When the rains start…they sure are here to stay! The machine, that is the South East Asia monsoon, has begun to dump its wet payload for the 2012 season. This moisture transforms the landscape into a burst of verdant, dripping green. Even though it isn’t technically a rainforest, days of non-stop showers certainly make it feel like we live in one!
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| Tilling the Fields |
Farmers take advantage of this time of year by planting rice in their sopping rice paddies. Other crops are hard to grow because they are not adapted to this much water!
As one might expect gardening becomes challenging as water logged soil is inevitable. Despite our raised beds, plants that don’t like having ‘wet feet’ soon drown, leaving the monsoon-resilient plants to flourish in the humid environment. Eggplant, ginger, basil, hot pepper, moringa, and lemon grass have all taken off, while tomatoes, green onions and dill have all retreated to the dryer safety of pots on our porch.
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| Planting Amongst the Stubble |
We were blessed by Mom and Dad Visness who brought with them good ol’ American sweet corn. We praise the Lord that the corn flourished so well that in only 65 days we feasted off corn-on-the-cob for two weeks, before the rains really geared up. Now that the corn is stubble the soil needs some replenishing. Since corn is a heavy feeder and the rainy season quickly leaches nitrogen from the soil it is a necessity to plant some sort of cover crop that will improve the soil and protect it from the pounding downpours.
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| Baby Jack Beans |
We were introduced to jack bean a climbing, nitrogen-fixing legume that seems to grow prolifically in any location. It doesn’t seem to mind the wetness either! It will produce foot long bean pods that are edible (but we have yet to indulge). Lima bean sized seeds are also produced, but we have read that they require some work before they are made tasty.
This coming year MCC may even encourage farmers to grow nitrogen fixing cover crops in their fallow rice paddies during the dry season. We are excited to see how well the jack bean continues to do in our garden and maybe see if it can be used to improve the soil in the fields of some local farmers working with MCC. Will jack beans prove to be magic?
