P2 PICTURES FOR TAWM

Photos from around P2, Saturday April 29, 2017

We have a two foot ditch that separates our two plots of land. I installed a big 12" piece of PVC in the ditch and put dirt over it. I'm letting everything settle real well before we start driving over it with the mini bikes and lawn mowers. We refer to this as my bridge.

These papaya plants don't look so impressive right now but they will be 10 feet tall by fall

Date Palm

I love Date Palm. She was totally covered with overgrowth and shitty weed trees that I had ripped out. Date is slowly but surely filling out with new limbs and leaves, she's gonna be huge and beautiful in a few years.

Melons and cucumbers in raised bed

Four baby Hedo palms sprouted from seed this spring

These two big pots are filled with the Hedo palms I sprouted a year ago in March, they're really growing fast now.

The swimming pool grow-cage

The canal behind our property, looking East

The canal, looking West

Note the mini bike road that runs along side the canal on our side.

Van in our carport

The Pole Barn where Lem lives (LM-500 lawn go kart)

Our $285 Harbor Freight generator

We got the generator back around beginning of December. I put Stabil gas additive in our gas cans as the manual instructed.

At the end of February I thought "I wonder if it will start?" It started on the very first pull of the rope.

It sat until last weekend when were harvesting bamboo and needed plug-in power to run my Skil Saw. The generator started on the first pull of the rope, incredible.

Here is Phil, he was a tiny Home Depot plant back in January, now he is taking over the world

Here is Phil's cousin Phillis, she's growing out in the wild without any water

Sabol Palms

Date Palm

Mary's banana circle, the center is rotting stuff that feeds the plants

This banana plant is going to be Big

I love the way they add new leaves, a cigar unrolls out of the middle

Mary gives the plant size reference

Our outer pond, the drain pipe is usually underwater, that's how dry it's become

Outer pond water inlet, we leave it on this strong all the time and the pond gets no higher it's so dry here

Mary posing by our first 10 clumps of field grown bamboo

See the neighbors house behind the bamboo? What a great wall :-)

Closeup of a clump from first 10 clumps we bought

A clump of field grown bamboo weighs over 1000 pounds including the dirt ball

See what a good job bamboo does of hiding our next door neighbors house?

Here is bamboo propagating in buckets between the planted field grown clumps

Carrots in pots, growing between the bamboo clumps

More carrots

Bamboo propagating, note the leaves, that tells us it's alive

It might look cut off but the green color means it's fine

This bamboo came with our house, some is over 50' tall

Mary should give you an idea how big this is

SNEETCHES, have you ever watched the Dr. Seuss cartoon about the Sneetches? The Ibis look like Sneetches, but their beaks turn down instead of up and they have wings instead of arms. Otherwise the Ibis are like living in a cartoon. There are always 10-15 of them hanging around. I throw them a cup of dog food twice a day so they're always hoping for a hand out.

Note the legs back while they fly, we call them "Flying Rubber Chickens"

Com'n In Hot

Here is our Friend, "Huge" We named him that before we were friends. He has an incredible tail this year, it is Huge

Huge nested next to the pool cage while were swimming, he likes hanging out with us

Huge followed us around while I shot these pictures

Yep, it's Huge again

He holds his tail up while he walks, here he was posing for the picture

Bamboo Feeding April 2017

Fed all of the bamboo with earthworm castings on April 15th 2017.  Ok bamboo... time to get excited about spring and shoot out some canes!

Raccoon Dance for Mark's Birthday

As I was blowing up balloons this morning to surprise Mark for his birthday, I was delighted to see a little girl raccoon climbing our "enrichment" gym to sneak a bird food snack.  Enjoy!

Jumps up at 2min2sec

Update: Piro (that's her short easy name) has taken to coming at night with her two young kits. They've learned to "hunt" at P2. The babies can't reach the buckets or climb on the PVC pipe yet but they manage ok getting into the other feeders.

I bought a bubble machine to entertain the raccoons but the motor noise scares them and they are confused by the bubbles.

P2 IS NOW CERTIFIED

Our little 5-acre agricultural farm is now recognized as a Certified Wildlife Habitat and we've got the sign to prove it!

PEACOCK DISPLAY

Our peacock friend "Big Tail" put on quite a show on our patio this morning. Perhaps he was trolling for a hot chick, not really sure what brought this display on since he was the only guy here. 

A very pretty tail, almost time to rip it out for the year lol

Bamboo Propagation Study - March 2017

I spent a couple of hours in early March using the reciprocating saw to cut out Emerald bamboo canes that had been cut short in the back of the 10 original clumps.  They were cut when FPL came through and decided that they were too close to the power line in the back, which goes over Drew's property.

That's fine, we turned lemons into lemonade!  I cut out the 4-6' canes at the rhizome/root level, cut them down to 2-3 feet, and put each of them in 3 gallon pots with potting mix.  The objective, of course, is to create bamboo that could be sold to someone (or planted all over P2's new ag zones that we're pondering).  There are about 10 pots which are now in the process of propagation.

Here's the timeline I'm going to be watching for:

NEW BAMBOO PHOTOS

This is Fluffy, he is the gatekeeper to the back of the A-J Emerald Bamboo clumps.  Fluffy is a Timber bamboo.

Here's the twins, two of the 3 large Seabreeze bamboo we got earlier this year at Beautiful Bamboo.  The 3rd is "six-ish" who lives now between 6 and 7 of the original 10 Emerald clumps.

Here's today's planting at the end of the bamboo forest line.

On the left you see Tiny.  Tiny is a propagated Emerald bamboo who is VERY tall, and since he sprouted tall green leaves at about 10 feet, we couldn't cut him shorter.

After Tiny is Skeeny, he's an original bamboo propagation who also sprouted green leaves.

Then follows Baby Baby and Spike, our successful original bamboo propagations from cut canes.

Another view of the happy bamboo kids.

This is one of our Majesty Palms, in his new spot on the ag lot. 

This is a view of our lovely home from the other end of the pond.  We're considering planting a papaya tree here, so we were checking the positioning.

Here are photos of our latest plantings.

First Seabreeze Bamboo Culm Baby! March 15, 2017

We were out in the bamboo forest today planting a few more bamboo from pots into the ground:  Spike, Baby Baby, Fluffy, Skeeny (propagated from original bamboo patch), and Tiny (an Emerald that was sawed out of the ground and insisted on shooting out green leaves 10 feet in the air before we could cut him shorter).  While out there, we noticed the first bamboo culm of the year!  One of the Seabreeze bamboo from Beautiful Bamboo is already making a culm mid March.  It's going to be a very prolific year for bamboo culms, I'm betting.

DAYTIME RACON

Enjoying the Racon playground gym (formerly known as Fake Tree)