What’s happening with our garden?

At the end of 2021, we had a beautiful garden full of tropical fruit trees, berry bushes, okra plants, ginger, hibiscus and tropical spinach.  I was especially proud of my mango tree, which had grown considerably in a short time and my first potential bunch of bananas.  My husband and I knew that in January or February it would get colder and we wanted to protect our plants.  We also wanted to protect our young ducks from aerial predators.

We got some netting that would cover the entire garden area and got to work building a framework to lift it up above the garden.  We started with pvc pipes sunk into the ground about 10 feet (3 meters) apart and then added vertical and horizontal pvc pipes to make a rectangular frame.  We also got some heavy-duty, clear plastic sheeting that could turn it into a greenhouse in the winter.

We couldn’t decide whether to put the netting up and then the plastic, or just start with the plastic.  We ended up going with just the plastic sheeting, with the idea that it would be easier to remove without the netting.  We learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t with this experiment!

First, trying to lift plastic sheeting up onto a pvc frame is a difficult trick!  The

plastic is heavy and the pvc bends and threatens to break.  This is really a job for four or more people to do, but there was just my husband and myself.  So, with a lot of struggle, we managed to get the plastic sheeting up on the frame.  It actually looked good as long as the weather was clear and not windy.

One day, we got some heavy wind and the entire plastic cover blew off the frame overnight and covered the shed where we were keeping our goats and pigs.  We woke up to find this crazy situation and had to move as much of it as we could out of the way just to let the animals out!  Somehow, we managed to get it back on the frame again and weigh down the sides to prevent that from happening again.

The next disaster was heavy rain!  The flat sections of plastic that stretched across the pvc pipes at the top of the frame collected the water like buckets!  Until we could get the roof at an angle, we ran around pushing up the plastic to empty out the water so the pvc wouldn’t break.  It was like one of those

circus plate juggling acts.  My husband put some strong wooden posts up in the middle of each flat section to make it look like a circus tent.  This was an improvement, but the plastic still collected water.  The frame did not have enough support and somewhere in this situation we lost the bunch of bananas that were growing.

Finally, in January, we got freezing weather overnight.  We had secured the

plastic to the pvc so it could not blow away but it did not keep the cold from getting to our plants and many of them were frozen.  My mango lost all of its leaves as did my avocado, jack fruit, and hibiscus. When it happened again in February, we wrapped many of our plants individually but the damage had been done. When we unwrapped the plants, we waited a few weeks and then took down the plastic too.

All we could do was wait to see if anything came back.  In the meantime, our goats feasted on the dead leaves from the fruit trees.  They especially liked the banana fronds, mango and avocado leaves.

By May, we had experienced several months of warmish weather and I am happy to report that most, if not all, of the plants were regrowing!  Many of the ones that were severely frozen came back from the roots.  The only two tropical plants that were not frozen were the guava and the loquat.

It does seem that I lost two Norfolk pines that I had kept for more than 20 years!  I didn’t realize that they could not tolerate the low temperatures here as they had lived outside in a slightly warmer zone for over a decade.

Now, we are looking at using the netting to keep crows out of the duck’s food and the goats away from my bananas!  Before the winter arrives we will need to revisit our greenhouse design and figure out something that will work better.