Mark Hansen

@George Yacus - thanks for the suggestions. I have been thinking to place a tarp of some sort on the jetty to collect. Now the young ones have learned to fly and they not spend their nighttime on top of the small building next to the pond!

@Timothy Markus - thanks, I will! I haven't done much on it yet.

Anne Miller wrote:Do the underside of the leaves look sort of like bubbles or raised spots?  

The second photos in the post is the underside of the leaves. Does it does look like galls?

Thanks, Mark

Tereza Okava wrote:are they ants?

Thanks, @Tereza I will have a closer look to see if it's ant - but I don't think so. I have never seen any ants on the leaves.

Dear all,

I have a frangipani tree with some kind of problem. I am not knowledge enough to identify what the issue might be. Can someone help out?

Please see attached photos of over/under leaves.

Thanks for all comments.

Regards, M

Dear all,

I have 16 muscovy ducks at my small farm. They mostly stay around the pond and at night they stay at the edge of the pond.

I would like to utilise the poop and my idea was to build an enclosure for them where they could stay at night and then cover the ground with rice husks to collect the manure.
I moved their food tray inside the enclosure to feed at 5pm and then closed the "gate". Feeling at bit bad since I know they like to bathe and clean themselves in the pond after eating in the afternoon.

It turned out that they were really not happy with staying inside the enclosure during night and eventually they all got out to their usual place on the edge of the pond or the small jetty.

I have covered the edge of the pond with rice husks but I don't think it will be easy to collect.

Any ideas of how to do something that will allow me to collect the duck poop?

I have attached photos of how it looks at the moment and where they like to be at evening/night.

Thank you!

Michael Cox wrote:‘Is it ok to put in the compost pile’

Actually, I would use it directly to mulch around the area you are planting.

Thanks Michael!

I will use the bamboo leaves to mulch in the gardens - they are nice and easy. I heard somebody talk about that it was not good to use teak leaves or rice straw in the compost pile - so wanted to check up on that. I will still use the rice straw to mulch bigger areas and then put the rest along with the teak leaves in compost 👍

Are all carbon material for use as mulch and in the compost created equal?

I have access to dry rice straw and lots of dry teak leaves but some people say neither of them are good for mulch and compost? Is that true? That there is some kind of chemical in the teak leaves that prevent growth?

Are dry rice straw ok to put in the compost as the brown/carbon part? They break down pretty slow..

I have started to use dry bamboo leaves in my vegetable beds - they are easier to handle than the rice straw.

Any recommendations to what to grow to produce material for compost? I am in North Thailand and everything breaks down and dry out really fast so I feel I have to add compost all the time.

Thanks, M

Thanks for the replies! I will try with the freezer first and experiment from there 😊

(not sure if this is the right forum to post this topic?)

Dear all,

I harvested and stored cowpea and pigeon pea in glass containers. After (quite) a while I saw that there was a lot of bugs. After some research I found out that it’s probably the “cowpea bruchid” (Callosobruchus maculatus).

Despite trying to google - I haven’t found a solution. Is there a way to clean or store the beans/peas so that I can avoid this bug?

At first I cleaned out all of the bugs from the containers but I guess they are inside the peas and keep getting “hatched” (or however they appear). I also added some dried neem leaves to see if that made any difference (it didn’t).

Any ideas?

Thanks, M

Thank you for the reply!

I have now tried to hand-pollinating one morning. I mostly have a lot of female flowers and had to do some searching before I found two males. I attach a photo of how it looks like. First time I have ever done this so not sure I am doing it right and if the male flower was shedding pollen.

I will also water more extensively. Let's see if it helps 😊