VEGETABLE NEWS IN BELIZE ON THE SUBJECT OF WORM PILES

Handful of worms turns Belize clay into growing humus.
A worm bin maker.
A big worm pile, makes Belize clay into humus that grows vegetables.


Tammy in Arizona
(wishing she was retired already in Belize)

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Dear Sir,

My husband died in 2001 and I have since remarried. He had a degree in agriculture and farming from Arkansas. That man could grow anything, anywhere.

I tried several ways to post to the blog but no luck. So I am writing you here instead. I hope to retire in belize and have laid out my gardening extensively on paper. Paper being the key word between idea and reality. I do so envy you already being able to live there. We suffered a huge financial setback last year and will be delayed another 5 years. I reside in Arizona now.

Ok back to lettuce and tomatoes in that type of soil. In the Ozark mountains along the Red River in Arkansas there is not really dirt/soil. It is instead a bed of harden red clay. Here is how we got our soil ready for lettuce, tomatoes and strawberries. We were so successful that over 100 families came by to learn how to do it.

In order to farm you have to farm the worms too. Earthworms. They create the soil you need. They are like soil magicians.

So create four earthworm beds. About a 4 foot by 4 foot rounded bowl shaped hole. I did mine at the four corners of my garden. From the center of the bowl-like hole to the top of the soil measures about 2 feet. Just make you a nice little hill. Line the hole with plastic. You want the worms to mine your chosen soil and not the earth around the hole.

Earthworm Soil
Mix this together:


2/3 part soil (your normal dug up soil)
1/3 part compost
1 pound of plain old cornmeal for every 5-10 pounds of soil
2-3 pounds of earthworms
Manure is optional (you may find he worms don't like it)

Every other day you make a dent in the top of the hill and add your daily collected coffee grounds and another 1/2 cup of cornmeal and WASHED egg shells. Throw in some vegetable trash (scaps or whatever you call your compost trash) Dampen the soil with the hose but do not soak the soil or the worms will leave.

Cover the mound of earth with a board or something. Remember worms hate the light. Plastic covering in that climate may bake the worms. So you think of something. Just no direct sunlight!!!!

Just put you a coffeecan next to the sink in the kitchen. Every day throw your used coffee grounds in there and 2 or 3 washed egg shells.

Why coffee grounds ? Earth worms use the acid from the coffee with an enzyme in their body that produces the proper Ph for the soil.

Failure to wash your egg shells results in bugs that kill the earth worms. Do NOT use nightcrawler earth worms use compost earthworms.

I brought our worms from here because his are pure organic and not just labeled that way.

http://www.vermiculture.com

Now every week stick a stick (like a hoe handle stick) in several different places and stir the dirt a little.

Trick: You know your soil is ready for use when the earth worms start leaving. It means there work there is done.

That's the method we used for ours. You will find lots of sites on how to farm the worms. Your trick is to get the worms to Belize or find a bait shop there.

When it is planting time:
Till and make your rows. Run your stick down the center of the row. Mix a seed packet in a bowl with the earth worm soil. Then put in the rows. After a week or as soon as you see 1/4 inch sprout gentle add some around each plant you intend to cultivate.
(your thinning process)

We did our worms one spring. The following March we used this planting method. I looked at my husbands' old logs.

Lettuce
Year (no worms) planted 3 rows 100 feet long and 3 ounces of seed. Harvest 7 plants. SEVEN

Next Year (with worms) planted 3 rows 100 feet long and 3 ounces of seed. Harvested 192 plants.

Potatoes - no worms 43 potatoes
Potatoes - with worms 732 ( over run with taters)

Strawberries - no worms 9 strawberries
Strawberries - over 100 pounds (we did 105 jars of preserves and I have no idea how much we froze and sold; he didn't record that)

Tomatoes (do not start in the ground do seedlings first)
no worms - 63
with worms - 734

Also, I used rare lettuce seeds b/c I couldn't get normal ones to grow. I got them here. http://rareseeds.com/seeds/Lettuce

I hope this information from my husband's old notes and journals helps you. I wish you all the best and when we come to Belize we will look you up even if I have to wait another five years.

Sincerely,
Tammy

p.s. Dear Tammy. I have the occasional worm in my humus when I can find it. Usually I make my compost in 5 gallon plastic buckets, by sticking in left over food and adding about 4 pounds of chicken manure. Then I use a muslin mesh to screen the mixed stuff with water and strain out the solids and vines, and pour the remaining chocolate brown liquid into another bucket, which I apply in a couple of different ways to both my soil and plants. Interesting about coffee grinds. We don't drink coffee here at home, only tea. But will keep it in mind. The PH effect of coffee grounds was a light bulb going off, in relation to other stuff I had read. Cornmeal and egg shells are interesting. Never considered them, though I have thrown them in my compost bucket, when making compost tea. Most problems here are temperature driven and seed varities. When night and day temperatures are the same, a lot of seeds will not grow properly.

