January Weather Report

White-tipped dove

The dry season seems to have arrived at last, and parrots have been sighted in the neighborhood, a good sign. Other dry-season birds are out and about too, including cattle egrets, eastern meadowlarks, and white-tipped doves.

The month began with a couple of stormy days, followed by a week of dry, windy weather, and then came another big storm, dumping almost five inches of rain and winds that reached 33 mph. Since then we've had 16 days of sunny, breezy weather. Rain spat at us from time to time, but not enough to show up in the rain gauge. Most of the year I switch from a short-sleeve to a long-sleeve shirt around 3 or 4 p.m., but recently it's stayed warm enough that I don't have to make the switch until 6 or 7.

Total rainfall came to 6.8 inches. The high temperature was 80 degrees, on January 21; the low, 55 degrees, on January 6.

Happy gardening!

Potatoes, Part 1

I apologize for the recent lack of blog posts. My computer and I've been experiencing problems. The computer refused to boot up, and my food refused to go down (without a fight) for almost two weeks. About the time the computer and I got back on track, some good friends arrived for a visit. But they're off touring Costa Rica now.

Okay, now for today's topic, potatoes. I love growing potatoes. Any root crop, actually. Harvest time is kind of like a treasure hunt. I grew potatoes successfully for almost 10 years in South Carolina. I liked Yukon golds the best. Consumed fresh from the garden (cooked, of course), they almost melt in your mouth. I never thought something as mundane as a potato could be so delicious.

I asked my Costa Rican neighbor, who is a gardener, about growing potatoes. He's originally from Cartago, Costa Rica's potato-growing capital. I said, "It'd be best to grow them in the dry season, don't you think." "Oh no," he answered. "Potatoes are easy. You can plant them anytime, even September and October [the two rainiest months]." "Really," I replied. "I'll have to give it a try."

I asked around for seed potatoes, but found none. My neighbor and a brother-in-law, who lives in Cartago, each promised to bring me some seed potatoes, but they somehow never got around to it. So, I got some potatoes with good eyes on them at the supermarket, cut them up, and planted them in November, the last month of the rainy season. About ten days later potato sprouts began to appear in the garden. Within a few more days they had all wilted. I dug up the potato cuttings and found that they were all rotten, and stunk terribly. I'd never had any serious problems growing potatoes back home. An internet search produced the possibility of viruses or bacteria, I couldn't tell which.

So I posted a message on the internet to the Costa Rica gardening group. I got some very good responses. Apparently at one time growing potatoes was very easy in Costa Rica. Then someone brought in some potatoes illegally from Colombia, which had all kinds of diseases. The diseases spread, and now potato growing can be quite a challenge here.

I also checked on the internet for ways to combat potato diseases. After my research, I decided to try again, using some precautionary measures. Basically you want to start with disease-free potato seed, and you want to reduce the possibility of infection once they're planted. So, I did the following:

     (1) In order to keep the soil as dry as possible, I dug up a space in one of the raised beds and replaced most of the soil with sand and rice hulls. The sand was to promote good drainage. The rice hulls were to provide organic matter, as a substitute for fresh compost, that was likely to contain at least some diseased plant material in it.

     (2) I cut up the seed potato with a knife sterilized with a solution of water and chlorine.

     (3) I sterilized the potato pieces with the same kind of solution, and let the pieces cure for three days.

     (4) I sterilized the potato pieces a second time before planting.

     (5) I planted them in the dry season.

As you can see in the picture, I now have potato shoots about four inches high, and they look very healthy. I'm overjoyed at the prospect of growing and eating my own potatoes again, and although I might be counting my chickens before they hatch, at least I've gotten the potatoes off to a good start.

Happy gardening!

The Vegetable Garden, Part 5: Another Wintry Blast

High winds shredded the banana leaves.

As you might recall, in the last blog entry I surmised that we might be in for some more bad weather before the dry season finally sets in. This was based on the absence of parrots, harbingers of the dry season. Sure enough, on the afternoon of January 11 it grew dark in the northeast, the winds picked up, and sheets of rain began to come down. This continued without let-up for four and a half days. I recorded the highest wind gust so far -- 33 mph-- and we accumulated almost five inches of rain.

The winds have died down now, the rains have stopped, and the sun is out. But the vegetable garden is in shock. My first attempt at a windbreak is leaning badly toward the west, and did not do nearly the job I'd hoped it would. The wind tugged and pulled at the plants this way and that until broccoli and tomato plants broke off, corn was flattened, and a couple of beets were yanked right out of the ground. I didn't think this was possible. Sweet pepper plants are sick and dying and banana leaves are shredded,

Asparagus, cabbage, and peanuts did okay. Carrots and onions thrived on the bad weather.

My pond builder and general handyman, Alexis, is working on a project at our neighbor's, but he says when he finishes he'll build me a first-rate windbreak. I can hardly wait.

Still no parrots.

Happy gardening!

The Vegetable Garden, Part 4: Sudden Change in the Weather

My grandson Reed and I harvest a radish on Christmas eve.
Photo credit: Emily Johnson.

We've neglected the vegetable garden for the last two weeks. Holiday guests and a sudden change in the weather kept us either busy or inside. We'd had a couple of weeks of warm sunny weather and we were hoping the dry season had arrived at last. The fair weather had enticed flocks of parrots to venture up to our neighborhood from lower elevations each morning. They departed on Christmas eve and have not been seen since. The weather is nicer now, but the continued absence of the parrots is a sign that we may be in for some more bad weather before the dry season sets in.

