Attacking the Garden

Pikinini bilong mi, hatwok.

 Our first week in PNG we set out to reign in our garden, so we can get some much needed food grown.  Our first attempt took 2 hours and we got a 1.5 metre square patch of garden dug up.  It was a massive job, our garden is big and we worked hard in the hot sun.

At the end of the day we decided to seek the help of a local lady to work with us to get the garden manageable and growing.  

Our boys like to call her a 'machine', she is amazing as cleaning up the garden.  She nailed the entire pineapple patch in a morning.  The next morning she worked she tackled the banana patch.  

The boys and I felt a little sheepish about our efforts, until we spoke with an ex-pat who said the local weed by scraping off the surface, rather than pulling weeds out by the roots.  This made us feel slightly better for our initial efforts.

Sena, gaden mari, bilong mi,
"Sena the Machine"

We are eating our first harvested banana's. In fact we had them hanging in our laundry to ripen in a large bag when they got ripe, very suddenly.  We had been checking them every few days, we left it 4 days and they went from green except one, to all bright yellow.  So it's banana muffins, banana bread, banana smoothies, dehydrated banana chips for the cereal and mashed banana on toast, and bananas as gifts. No doubt we shall be tired of bananas by the end of the week.

I planted some seedlings upon our arrival and some of them have come up and are growing nicely, nearly ready to transplant.  I am guessing some seeds may have been consumed by bugs in the ground before they had a chance to sprout.  So I shall plant some more today. I am looking forward to telegraph cucumbers and moneymaker tomatoes. I'm hopeful the courgettes will prosper, the humidity can rot the flowers before they are pollinated.