UN FAO money supplies chickens to small farmers in Belize

FAO supplies chickens for small rural farmers to start a poultry business.


UN FAO SUPPLIES FUNDS TO HELP RURAL SMALL FARMERS GET STARTED IN THE POULTRY BUSINESS

A number of farmers in Western Belize received live produce of chickens, feed supply and other materials to help them get started in the poultry business. Hon. Rene Montero, Minister of Agriculture did the honors. Seeds had already been given out under this program after the floods last year. The idea is to give a boost to local production of foods. Belize is at the end of Hurricane Alley and periodically gets hit by hurricanes, river floods and the odd earthquake in a more minor manner. Other than that it is a great place to live in a mild tropical climate.

TWO LENTIL GROWING EXPERIMENTS IN TROPICAL BELIZE FAIL SO FAR.

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TWO EXPERIMENTS IN GROWING LENTILS IN BELIZE HAVE FAILED!

Here are the requirements copied off the internet for a temperate climate. From reading the below, lentils should grow in Belize. What seems to be the problem is the soil. Looks like they require HUMUS.
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Lentils are annual plants producing lens-shaped seeds. A cousin of the bean, the lentil belongs to the legume family, or those with seeds that grow within pods. Lentils are quite rich in iron and have the highest levels of protein of any vegetable next to soybeans. Once you know the right soil and climate conditions you can grow your own lentils.


Instructions
Difficulty: Moderately Challenging
Things You’ll Need:

* Soil pH tester
* Garden spade

Step1
Test your soil with a soil pH tester. Lentils grow best at a soil pH of 6.0 to 8.0.
Step2
Find the best location to plant. Lentils grow best on level or slightly rolling land, which drains well.
Step3
Sow your seedlings using a garden spade early in spring. Work the soil while moist and when the soil is warm enough to stimulate germination.
Step4
Plant seedlings 1 to 1 1/2 inches deep in moist, but not wet, soil. You can plant them a bit deeper in well-draining soil.
Step5
Watch your lentil plants grow. On average they reach 1 to 2 1/2 feet high, with pods that usually hold two lentil seeds each.
Step6
Harvest them around mid-July when seeds mature and your soil dries. Lentils are drought tolerant and can grow under fairly dry conditions, although they do require a minimum of 6 inches of rain or watering during the entire growing season.

Sugar export crop in Belize is DEAD!

cutting cane in Belize
Sugar Factory in Northern Belize
WHO OWNS THE SUGAR INDUSTRY?

There was a bunch of articles on the sugar industry this weekend in the different newspapers, representing different details. The question that comes to mind, is who really owns the sugar industry?

Perhaps we should re-phrase that? Who CONTROLS the sugar industry? While BSI and the Cane Farmers Association, local citizens are supposed to be the owners of the FACTORY and their individual crops of sugar cane, it became apparent from reading the research in the weekend newspaper media articles, that the local sugar industry is not their own master. In fact, the sugar industry of Belize is very much still a colonial operation. Despite having some different markets for their sugar production. The major buyer is still TATE and LYLE an Irish company selling to the UK and European buyers and by the BUYERS RULES.

The recent squabble over the quality control machinery in the shape of the CORE SAMPLER, was based on erratic readings of sugar cane quality from samples, sometimes within the same truck, or with sugar cane from the same patch of fields, treated when growing exactly the same way. The cane farmers were dissatisfied with the quality control readings by the core sampler machine, which effected about 20% of the growers with low readings. Other researchers accused some farmers, about 20% of them of stuffing the weight of their trucks with trash cane using the sale of cane by weight loads. It seems more fair to pay by weight than by quality of sucrose, because of the limitations of the delivery and processing system at the factory? Trucks nowadays carry between 20 and 30 tonnes to the factory in one load. The trucks today are mostly 12 wheelers, bigger than before. Payment is stated to be around $40 a ton. Poor quality sucrose by this core sampler machine readings, dropped a load payment to as low as $26 a ton. I have to confess, I do not know what the difference is between good cane and trash cane taken from the same field?

