...quickly harvested and cooked my beans just in case
Wherever crops are grown, just as humans want to eat or use the crops, other creatures also seek to eat.
Afew days after celebrating the growth of beans in my mini-garden, I noticed insects have started swarming the beans.
Since I do organic growing of crops, I can't use chemical pesticides - too many foodstuffs in the open market grown in large commercial quantities are produced with use of chemicals.
When you hear of people slumping and dying not long after, there is every likelihood that the food they have been taking over time have toxins as a result of use of chemicals in growing, processing and preserving food .
Not all sudden deaths, if any are due to witchcraft of village people - let's focus on ensuring the food we grow and eat are healthy .So I needed to look for an organic solution to the insect attack.
I already noticed that the crops planted close to the Neem (Dongoyaro) tree hardly get insects infestation. The reason is simple- Neem leaves as well as the oil repel insects so can be used in production of organic pesticides.
Since I have a small garden, I decided not to produce organic pesticide but just plucked the stalks of Neem with the leaves and use them to wipe or whip the pods of beans.
I have a growing mango tree having insect attack as it's planted in a sack somewhat far from the Neem tree in the premises. So I also did same with the mango leaves. I then left the stalks of neem leaves hanging on branches of the mango tree.
Some days later I noticed the insect infestations seem to have reduced on the mango tree and to some extent on the bean plant- you may already know that insects love beans so very much.
So, just in case the insects dare the Neem, I harvested most of the bean pods - they were still green - fortunately green beans are edible. In our clime the reason beans are allowed to dry before being sold for consumption is simple - there is comparative advantage in sunlight and it is more commercially viable for large scale commercial farmers and merchants to distribute beans in dried form so the shelf-life can be prolonged - no need for refrigeration
The advantage of growing in small quantities is that you can harvest and cook your beans while they are still fresh- so the beans I harvested, I boiled and added pepper and oil - fried a bit and added salt. I then made corn pap and had garden grown beans and pap for breakfast that morning.
If you harvest your matured beans while still green, even the pods are edible. So I cooked the beans with the pods- the pods are indeed edible but I don't really like the taste so I removed them- but the beans sweet o - I didn't even add onions and my garden beans still so very tasty. Henceforth, grow beans I must..
OTHER ACTIVITIES
I also planted yam during last week after doing tillage of the soil - packed out the soil with a shovel, put in a bucket, poured the soil into a new sack and added organic manure - tillage is about the most tasking aspect of gardening.
This morning, I did similar tillage of
another sack of soil, manured and planted Okro. In farming - do the best possible you can and trust the process that God - the Creator has put in place.
If there are issues, find out and rectify because the natural growth process by the Creator is actually infallible- problems that emanate are directly or indirectly related to humans.
OTHER GIST
But am wondering o - when I was doing the tillage last week, even though I had taken fruit in the morning, can you guess what happened? I was given a very hard slap - my entire body shook!. Really? Yes o - Hunger slapped me very hard! I ran all the way from the garden to the kitchen - you won't believe it- even though I was very tired, I pounded yam and ate with Okro soup! I tell these things because I used to be someone that I could work all day and not really eat, maybe just a snack and drink or even nothing. . But the more I get involved with farming through gardening work, the more mean hunger is to my body - it's as though my body is saying - 'if you work this hard and don't eat, I will deal mercilessly with you.'
Even this morning, after taking tea, while doing the tillage, thankfully it was not a hard slap that hunger gave me just a wicked bite of my tummy - so I quickly went to boil egg and then rounded up the work in the garden.
Thank God for the boiled egg I tool immediately I finished. So I am able to write without hunger slapping me but hust sending reminders to my body.
I will go to garden to look for vegetables and cook the egusi soup and herring- shawa fish I bought. If not for fear of what hunger would do, I won't bother to cook, I would spend more time doing reading on some herbs and writing .
To cook is not easy o but since farm ing and eating -well are 5 and 6, dare I not eat well after doing farm work in the garden? Not even tiredness from farm work can stop me.
#dealingwithinsects
#dealingwithinsectattacks
#organicpesticide #minigarden
#neemleaves
#minigardencare
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