Garden Journal in May, 2022: Cutting grass and planting new species in the rainy season.

It has been nearly two months since I grew and harvest the Mung Beans and Passionfruits, my garden now is covered by wild grass from the top to the bottom.

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The cutting grass becomes a crucial part of my duties in taking care of garden. Instead of weeding root from the soil, I would rather cut it from the ground by using the lawn mower.

The rainy season is coming with us in the end of April, there are a lot of kinds of grasses growing and developing quickly. My garden suddenly becomes a great park of grass. As you can see in the picture, there is the white color of Black-Jack, the pink color of pink grass, the fern and other plants. They grow erratically even cover the road in my garden.

The fern

The pink grass

The black-Jack grass

Before cutting the grass, I take a short tour around to check the fruit trees and clean the grass around the hole to make sure their protection from the lawn mower.
Last year, I have grown over 40 nurselings when the rainy season came. Until now, the survivors are in single figures. They includes: Guava, longan, sapodilla plum, jack-fruit, custard apple, English walnut, and Cassia javanica.

The longan tree

The Guava tree

The custard apple tree

The sapodilla plum tree

Sadly, the English walnut died without any reason while this one grew up quickly than others.
I have added a bit fertilizer to all of them since 2 months when I watered the coffee trees. Over the next 10 days, I will also add a number of organic fertilizers to these nurselings once more time.
Also on this occasion, I decided to plant some seed of Ricebean which I have found it in the Northwestern Viet Nam. This seed nowadays is not public to farmers because they often like the one which is more productive and good price.

These saplings are growing so fast. The shape of its leaves looks like a wild grass which belongs vine species.
To have more fresh feeling in my garden, I also grew Christia species, a beautiful flower with other common names such as Red Butterfly Wing, Mariposa to grow it in my garden 1 month ago. This flower has a great vatality in any condition. And now, look at these flowers, they grow quickly, the pupple leaves are poking up from the ground, and bigger day after day.

Finally, I have successed in growing this flower in a small area. From one bulb, it will spring up more and more small bulbs then create beautiful shrubs.

Before finishing my working day, I need to plant a healthy root vegetable in the ground. This plant is called Cassava. My friend sent me some tree-trunks of Cassava and the mature root for food, he also gave me the way how to grow it by trunk.

Cassava is one of a root vegetable that supply a lot of nutrients and starch but it is also a dangerous plant for human health if we over use it without knowledge. I often use the root of it to boil and eat with sugar or salt.

The rainy season is an available weather to grow this kind of plant. That is why I digged over 10 holes in the boundary of the fence after weeding the grass and turned over the soil.

To get a good production and to let the root develop easily, I put the tree-trunk in the hole to form an angle of 15, then cover the rest of hole till it flats with the ground.

Afterward, I took some dried grass to cover the ground to avoid the escaping of steam. Now I just wait for it sprouting and developing the leaf.

My plan for next month will be putting organic fertilizer in the coffee and pepper trees. I do not use chemical fertilizer due to its harm for the soil. If farmers add that nutrient for the trees during many years, the soil would be exhausted and make soil become harder and harder.

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Let’s see the changing of my garden in the next few months when the rainy season is coming soon. Have a nice day, all belove Hivers.