Click here for video: I used to pay a supplier about 4.00 US a bag for cow manure.  I use a lot of it for asparagus, cucumbers, watermelons, and coconut trees I'm growing. I've recently found a cattle rancher who has large pens of feeder cattle and will give me all I want if I sent someone to pick it up and bag it.  Now I send Salvador with my truck every Thursday afternoon, and we gave a young high school boy a job every Thursday to pick it up for me.  Now every Friday morning Salador brings back to the ranch about 20 bags . . . and it's free. Also, I show some Aloe Vera that my guys mistakenly cut down when I asked them to clear a fence row.  Some friends told me to pick the plants up and stick back in wet, soggy soil and they'd live.  The sure did. Lastly, I explain here about why we are bagging up 100's of bags of leaves.   Yucatan has 3 seasons really.  Not so hot.  Hot.  And hot as hell.   We're about to go into th...

I'm posting this so I can remember this time next year when the bees arrive to my yard.  I've been hearing this loud buzzing for a couple of days near my front porch of my house and didn't think a lot about it until it got so loud this morning I decided to walk out and try to see where they were coming from.  I don't have a lot of flowers near the porch and thought the buzzing much be coming from the trees.  I was right.  I do know that February is not a big month for collecting honey from the local hives.  That won't begin until the middle of April.  But I guess they are starting to work now to make the honey that will be collected in large quantities in April thru mid-June. Click here for video if you'd like to see.   Sorry.  It was too windy and I wasn't able to capture the buzzing.

  I used to buy cow manure 100 bags at a time for about 4.00. 25kg each bag. Now I've found a cattleman who gives me all I want, and I gave a young boy a weekly job to pick it up.  I pay him the equivalent of $7.50 and he picks 20 bags, more or less, a week.  I let Salvador take my truck home on Thursdays, along with 20 empty bags, and he brings it back on Friday.    Big savings in $$$$$.  And all the free fertilizer I need forever.  Plus a young boy has a weekly job to look forward to. Win/Win

  A few days ago, I posted about how to keep leaf cutter ants away from harming your plants, shrubs, and trees.   As I said, there is no way to get rid of them.  All you can do is keep the population down, and take some preventive steps to keep them from attacking.   But they will go on. But there is something that can be done to keep the very tiny ants away from the fruit trees and shrubs, as the Mayans have done for many centuries.  It's a limestone powder that is mixed with water, and then put into a paste and applied directly to the trunks of the trees.  It doesn't harm the tree, and it doesn't harm the ants (though I'm not opposed to the latter).  What it does do is make the surface too slick and the ants cannot climb up or down. Here's a very short video of my fruit tree orchard with a fresh coat of Cal.  It does wash off over time from the rain.  But generally, will last many months.  If it rains the same day, you apply ...