Sharpening machetes, preparing a piece of land and THE frog

- February 13, 2020

On Day 3 of our permaculture design course, we learn to sharpen a knife file and a machete, then we all set out on a piece of the land with our machetes to clear the grass from under the fruit trees. This is important to remove competition of the plants under and around the tree to ensure the tree itself gets all the nutrients around and gives more fruit with more nutrients from the soil. The cut greens turn into nutrients themselves. We also brought large banana leaves and placed them around the tree to avoid the weeds from growing back, keeping the soil moist and weed-free, the fruit trees love it. This is called mulching.

Our Day 4 activity: preparing a whole new piece of land, bringing the cut down leaves around the place where we will plant fruit trees, bringing the cut wood into a huge pile to later burn to make biochar once it is dry and planting rows of vetiver grass. Vetitver grass is like a miracle plant here, it grows roots down to 5 meters deep, bringing circulation and carbon matter deep into the soil, preventing erosion and protecting the soil all around it, retaining the nutrients when it rains and providing lots of mulching material when it is cut because it grows so fast and well, yet stays contained in perfect rows.

While we were clearing the land, Sivaan spotted a tiny little green frog with orange paws, big red eyes and spotted belly, sooo beautiful! Unlike other frogs in Costa Rica, this one is not toxic and Ian showed us we can actually take it in our hand to place it away from were we work so it can stay protected. How cute to have it in my hand and see it spread its paws and jump on the tree, it first jumped on Lauren, took a little nap, then Mallory's orange hat and David's phone.