($100 after $20 discount). 

The Harbor Freight garden cart came in a very beat up box but it went together perfectly and included exactly the right amount of all the nuts, bolts, washers and cotter pins. 

After we assembled the garden cart we unboxed the generator, added oil and gas, it started on the sixth pull of the rope, not bad for a brand new engine. 

Note: New Predator engines ship with a few ounces of oil in them already, I started with 12 ounces of oil and finally had to put in about 15 ounces to get it up to full. 

The Predator generator is now living on the new garden cart, after breaking the engine in we pulled the cart out to the agricultural area and cut down some seriously ugly orange trees that were riddled with bugs and disease. Mary is replacing the rotten orange trees with banana plants which have a wonderful tropical look and will potentially produce fruit.

Here are photos of the new generator.

Bamboo Food

Today, sprinkled the emerald bamboo with timed release fertilizer.  They look HAPPY.

UPGRADED ARTESIAN WELL BY HEIDEKRUGER
This is our artesian well after we had our well service provider upgraded the above-ground parts. I added a couple of new faucets for filling buckets and jugs easily plus a garden hose outlet to water other plants.

The artesian well requires no pump or AC power, pressure from underground rock formations forces water up and out the well with no energy expense.

MARYS BANANA PLANTATION VERSION 1.0
When Mary gets into something she dives deep. Right now she is focused on growing bananas and these are leading the experiments until FULL BANANA CIRCLE installation gets underway.

These locations are watered from undeground.

These are a couple of our favorite varieties.

Here's Mona, this banana plant is testing their response to direct sun out in our main agricultural area. Mona is on a strict diet of artesian well water and longest exposure to sun, so far, after a week at this location the plant is showing zero signs of stress.

PALMS MOVE OUT TO FARM AREA

This was one of the three Beverly Hills coconut palms we bought as babies. This one is testing the limits of sun deprevation, sun is kind of bad at this location, formerly an orange tree was located here but it died.

Here's Foxy, this little Foxtail palm had been very slow growing so far. We moved him from the pool cage a couple of weeks ago, he gets tons of water from the artesian well.

This is the other Beverly Hills palm, he got a premium sun location and is watered by the underground artesian well system.

MARY AND THE LITTLE PLANTS
These plants started as little guys, the bananas were ebay mailorder and pathetic looking when they arrived here last spring.

This banana plant was teeny, now look at him.

Meet Crooked, he was a scawny outcast at Home Depot but I recognized his good and gave him a home, now look how big he is.

This Thai Giant was another puny little plant from ebay, these looked pathetic but Mary has worked them up to be huge and jurassic the way we like our plants.

This Majesty palm out by our pool pump was another bargain find, we got him when he was much smaller. We got three of these and have not been very kind to them. In spite of lack of watering, poor sun light and abuse from Hurricane Mathew these palms not only hang in there, they've flourished.

PLANTS - NOV 20 - Bananas, Coconut Palms and More Bananas

We replanted two coconut palms in new B I G pots to have in the pool area, we sent two other coconut palms out to the agricultural area and planted them in the ground.

The Crotons took over the Beverly Hills pots by the pool, their brilliant red colors attracted us to them at Home Depot. The coconut palms that formerly lived in the Beverly Hills pots were completely root bound. Now the palms have lots of room to grow.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

This morning it's COLD outside!  Well, cold for Floridians like us.  57 degrees F, and humidity 47%, makes for a cool, refreshing morning.  The Weather.com report says it's 47 degrees in Melbourne, FL right, now, which means that P2's micro climate once again is awesome.

We have sweatshirts on, and we're going out to play in the gorgeous weather.  We have watering, digging, planting and branch chipping to do.... FUN!

MORE CHIPPER PHOTOS

This is our 4th China-clone of the Honda gas engine, these are great so long as you remember to turn off the gas when not in use.

NEW WOOD CHIPPER
With 5-acres of trees we have a lot of waste from dead limbs. Instead of burning everything we decided to get a wood chipper to produce mulch.
I filled the engine with oil slowly because we'd been advised it might come with some oil in it.

After putting in the gas, I pulled the rope, nothing. I gave it another pull, nothing. Then I remembered the on-off switch, yes it was off, set it to ON and gave another pull, the Predator engine sprang to life.

MONA LISA BANANA SUN EXPERIMENT
She is one of our favorite banana plants. We chose her to test an area of our farm for direct sunlight.

This banana plant is in our best area for longest sun days. Note the shade left-rear.

We are in the process of mapping all the areas of our farm for sun exposure. We moved this Mona Lisa banana plant out to where it is easy to water with artesian well water.

We will be tracking the growth performance of this test plant and making our next move based on how this one performs.