Background:
Born and bred on the island of Trinidad, in the twin republic of Trinidad & Tobago. I am of Chinese descent (duh). I was an average student, nothing spectacular. Studied Systems Analysis in Miami for my undergrad, and did a Masters in Project Management in Trinidad (mainly because i didn't know what to do next, all i knew is, i was bored, and needed to do something). I am an IT consultant, and have spent most of my professional career as an IT Manager / Systems Analyst / Database Administrator / Developer in Manufacturing and Food Distribution environments. Most of my spare time was spent on video games, MTG and anime. I was always generally aware of the earth's problems, and my knowledge of natural systems was limited to geography in secondary school (equivalent of high school). I would watch national geographic, and was always interested by nature, animals, and ecosystems. I would always think about recycling, and saving the earth from my early experiences watching Captain Planet. But i had never actually done anything. My gardening skills had been limited to what my father had shown me when we would prepare small pots, fertilize plants, transplant flowers, or cultivate new plants from seed or cuttings, just as general garden maintenance, but nothing more. My home did not have a large garden. There were a lot of pots, flowers, orchids, generic home shrubbery, and random herbs (chadon beni, pimentoes, thyme) growing here and there, but nothing structured.
The Event:
A few years ago, my girlfriend (now wife) took me to a "Red Earth" festival being hosted by the Australian Embassy in Chaguaramas. The festival advertised that there would be a farmer's market, and a short course on how to survive in the wilderness, and a course on sustainability and permaculture. We had no idea what any of this was, and we really just went because we thought it would be cool to see. I had heard about permaculture before, but had no real idea what it was about.
The farmer's market was pretty cool, and the wilderness survival tips were also quite interesting (i'll make a separate post about those later). But what really captivated me was the talk on sustainability and permaculture. This was where i met Mr. John Stollmeyer of Wa Samaki Ecosystems, and was introduced to the idea of permaculture.
The Awakening:
At this time, i was probably about 28years old, and i had never really thought much about plants. What i did know a lot about however, was databases, systems, design, and efficiency. I also knew a lot about MTG. As i listened to John talk about sustainability, and design, a number of ideas lodged themselves in my brain, and started all of my wheels turning. For the first time, a whole number of questions that had been floating around unanswered in the back of my brain suddenly became answered, and there was a flood of understanding that came over me.
- What is energy? - All energy comes from the sun. Okay, so this isn't 100% true, so i will rephrase. 99% of all ORGANIC energy comes from the sun. (geothermal, chemical and nuclear are a whole different kettle of fish, and we will discuss those later) All plants use solar energy, and store it within their bodies. This eventually becomes food for others. Animals eat plants and produce waste. All animals are grown from plants. Animals and plants are made of the same stuff. Bio-waste, humus, soil, oil - they are all the same thing. Physical manifestations of Energy in different forms. They taught us this stuff in school..circle of life, food chain...but for some reason.. i never quite understood how the whole system worked. Until now.
- The Circle of Energy - Sun - Plants - Soil - Plants - Animals - Soil. We all live in a closed system. All of our energy comes from whatever energy has landed on this planet from the sun. Every piece of organic matter - leaves, trees, wood, fish, people, food, oil, everything...is just a solidified piece of sunlight.
- At this point i understood. Plants are nature's batteries. They are like sponges,soaking up the sun's energy, and trapping it. they are also, the only batteries. Animals do not store sunlight directly. They store sunlight by eating plants that have stored sunlight. The waste that animals excrete is also sunlight, just in a form that animals can't use.
- Once i understood this, everything suddenly became clear. Our goals on this planet should be to harvest as much sunlight as possible, all day, every day, at all times. Every piece of sunlight that is not absorbed by a plant, is basically wasted.
- This was the one driving thought that stuck in my mind. This was the reason why i decided that it was time to DO something. For the first time, i felt a sense of urgency. I felt a sense of "All that sunlight going to waste"
- Sustainable Design - The idea of designing a natural system so that it does not require human intervention, and it can look after itself. I was completely blown away by this idea. It had never occurred to me before that something like this could even be possible.
- Plants as building blocks - The basic idea here is that every single plant has a different set of attributes. Every single plant is like a miniature factory. Is takes in X, converts it, and produces Y. Therefore, the idea is, that if you can find one plant that takes X and produces Y, and another plant that takes Y and produces X, together, you have a sustainable system. A sort of, natural perpetual motion machine (which isn't really perpetual because everything is fueled by sunlight). At this point, the strangest link happened in my mind. I had used this technique before. All of my experience building MTG decks suddenly sprang to life as i thought about this idea of sustainable design. The idea of taking opposite cards, and using them together to create some kind of synergy. I was hooked. From this point, my love of designing systems took over, as i realized how it could be applied to plants. Now all i had to do was figure out the attributes of every single plant...
- The Database - My original idea was to basically create a sort of "Skills and Abilities" card for every single plant, in much the same way you would have information in a game about different weapons, or different character classes, or different creatures to make decisions easier. Right away, i realized that this was not going to be easy, as most of the information out there is not geared towards this kind of thinking. So i decided to build my own database of information, and develop "cheat sheets" for every single plant i came across during my search for information. This is the list of attributes i started tracking.