It was on Christmas day that the weather turned nasty  -- high winds and horizontal rain. This continued for almost four days. It wasn't until Tuesday, January 4,  that I was finally able to get back in the garden to appraise the damage. Some things thrived on the wet, windy weather -- carrots, onions, lettuce, mustard, and radishes. Corn, sunflowers, tomatoes, and peppers were flattened, broken off, or beaten to shreds. I'm making a mental note of the survivors and casualties for planting this time next year. The first version of a windbreak proved to be inadequate, and will be replaced with an improved version soon. In the coffee grove next door, most of the plantain trees were felled by the wind and most of the leaves on our cecropia tree were left in tatters. I had one tomato plant sitting on the edge of the upstairs balcony. The wind blew it off and it tumbled down the roof and stuck in the gutter, resting sideways. I had to wait three days until the wind died down to venture out on the roof and retrieve it. In it's three-day sojourn it had produced a small tomato.

The winds calmed down to almost nothing last night and the thermometer dropped to 55, the first calm weather since mid-December. Maybe we'll see some parrots this morning.

Happy gardening!

The Weather -- 2010 in Review

The picture for today's entry is of a morpho butterfly. My friend Louis Bregger took it on Christmas eve, up at the  La Paz Waterfall Gardens, one of my favorite places in Costa Rica.

If I'd known in advance that I was going to be recording as much weather information as I have, I probably would have purchased a weather station. But I started recording rainfall, and then the temperature, and one thing led to another. Rainfall measurement began in June, temperatures in August, and wind velocity in December. So, the information for 2010 is incomplete, but interesting nonetheless.

RAIN: Precipitation (all rain in our case) was the easiest. I put a plastic rain gauge that measures up to four inches out in the vegetable garden. I check it and empty it every morning.

TEMPERATURE: I began measuring temperatures at the same time, but had to throw out the information gathered when I checked it in July against information obtained from iWeather Complete on my new Ipod. IWeather Complete provides detailed data from Heredia, which is only five miles away. The weather in Heredia, however, is much different than here -- warmer, dryer, and less windy. When the low temperatures for Heredia were lower than my data for Concepcion, I knew my thermometer was inaccurate. I began recording temperatures with my Timex helix watch and comparing them with Heredia in iWeather Complete, and they seemed to mesh.

WIND: In December I received an anemometer to record wind speeds. It is hand held, so I check several times a day, which means I could very easily miss the high wind volocity for the day. Lacking a real weather station, this is the best I can do.

BAROMETRIC PRESSURE: I haven't begun recording this yet. My Timex helix watch is capable of giving me this information. To be honest, I've never really paid much attention to this. We'll see if I have the time to fool around with it.

For comparison purposes, I've included below data provided by the Instituto Meteorologico de Costa Rica for their weather station in Santa Lucia de Barva de Heredia. This weather station is slightly more than two miles distant from our location and 1,000 feet lower elevation. The Barva data are averages; the Concepcion data are actual rainfall and temperature recordings for 2010.

RAINFALL FOR 2010
Total rainfall (mid-June - December):  99.4 inches
By month (inches)
                   Barva    Concepcion
  June          12.6       5.0 (2nd half of month only)
  July             8.5      11.3
  August      10.5       27.2
  Sept          16.5      26.7
  Oct           16.8      10.1
  Nov            7.4        9.8
  Dec            2.0        9.3

TEMPERATURE (fahrenheit) FOR 2010
  AVERAGE HIGH
                   Barva    Concepcion
  August       77         76
  Sept          77         75
  Oct           76         75
  Nov           76          73
  Dec           75         72

  AVERAGE LOW
                  Barva    Concepcion
  August      60         57
  Sept          59         62
  Oct           59         61
  Nov           60         60
  Dec           59        57

  Low temperature for the year -- 51 degrees - Dec. 17

  High temperture for the year -- 80 (various dates)

Happy gardening!

December Weather Report -- COLD!!! . . . and wet

We'll always remember December 2010 as the month that brought so much cold weather. Looking over my data, however, it shows the month to be fairly typical for this time of year, up until Christmas day. The month began with a couple of hard rains, then shifted into the typical December pattern -- mostly sunny with blustery winds from the northeast bringing spray precipitation and rainbows, highs in the low-to-mid seventies and lows in the upper fifties. There was a three-day lull, with light breezes from the west (very unusual for December). On the night of December 17 the sky was clear and calm and the thermometer dropped to 51, our record low for the year.

Rainbow in the west. As morning progresses it gets lower and lower in the sky, then disappears, and reappears in the east in the afternoon. Rainbows are almost a daily phenomenon in December.

The cold began on Christmas night as we were sitting around our computer watching the snow fall back home on the Clemson University campus. We could hear the winds begin to pick up outside and then a hard spray started to hit the windows. This is exactly what it had done the previous night (Christmas eve), but this time it continued all night and on into the next day, and the next, and the next. The low for Dec. 26 was 59, the high, 60 (the lowest daily high temperature for the year).

Several times during the month I checked the wind speed with my new anemometer. Twenty-eight miles per hour is the highest speed so far.

Total rainfall for the month came to 9.3 inches, half an inch less than November. This is almost four times the normal for December.

Happy gardening!