Monthly updates
June 2025
Orchards
Mango Orchard
The experiments with mango intercropping are giving good results and we had abundant harvests of turmeric and pumpkin from the Mango Orchard.
The early rains have not been so kind to the mangoes and we lost quite a lot of fruit. The flowering is also late this year and not as much as last year pointing to a much less mango harvest compared to the last two years. Nonetheless, all of us are eagerly waiting to relish the mangoes as much as possible.
Lemon Orchard
We have raised new beds in the lemon orchard to grow Turmeric, Yam and Taro in open spaces within the orchard, as well as under the shade of the existing trees.
Coconut Orchard
We continue exploring the best way to irrigate the Coconuts considering the needs of the trees and water efficiency. Meanwhile Bananas are growing well and have started yielding the first fruits. This comes after two years of setting up this plantation as an experimentation of Coconut-Banana intercropping for this region.
Ramphal, pineapple orchard
Our 1000 pineapple project is bearing fruit (literally). This year we will be able to offer abundant pineapple to the community.
Here Pineapples are growing with Tapioca, Ramphal and Papaya.
Cashew Orchard
The Cashew harvest this year is better than we expected and we will be able to distribute the first cashews of this season very soon!
Papaya Orchard
We continue to plant more Papaya after losing hundreds of plants in the cyclone last December. We are planting Kumquat and other citrus along with more lemongrass under the Papayas.
Avocado orchard
Tiny Avocados have appeared on the trees. We are expecting a good yield this year. Avocado harvest is expected to start by late July.
We have also started some new Avocado trees which will start bearing fruit in 4 to 5 years.
Block A syntropic orchard
Our experiments with the Syntropic method have been really successful. We planted a new Avocado orchard under the canopy of Papaya, Moringa, ad several other biomass species. All these plants were planted densely and put together at the same time. Papayas are beginning to fruit and the entire system is growing beautifully abundantly and synergistically.
This is a highly productive and perhaps the most efficient way to start new fruit orchards.
Mango Orchard
The experiments with mango intercropping are giving good results and we had abundant harvests of turmeric and pumpkin from the Mango Orchard.
The early rains have not been so kind to the mangoes and we lost quite a lot of fruit. The flowering is also late this year and not as much as last year pointing to a much less mango harvest compared to the last two years. Nonetheless, all of us are eagerly waiting to relish the mangoes as much as possible.
Poultry
We replaced our last flock and with that the 3 year plan of transition to a different breed of birds is now complete. As mentioned before, these birds are free ranging, have better constitution and disease resistance and produce eggs of higher nutritional value.
We are also making changes to our free range areas and experimenting with fodder crops for the birds.
This season has been particularly difficult due to the sudden drop in egg consumption in the community. Despite the same situation every year, we haven’t been able to find a solution to this problem.
Vegetable Garden
We are preparing for the July planting and putting most of our beds under green manure- Sunn Hemp. This is also the season to manage biomass and add more and more mulch to the beds.
This season we are again planting turmeric after the great success from last year and the appreciation of the community to have access to good quality organic turmeric. We are also going to plant hundreds of new pineapple plants, some dwarf varieties of Jack fruit and start our first organised trial for ginger cultivation on a large scale.
March 2025
Poultry
The second batch of the brown birds has started laying eggs! We now only have one batch of white birds left and they will be replaced next month.
We are experimenting with the free range by adding irrigation and maybe even cultivating certain cereals or millets which the birds can then eat.
Vegetable garden
This is a great time of the year as all the beds are full and abundant with lettuce, pokchoy, brinjal, pumpkin, cucumber, rugula, beans.
The sweet potato harvest has started and we are hoping to have a good harvest this year.
Turmeric harvests have surpassed our expectations. We planted 30 kg of seed which has grown into 900 kg of turmeric. We are exploring how best to process the turmeric for longer use in the community.
We are struggling with distributing greens like pokchoy. Any suggestions are welcome!
Orchards
We had a bountiful harvest of lemons this month. This comes after severely pruning the lemon trees in our effort to organise the lemon orchard better and introduce other crops there to diversify the orchard.
The new avocado block is now full of papaya, castor, mexican sunflower, corn, chili, cowpea and biomass trees.
The Papayas and Bananas have been replanted after the massive damage from the cyclone.
Mango and Avocados have started flowering!
January 2025
Poultry
We have just bought the third flock of 500 birds. They are of a breed called Hyline Brown. With this batch we will finally shift entirely to brown birds.
They will be moved to the laying coop in three months’ time.
We are also exploring how best to manage the free range of the birds. We may have to sow some perennial grasses and create more sections so that the birds can graze intensively and at the same time, give enough time for each small area to recover from the grazing.
Vegetable garden
This is the most busy time in the garden for us with a lot of cool weather crops like Arugula, Palak, Lettuce, Celery, Pok Choy and so on, in addition to our regular crops like Pumpkin, Cucumber, Long beans, Brinjal etc. This is a beautiful time in the garden as the soil still smells fresh from the residual moisture of the monsoon, the morning dew and the flowers have begun to bloom.
Orchards
We finished quite a bit of pruning work with the Avocados and Lemon trees and are now preparing for the Mango and Avocado flowering. During monsoon, we added Kumquat, Pomelo, Amla, Sweet lime to the existing orchards. The last months were also busy taking care of the broken and fallen Banana and Papaya trees from Cyclone Fengal. Hoping for a good harvest this Spring of Jackfruit, Papaya, Pineapple, Banana, Lemon and later Mango and Avocado.
