Adventures in Tree Planting

So on Friday, after several days of rain, we visited our good friend Don Antonio for some old fashioned tree planting. He is very eager to continue his journey with more sustainable agriculture by introducing guamos (Inga Edulis) among his specialty coffee.

These trees will not only provide a delicious exotic fruit, but will fix nitrogen from the air into the ground for the crops.

His farm is in a similar position to ours, just outside of town and overlooking the lovely Líbano. One thing he asked was to consider the planting in such a way as to not block the view too much.

His farm is quite pretty, and he even has a pair of peacocks that run around causing noise.

On our way in, we stopped to look out for the trees we planted here two years ago, take a look at that publication for reference, and were so happy to find the results, many of the trees could be seen rising above the coffee fields.

We got to work, first working our way down a central alley that left some extra space for the trees.

All this land was pasture before, which makes the grass the biggest obstacle. In order to combat this we didn't just dig holes, but also cut out a ring of grass all the way around each one.

It was hard work, luckily don Antonio had an additional worker to help with the hole-making job.

The young guamos were planted by my wife @ecoinstante, who also managed to get many great pictures of the activity. Don Antonio placed three markers for each tree, making sure that they wouldn't get damaged later as part of the grass management.

We then wound our way around the outside of the lot, continuing to plant into the afternoon after lunch, a total of 91 guamos for this days work.

It was a great productive day, and it was nice to get out in the sun and sweat a bit.

@ecoinstante will have an upcoming post with more info, as my phone died and I was unable to keep taking pictures. But the restoration continues!

Freedom and Friendship