Blat Ha Garden Updates

Jenny and I spent the last week working in the Blat-ha garden. We’ve learned a lot about sustainable gardening techniques in a difficult growing environment, and also a lot about medicinal, edible, and ornamental plants grown in this part of Mexico.

A new irrigation system at the Blat-ha garden,
installed by Jesús. Simple, but effective.

Because the garden is only feet from the ocean, the natural soil is mostly sand. This, combined with the fact that topsoil is difficult to find for purchase on a fishing and touristic island like Holbox, is why composting and finding local, natural sources of fertilizer are so important here. The seasonal precipitation patterns (which, incidentally, Daniel says seem different this year, with the dry season not as dry and the wet season not as wet) call for an irrigation system. This is especially true for certain fruits and vegetables like tomatoes, pumpkin, and cilantro. Over the course of a few days we had the chance to see Blat-ha's gardener, Jesús, construct a semi-passive drip irrigation system. The construction was simple and elegant- a couple of pieces of wood creating a tower to hold up a bag of water, from which extended tubing with intermittently placed holes. Fill the slow-drip bag from the garden hose, put it into place on the wooden tower, and  let gravity do the rest. When Jesús finished the construction, Jenny helped with planting a few cherry tomato starts that would benefit from this new system.

A newly planted cherry tomato start, next to an exit hole for
irrigated water. No worries about the growing season
ending here on Holbox anytime soon!

Of course, some plants can thrive in the beach-like environment without the help of irrigation or fertilization. Quite a few of these- palms, a native goldenrod, coconut- are desirable in the garden, for aesthetic reasons, for practical reasons (providing shade, preventing erosion, attracting insects), or for edibile reasons (no coconuts yet, but there are plans). Others, like certain kinds of beach grasses and vines, compete with wanted plants and require weeding. An invasive red vine is particularly aggressive and particularly damaging, apparently growing without roots over certain native plants, choking them to death.

Other plants that thrive without assistance at Blat-ha were culturally and biologically
fascinating. Daniel warned us from the beginning to avoid the largest tree in the garden, known as the chechen tree (Metopium brownei- closely related to the Florida poisontree). In the same family as poison ivy, the chechen releases a compound that causes contact dermititis in many people. The rash, which can last for longer than a week, can be set off by even brief contact with the tree's leaves, bark, or fruit. However, it is thought that almost wherever a chechen tree is found, another tree, called el chacá (Bursera simaruba), can be found growing nearby (and the Blat-ha garden is no exception). Conveniently, the chacá tree contains an antidote for the rash caused by the chechen tree!

Cuidado! A chechen tree!

This association between chechen (which produces high quality lumber) and chaca (which is sometimes known as "the tourist tree" because its red, peeling bark resembles a sunburned tourist) is probably the result of human intervention. But if this is the case, humans have been intentionally cultivating chechen (the "venom") and chacá (the antidote) together for a very long time. A Mayan legend holds that the chechen derives from an ancient malevolent king, and that chaca is either his brother or a beautiful princess- there seems to be multiple versions of this story. The broader picture- of balance, or equilibrium between harmful and helpful, good and bad- fits well within some conceptions of traditional Mayan thought.



A broad shot of the garden. Various types of wildflowers,
vegetables, and trees are divided by rows.
In the background, the famous chacá tree.



Some other interesting plants found in the garden include la penosa ("the shy one"; Mimosa pudica), or, in English, the sensitive plant. This plant illustrates nicely the general concept that plants react to stimuli. When touched, the plant's leaves almost immediately fold up, presumably an adaptation to avoid getting eaten.



The Sensitive Plant (Mimosa pudica)
before Jenny reaches out to touch it.



The Sensitive Plant, moments after
Jenny reached out to touch it.
Where'd all the broad leaves go?
Clever plant...



  

 

Espinaza del Diablo
Note the small plantlets growing on the lip of several

of the leaves!

One of our favorite plants in the garden was not a Yucatan native. Espinazo del Diablo ("Devil's spikes"; Kalanchoe daigremontona) produces plantlet clones along the lips of its leaves, which each appear to be a miniurture version of the larger plant. Around each Espinazo del Diablo, several "baby plants", dispersed plantlets, can be found.

Another member of the genus Kalanchoe. These
plants are common house plants around
Chicago. But here in the Yucatan, they
grow outdoors!

