Andy Ze

Google says 35 inches of rain a year. But getting hotter and dryer in recent years. Our 2 rain barrels prob collect about 200 gallons a year or something. Not much, just barely enough for the little garden.

Lazy Miyawaki forest update. I planted 13 more trees this weekend so we have about 25 now, spread over 50m^2 or so. It's not as dense as a true Miyawaki forest and not as large but I hope it will work. I'm done for now, maybe I'll add more next year.

Funny story, my wife is enrolled in this Amazon program where she can bid on items that get returned to Amazon warehouses. Well, nobody else bid on these coconut husk bricks that were imported from Australia, so she won a bunch at $3 each. When you put the coconut brick in water, it swells up to 6X in size or something. So now our little trees are mulched in imported coconut and Starbucks grounds, among other things.

We harvested the sunchokes so it's time for the annual calorie tally yet again. The sunchokes were a little disappointing but I think it's because we planted too many per 5 gallon bucket. Next year I'll only plant 3 or so per bucket.

Type	2023	2024	2025	Calories per
blueberries	145	379	82	1
bell peppers	15	22	0	1
squash	7	2	8	5
figs	5	70	109	30
calamondin	18	0	0	1
okra	9	90	0	2
hibiscus(C)	0	0	10	28
sunchokes(C)	0	0	5	109
total calories	363,	2691,	4217,	-

Another side project... Putting a plastic box under our water spigot to capture the drippage. I planted rosemary, basil, and mulberry here. Very focused on food production.

Here's the humble beginning of our Miyawaki forest. You're looking at a few fig, apple, and red oak trees that were established, mixed in with pomegranate, mulberry, and a large Mexican white oak planted recently. It's not exactly following the Miyawaki Method but pretty close. Total size right now is about 3x5 meters. Miyawaki says it should be 10x10 minimum.  Luckily we have a bunch more saplings from the Arbor Day Foundation on the way so I can at least double the size.

The planting guess pretty fast. If the saplings are small, I can do 3 per hour.

The white plastic and the liquor bottles are from ideas my wife saw on Tik Tok. They actually work pretty well. There are terra cotta caps on the liquor bottles to regulate the water flow.

I put up with watery Starbucks coffee in order to score 40 pounds of coffee grounds. I can get as much more as I need. Along with a rotten pumpkin and a few other things, that's our compost source.

Wow, I just came across the Miyawaki thread about growing a forest really fast. We need a visual barrier to block out some apartments going in. This is just what the doctor ordered.

https://permies.com/t/44498/grow-forest-fast

I think we'll do a modified version, working with my own hands and my own schedule.

Photo update. The biggest success was getting my wife on board. She started this mushroom tent and her own rooting compound.

Sunchokes did great. The okra plants look healthy but no flowers yet. Any ideas why? They've done great before. The basil and figs were big winners.

There's a picture of a black compost bin here because it sucks. Never buy one of these.

Finally, I'm proud that we watered the garden 100% from rain water this year.

My wife threw some Genovese basil in the ground without doing any research and it turned into a big victory. Central Texas. Makes sense with the Mediterranean climate. There's something about snacking on a basil leaf that just seems extra healthy.

Cool. I have a smaller version of your setup. Much smaller, it only charges phones. However, one thing I've learned over 3 years is to cover unused ports or you'll get a bunch of dust in them eventually and they'll fail.

B+ on the rocks. A if you can make a crescent moon, A++ if it happens to frame the actual moon. That would be some Mayan shit.