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.

FOXY THE FOXTAIL PALM
We bought this palm as a baby at summers end (Sept, 2016), a sort of beat up loner looking for some love and a home.

After having the well head on our artesian well repaired we suddenly had pressure on an underwater distribution system we knew nothing about.

We planted Foxy where an orange tree was long ago and repurposed newfound drip line to fill a moat around the plant formed out of the sandy soil.

Foxy spent the last 70 days in a pot inside our pool cage. It was time for him to take a place out in the P2 landscape.

All new PVC pipe and 1/4-turn valves replaced the old rusty pipe and valves. Heidikrueger well services did the rebuild on the well head. Now it is easy to draw buckets of water for plants.

Peacock boy by the pond

Great picture.... Duck, peacock, heron.....we love p2!

JUVENILE PEAFOWL DISPLAYING
This young peacock male is testing his ability to intimidate some ibis.

Notice the bored yawn at 0:27...

You be the judge, do the ibis look scared?

GEICO RACCOONS!

Loving Raccoons... It's what you do.  Thank you GEICO!!!

NEW BAMBOO SPROUT ATTEMPT OCT 23 2016

Here are eight new pots eith our latest bamboo sprouting attempt fully underway (hint: it's the row with blue tags).

This time we took cuttings from a stalk of Emerald bamboo between the 4th and 12th nodes. Each cutting had approximately three inches of cane on either side of the node. Mary trimmed the outgrowth so a single strand stuck out above the soil (except on one which is completely buried).

We are excited to crack the code on sprouting bamboo, it's supposed to be easy but so far we only have two successes to point to, fortunatel Spike and Baby-Baby have both launched new larger canes which indicates they're healthy and happy.

SQUIRREL AFTER HURRICANE MATTHEW

We're having trouble with the internet due to massive hacking, here is the picture of the squirrel begging for black oil sunflower seed. 

MORE POST HURRICANE PICTURES FROM AROUND P2, HURRICANE MATHEW 2016

As we headed out to look around after the hurricane a single lone squirrel was calling down to me asking if I would please put out some black oil sunflower seed. I did and she thanked me profusely :-)

Here are the rest of the pictures.

AFTER THE HURRICANE MATHEW 2016

GETTING READY FOR HURRICANE MATTHEW 2016