Elsewhere in the garden we found such plants as okra, sugar cane, papapya, arnica (which in addition to serving medicinal purposes provided wheelbarrows full of dead leaves- another great natural fertilizer), various types of cactus and agave, white spider lily, watermelon, maize, and much, much more, with many plants conveniently labled with sign posts. While compared to Jesús and Daniel I have a long way to go, I can leave Holbox confident that I know a lot more about plants, and gardening, than I did when I arrived. Thanks Daniel and Jesús!

Gardening Adventures: Chaya, Chiles, Pineapple and Worms!

Greetings! My name is Will, and I’ll be tagging along with Jenny for the rest of her travels through the Yucatan. Like Jenny, I’m a graduate of the same teacher training program (UChicago UTEP) where Danny is currently studying. Next year, I’ll be teaching Earth science at Kelly High School in Chicago (Go Trojans!). I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to study the natural history and horticultural practices of this region of Mexico, and can’t wait to bring some of what I learn back to my classroom next year. 

On my first full day here on Holbox, I had the unique experience of swimming with the largest fish on Earth. I couldn’t have asked for a better, more relaxing start to my stay here. Jenny assured me, however, that we would be hard at work the following day, at Daniel Trigo’s organic garden and orchard. Certainly the hard work part proved to be true- but I also found that tending to a garden here in the Yucatan could be nearly as exciting as swimming with the whale sharks.

When we arrived at Blat-ha, we greeted Daniel and some guests and discussed the MHG back in Chicago as well as some books describing the plants of the Yucatan and thousands of years of Mayan agricultural practices (more on these in a later post). But soon the topic turned to the work at hand- today, Jenny and I would be maintaining a worm-compost culture and harvesting various chiles and chaya, a vegetable that originated here in the Yucatan.

Finding the worms

To help continue Daniel’s vermiculture, our first job was to sift through about a half of a cubic yard of post-compost dirt and pull out all of the red wigglers (Eisenia fetida) we could find. While these worms make for excellent composters, they prefer an environment high in decaying organic matter (like vegetables and other compostables) to soil. Daniel was also worried that the worms experienced too much heat under the Yucatan sun, and wanted to concentrate whatever live worms were left. We found more living worms than we bargained for, ranging in size from only a few millimeters (presumably newly born) to several inches long (presumably reproductive). The next day, we found our concentrated colony of red wigglers happily eating away at compost in the Blat-ha kitchen. Then we used the remaining post-compost soil to help nurture the garden’s pineapple plants, after a bit of weeding.   

Chaya Success!

After describing his composting system and inquiring about Jenny’s students’ system back in Chicago, Daniel asked if I knew how to pick chaya (Cnidoscolus aconitifolius). I was eager to learn, but didn’t realize that delicious chaya plants have at least two defenses against harvesting their edible leaves. The first are spines on the underside of the leaves, which I easily avoided using Daniel’s technique of folding the front side of the leave around the leaf stem before picking. The other defense is a milky-white sap (similar in appearance to milkweed sap) that irritates the skin. By the time I finished harvesting 50 or so chaya leaves, my hands felt like they were on fire, though a simple rinse immediately eased the discomfort. 

After the harvesting lesson, Janny, Daniel, and I talked chaya for a few minutes. First, while not common in Chicago, we know of at least one chef who manages to grow the plant in the city. One day, Jenny and her students hope to have a healthy chaya plant growing in the Mexican Heritage Garden at school. Second, it is generally recommended that the highly-nutritious chaya be cooked before eating because of the potential release of poisonous cyanide from the raw leaf. However, Daniel, and many others, apparently ignore this advice and prefer the raw leaf. Hopefully in moderation! And don’t try this at home!

Chile Harvest

The chiles in Daniel’s garden were ready for harvest. Fortunately, Jenny, wondering how the chile plants her students have been growing since February were doing back in Chicago, was eager to pick dozens. When we asked what kind they were, Daniel said that he wasn’t sure, because they are likely a hybrid, several generations in, perhaps a mix of jalapeno and habanero. 

The following day, in addition to tending to the pineapple plants and trimming down an abundance of native goldenrod, Jenny and I went on a mission to gather some natural fertilizer from a ranch down the road. We were told that if we asked for the “miel de Daniel” (“Daniel’s honey”) the proprietors would point us to their dried horse manure. Walking back from my second trip to the ranch, as a large iguana crossed the sand road in front of me from one thicket of palm trees to another, and with the blue-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico not fifty feet from me, it struck me that I never thought I’d have so much fun hauling a wheelbarrow full of horse poop.

The secret ingredient of any successful gardener

Freshly weeded and fertilized pineapples