On July 22^nd I wrote a blog, encour­ag­ing you my friends, to uti­lize unused lands and spaces to pro­duce food to sup­ple­ment the bud­get and change the way we eat. I uploaded some pho­tographs of pro­duce reaped from my 1x 3 yard garden.

In the pic­tures there are zuc­chi­ni , toma­toes, pep­pers, and let­tuce. My fam­i­ly had already ben­e­fit­ted from green pep­pers, anoth­er type of let­tuce( red leaf), hot pep­pers , calla­lo, and we have been able to bless a friend of ours with some of our boun­ty My fur­ry friend pic­tured below how­ev­er, was not hap­py with me as I decid­ed that I would­n’t allow him/​her to enter my farm and sin­gle-hand­ed­ly eat all my crops , he did get to enter once after that I clamped down . There is plen­ty of stuff that he eats that I do not eat so we agreed to disagree. 

Until next time I hope you enjoy your gar­den­ing as much as I have, .….…..oh , oh, I almost for­got I saw my first water­mel­on yes­ter­day, I am so excit­ed, any­way bye for now.

I recent­ly adopt­ed a new hob­by, back­yard gardening,it is a hobby now, but dur­ing my high school days it was a means of putting food on the table and mon­ey in my pock­ets, any­way, I digress.

Times are a lit­tle hard right now and many peo­ple are strug­gling just to make ends meet, peo­ple in Jamaica and oth­er parts of the world are hav­ing to be inge­nious in stretch­ing their gro­cery dol­lar to feed their fam­i­lies, hav­ing lived in both Jamaica and the United States I have a lit­tle bit of expe­ri­ence on what it feels like to be with­out mon­ey, or at least enough of it, in both countries.

I would like to stress to my friends who access these blogs, that it is real­ly isn’t that dif­fi­cult to pro­duce fresh veg­eta­bles and fruits to sup­ple­ment the fam­i­ly’s dietary needs, and maybe add a lit­tle bless­ing to some­one else.With very lit­tle space and a few dol­lars at the right farm store, you would be sur­prised what you can accomplish .

This spring I ven­tured into a farm store a short dis­tance from my home, I pur­chased a vari­ety of seedlings , includ­ing two vari­eties of let­tuce, two vari­eties of water­mel­on, cucum­ber , green pep­pers, squash ‚(or what we in Jamaica call pumpkin),hot peppers,tomatoes , zuc­chi­ni . Supplemented by egg­plant and Callalo seedlings a friend blessed me with.

So I pro­ceed­ed home with my seedlings , along with some peat moss, a small bag of organ­ic fer­til­iz­er, and some top soil, to the side of our house and there I did my thing.Well it’s been over fifty days and my fam­i­ly have ben­e­fit­ted from green pep­pers ‚plum tomatoes,callalo,hot pep­pers, and our let­tuce are almost all gone thanks to my wife.

I am in total and utter fas­ci­na­tion at the good­ness of God in pro­vid­ing food for my fam­i­ly from such a con­fined space and I thought I would like to share that with you wher­ev­er you may be​.You too can do the same in a wood­en box or an old tire, or a small area where there is at least six hours of after­noon sun,a lit­tle less would not be catrostrophic.

You can find good top soil any­where in Jamaica or oth­er parts of the Caribbean and you may be sur­prised that here in the USA the leaves you rake and bag in the fall , may be stored and used as valu­able mulch in the spring.Places like Kingston Jamaica pos­es a slight­ly big­ger chal­lenge for ten­e­ment dwellers , for those in high-rise dwellings this may not be for you, but for those peo­ple liv­ing on ground lev­els , even rent­ed ten­e­ments, you can pro­duce some toma­toes , pep­pers , callalo,and even cucum­bers and cab­bage to bol­ster whats served at the din­ner table, the weath­er is good and you may do this year round in Jamaica, peo­ple in the New York do not have the lux­u­ry of year round gar­den­ing but should take full advan­tage of the warm months.

Happy gar­den­ing.

mike beck­les:

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