TROPICAL GARDENING IN THE LAST QUARTER OF THE YEAR
While most northern gardeners are finishing up their gardening year in October, tropical gardeners can plant a second garden before the year ends. The last quarter of the year in Costa Rica provides an excellent opportunity for planting another corn patch, as well as both green beans and dry beans, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and squash. Hardy greens, such as cabbage, collards, mustard, Chinese cabbage, radishes and green bunching onions grow well in this season. Tomatoes, on the contrary suffer from the heavy rains and high humidity when planted outside. You can solve this problem by planting them indoors in 5 gallon pots or old recycled plastic buckets. Cucumbers, peppers, garlic, lettuce and eggplant also grow much better indoors, but be sure to locate them in a dry and sunny part of the home. You can also enrich your potting soil with aged compost and sand for better results. Although the harvest of mangos and avocados has finished, other fruits like oranges, carambola, banana, mammon chino, and jocote are in season. There’s still time to transplant seedling fruit trees and ornamental plants to their permanent sites before the dry season comes. Composting is another activity that can continue during the rainy season. The lush bio-mass from grass clippings, prunings and garden clean-ups can be composted into rich, fertilizer that ready at the end of the year. Heavy tropical rains, however, can turn compost into a soupy mess, unless you cover your piles with a makeshift roof or plastic cover. Also keep in mind that heavily moisture-laden soil packs or clumps very easily causing plant roots to grow poorly. There’s a gardener’s rule of the green thumb that goes like this – If the soil sticks to your hoe or shovel, it’s too wet to work. With a little effort now in the garden, you’ll be dining on the fruits of your labor in the festive month of December.
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