The Action:
Now, a normal person would have gone online and started reading about plants first, and started gathering information that way. Now, don't get me wrong...i tried that. However, every single piece of gardening information online seems to be heavily geared towards home gardening, and NORTH AMERICA. There is VERY limited information on a lot of the plant species we grow in Trinidad, and in the Tropics in general. Also, a lot of the techniques, and advice they give, is based on the four seasons, and a generally colder climate, with a lot less ambient bug life. There is little to no technical information about the plant attributes, and even that is wrong, or is different because of the different species that exist in North America.
- The Planting - So of course, in my gung-ho, red mage, brute force password-cracker attempt at getting information for my database, i requisitioned some bricks leftover from some construction done at my sister's house, commandeered a part of my front lawn, and set up the most godawful ugly planting bed that you have ever seen. I took all the bricks, and made a rectangular outline of a bed on one side of the lawn. (because that's all my father would let me have) I was going to dig up all the soil, but the permaculture way spoke about not disturbing the natural configuration of things. So instead, i would only dig up small areas as i planted things.
- What did i plant? - Everything. Whenever mom came home with groceries, whatever vegetable bits she had leftover, i would take, and plant, just to see what would happen. In my database, i would record the date, and as much information as i could find about that plant that was applicable to my location. I would talk to my friend, go by the neighbours, go to the plant shops, everywhere, and ask for plants. Now there were a couple rules to the types of plants i was growing.
- It had to be edible, or useful in some way - All those decorative plants, i didn't care about (this changed a little later on, as i learned more and more about how plants worked)
- It had to be free/very cheap - i was hell bent on spending as close to zero money doing this, just to prove that it could be done
- It had to be easy - If the plant required too much attention, or could not survive on it's own, i didn't bother with it. I believed in lazy gardening. If something kept dying, i just planted something else.
- The Realization - As i started asking for different things to plant, i suddenly realized how LITTLE i knew about the food i ate. A lot of the vegetables i would just eat without giving a second thought, i had NO CLUE what the plant looked like, what requirements it had, how to harvest it, WHEN to harvest it...nothing. And that upset me. It angered me. I wondered, how could something so basic to survival not be common knowledge. So i started asking everyone. And what shocked me even more was that NOBODY seemed to know. Then, like every techy, i turned to google, and made another shocking discovery. You can't search for plants if you don't know their NAMES. I had a bunch of stuff growing in my yard. There were a bunch of vegetables selling in the grocery, and our markets. There were trees growing everywhere. But if everyone calls something by a local name, you can't find that online. I looked at so many trees and thought "what is that?" and then realized there is NO WAY for me to find out the name of that tree, except to find someone who knows, or to keep showing pictures of the tree, leaves and flowers to people in the hopes that someone knows it. This got to me. As an IT person, who is used to ID numbers, and order, and information being easily available with all our google and facebook and advanced technology tools, i was floored at the idea that all of this technology fails utterly and completely when it comes to finding the name of that tree over there. If anyone has a link to some sort of online Plant Database with a Similar Image search function...that would be spectacular. If that sort of thing doesn't exist, well hey, there's a million dollar idea for free. Go build it for me.
That simple action i took, of putting down some bricks in a rectangle, had some unforeseen consequences. Suddenly, i had this ugly bed with nothing in it. It only had lawn grass, and a few failed attempts at planting random things in random places. However, there were also a few successes. These minor successes drove me to want to learn more, to do more, to do better. When my first set of plants failed horribly, i was ready to give up. But there were a couple that didn't fail horribly, and started doing quite well. That made me stop and think. "Why did those die? Why did those live? What did i do differently?". And then i went down the rabbit hole..searching for answers. And i found them.
A Few of the plants i have had success with -
- Sweet Potato - I took the rotten part of the top of a potato that mom cut off and planted it. Within 2 weeks, i had a vibrant sweet potato vine that i cannot get rid of to this day. I learned that sweet potatoes grow from vines, and only make potatoes where you plant them.
- Cassava - I got a cassava stalk from our dude that sells veggies outside the supermarket. Planted it, and now i have endless cassava plants, and every so often, i get cassava for doing pretty much nothing.
- Bananas - I got a tiny banana shoot from a friend at work. Now i have over 12 separate plants, more bananas than i can eat, and banana leaves for pastelles at christmas.
- Dasheen - Planted the top of a dasheen in a soggy part of the lawn, and now we have a vibrant dasheen patch where we get dasheen bush to use as spinach, and every so often, an actual dasheen or two.
- Lime, Lemon, Portugal, Orange - Citrus plants are the easiest things in the world to grow. They are strong, they are hardy. They just take forever to mature. I will always remember when i first planted my lime seeds taken from a few limes my mother squeezed for lime juice, she said "You know how long it's going to take for you to get limes from that?". Honestly, i had no idea how long it would take, but i didn't really care. I planted them anyway. A few months ago she got her first lime from those trees, and i don't hear anyone doubting me any more.
- Ochroes / Okra - I got some seeds from an old family friend, and these things grow super easy, but their fixed lifespan means constant replanting..which is a pain.
- Mung Beans/Bean Sprouts - Fast, prolific, easy. These things amaze me every time i plant them.
- Rosemary, Chives, Thyme, Chadon Beni, Basil - All very easy to grow under the right conditions
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