Leaving Guam

Well, it has been a long while since I posted a blog entry. This is less of a mistake for people such as myself that have a very small following :)

I applied for an early retirement slot from the Air Force due to the massive draw down in the armed forces. I was accepted and we will be leaving Guam on 21 May. That is 2 1/2 weeks and there is a ton of stuff that needs to be done before we leave. Times are very busy at the moment.

One positive bit of news is that I finally purchased a new camera and I am Back into photography. I will be posting a ton of pictures in the near future. I have already begun trying to capture all of the scenery here in Guam that I have  been dying to take pictures of for the past 16 months.

The garden has gone dry as I harvested the last tomatoes about 2 weeks ago. I let the okra go to seed and harvested it. I managed really good results from my black krim, big rainbow, and yellow pear tomatoes. I look forward to having a fall garden as soon as we find a place to live in what ever state that God puts us in.

I suppose this is the end of living in a tropical paradise. Truth be told, I'm ready for winter!

Corn update

After battering nitrogen deficiency in my potted corn, they have bounced back thanks to some fish fertilizer and chicken manure. I am beginning to see silt showing and as of now it looks as though I will make 4 ears off of 5 stalks. I have been attempting to hand pollinate, but I really have no idea if I'm doing it rig or not. I have collected the pollen in my hand and sprinkled it on to the silt, and I have also tried rubbing the tassels with q-tips and the rubbing the silt. Only time will tell if my efforts will pay off.

Some notes on the rest of the container garden:

I finally found some kelp meal and applied it to all of my containers. I really think that I am missing many trace elements in my containers so I have been adding some bone meal to gain calcium and phosphorus and I hope this kelp meal gives me some other elements that might be missing.

Everything is progressing along nicely at this point. I have acquired access to an actual gardening plot just up the road from my house. I purchased a small cultivator and started turning the ground and removing weeds yesterday. It is a modestly sized  20' x 21' plot, but should be more than adequate for my needs. More to come on that...

New sprouts

In the past week the okra and cucumbers seeds that I planted have sprouted. My plant is to put the okra in 10 gallon smart pots (fabric pots), 1 per pot. The cucumbers will go into 15 gallon smart pots. I chose space master and pickle bush variety cucumbers because, well, I don't have a lot of space to trellis long vines. I should be able to plant the smart pots in the upcoming week.

Homemade pickles and okra stir fry are just around the corner.

I also was able to cut and dry dill and rosemary. I love not having to buy rosemary because we use so much of it. I am growing dill primarily for use with our homemade pickles but I think there are a few fish recipes that dill can be used in as well.

Corn and beans in a pot

I wanted to try something a little different since I will be living in an area that has a year long growing season. I don't normally experiment because on the mainland of the US you only have limited time to grow and I spend that time with things that are tried and true methods.

My experiment is growing a dwarf variety of sweet corn in a pot. I even took it a step further and tried planting contender bush beans in the same pot. I'm using an 18" pot and planted the corn in a standard 5 pattern (just like you see on dice). I then speckled the beans in there between the corners of the 5 pattern.

I suspect that the corn will be too crowded and not produce but I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised. Even if it all makes, it won't be enough to produce a lot of food, but it will give confidence that this can be done. Sometimes that piece of mind is worth more than the food you produce.

As a side note. Once my bush beans produce I plan on planting a pole bean in its place and using the corn as a trellis. Cross your fingers for me!

First day of school

The girls start back to school today. I wish i could say that this is a joyful event but that would be a lie. Our youngest (Morgan) is starting the 1st grade and she is supper excited because she has figured out that starting school means that she has a birthday a few weeks away. Our oldest (Lindsey) only hears bad things about her teachers so she dreads school every year. The funny thing is that she will most likely be excited when she gets home in the afternoon because she will have seen that the rumors about her teachers are not true. It is a cycle that repeats every year like clock work.

I have been on leave for the past week and I have to return to work today too. It is bitter sweet because I have a lot to get done, but I  know that as soon as I get to work all that will go out the window and I will have a whole new set of issues to deal with.

Enough complaining though. I had a fairly productive week off. I got a few more veggies planted in my container garden. We have longed to eat fresh okra and I managed to get some planted and noticed yesterday afternoon that it had already sprouted! I can't wait to sauté up some fresh okra!!

I'll get some pictures of the girls up in a few minutes.

I hope everyone has a great day!

Introduction to my blog

My name is Todd and I currently live in Guam with my wife (Jessica) and two daughters (Lindsey and Morgan).

I started this blog with the intentions to pass on lessons learned about gardening, hunting, camping, and what ever hobbies I find myself into in the future. I suspect most of this blog will cover gardening though. It is the one hobby that evolves every time we move somewhere new. In Texas we we had great success with square foot gardening in raised beds, but due to the short span of time that we are here in Guam, we decided not to invest a lot of money into construction and opted to use containers since the containers themselves can go with us when we leave.

My wife has embrassed a raw food diet for our family. This has here making most of our meals from scratch and uses almost no processed foods and she has also removed almost all artificial dyes from products that we use. It is amazing how much fun it is to try and make stuff yourself! It also gives you a huge sense of accomplishment when you can make things happen on your own. You will see many pictures of stuff that my wife cooks on this blog.

If you can't tell already, there will be a wide variety  of topics on this blog. It will be an ADD blog that jumps from one subject to another. I hope you enjoy it.

Guam gardening

Since we moved to Guam 6 months ago, I have settled on doing a container garden over a raised bed garden. This decision was primarily made due to the high cost of filling a raised bed with soil as opposed to being able to spread that cost out by just filling pots with soil as I get the money to do so.

So far I have a Roma tomato, 2 admiral bell peppers, 2 okra, 2 rosemary, dill, basil, container corn and a bush bean variety planted. I also just started some cucumbers from seeds but they haven't come up yet. It is my hopes that I will be able to offset the high cost of fresh produce with this small garden  and also be able to obtain food that I know was not grown with the use of pesticides or other harmful components.

I also constructed a compost bin out of old pallets that were given to me by a store next to our house. This has been huge in cutting the cost of bagged soil for filling my pots. All of my plants are grown in a 50/50 mix of compost and organic potting mix made by black gold. So far I have had to use granular organic fertilizer due to the large amount of rain we receive here. The rain tends to deplete the nutrients in the soil very quickly. I have been adding about 3 tbs of fertilizer every 2 weeks and it has made a little difference in the size of the bell peppers that I am harvesting.