As Lord Ashcroft has shown the public of Belize. It is not who owns local industries, but who CONTROLS the local industries. In the case of BTL it is done by votes and the Board of Directors to establish CONTROL, and disbursements of dividends, or consultancy contracts, management dispersements, etc. The government of Belize actually had to cancel taxes on PROFITS of BTL, because the profit figures were not deemed to be accurate and much of the revenue was believed to be skimmed using imaginative accountancy. So the GOB actually placed a tax on revenue instead of profits, in order to overcome the suspected machinations of imaginative bookkeeping, beyond their expertise to decipher. In the case of the BSI factory and the Sugar Cane Farmers, it is the contract holders ( buyers ) of the majority of the crop of sugar that is produced, who own the crop. It becomes even more murky than that, for an outsider like me to understand. For Tate and Lyle the buyer is an Irish company, which I’m not even sure they are part of the European Union? Yet the European Union is lending money to BSI and the Cane Farmers Association, to upgrade the quality of sugar content in the cane that is grown in Belize. Either way, the Government of Belize and BSI the FACTORY and the Cane Farmers Association have been forcibly obligated to abide by rules of the PURCHASING CONTRACT, to increase QUALITY of the cane in Belize and sucrose content. There has been separate technical assistance from the European Union also, with binding obligations on those contracts, ( strings ) on the sugar business of Belize, which includes the Government of Belize who negotiates these things, in return for financing improvements in quality production, including the Cane Farmers Association and BSI the factory that processes the sugar. The upshot of all the double dealing, is that the sugar industry of Belize is still a European controlled style operation, despite (hic) alleged ownership by the local population.

On the surface of all this, is the fact that it should be to the advantage of the farmers to increase their quality of cane. Unfortunately, the experts explain that there is a TIME FRAME, from the time of burning, clearing, cutting, loading and delivery to the factory of about 36 hours, after which sucrose content is rapidly lost, making the sugar cane cheaper and perhaps ultimately worthless. The farmers argue, there is not much sense in going for quality, if the FACTORY is too small to handle the crop within the TIME FRAME required for delivery. Indeed, all the evidence indicates the FACTORY is too small and long lines of trucks queue that take hours and hours of waiting, much more TIME from the beginning of harvesting to the delivery, than is practical for quality and a fair price. Part of this problem seems to be the road system, which is in bad shape and part of the problem seems to be, too low a processing capacity at the factory.

Looking at this from the outside, it is obvious that the existing sugar factory is too small and another sugar factory needs to be licensed and built to handle cane as a crop. Secondly, BSI, or any other new factory producer operation should seek alternative markets for our sugar. Obviously we are prisoners of a colonial applied exploitive system, that is not to the advantage of local production. We need a different set of markets for sugar than Europe, or Tate and Lyle. We were recently double crossed by the Europeans who knowing that our Euro centric pseudo black ROYALIST Englishmen ( called Creoles ) in the port town controlling our government, continually look backwards, rather than forwards for newer ways of dealing with existing problems. The recent half year fuss over a European FREE TRADE ( EPA ) area agreement, for our CARICOM countries including Belize, was based on our being locked into the mind set, that our sugar industry majority buyer is the EU market. ( we do have some other markets, but not enough ) To save those 6000 jobs or more, the Government of Belize signed a 5 year contract with the EU if they would not cancel our market for sugar in the EU. The EU honored the agreement when our Royalist controlled government signed the agreement ( EPA ) along with other CARICOM, African and Pacific countries and we can still sell our sugar to the existing buyer. What happened though was outside the experience of our CABINET and bureaucrats. A month or two later after the arm twisting and blackmail and the signing of the EPA to open our markets to tariff free EU goods, the sugar price was immediately SLASHED by 36% from our EU buyer and is now being threatened with another slash in price. Obviously we in Belize are going to be forced out of the sugar producing business, as the writing is on the wall for everyone to see, if you will only look. In favor presumably of European sugar beet growers. The Europeans opened our import markets in that teaser EPA agreement and got the customs duties lifted for 5 years and now they are screwing us over again. Europeans PAAH!

With or without the EU sugar buyers, it is obvious we better find some other agriculture pursuit for those 6000 cane farmers. While the EU is giving us some grants in foreign AID, we are getting far more from both TAIWAN and VENEZUELA in amounts. Just raising sugar cane quality is not going to solve the problem of EU sugar beet competition, or the rapaciousness and deceitfulness of ex-colonial masters, double dealing which is going to kill our sugar industry. This industry is dead in Belize, we are just flopping around like a chicken with it’s head cut off right now, at the mercy of those EU people wielding the axe.

If you want to keep the sugar industry, it is going to have to be smaller, leaner and more competitive. Even then it is not too sure! It is time to find a new game. The deck in this one is stacked against Belize right now, unless we find newer markets in ASIA, or CANADA, or someplace else than the EU. Otherwise lets find markets for vegetables or something else and switch our agriculture mainstay crops and diversify our markets for a change.

VEGETABLE GROWING IN TROPICAL BELIZE

STATE OF THE ART OF VEGETABLE GROWING IN TROPICAL BELIZE

by Ray Auxillou, Jan. 20, 2009

A recent visit to our BELIZE DEVELOPMENT TRUST ( internet NGO of volunteers ), two very small, simple, hand applied, hydroponic research facility nurseries, located at Hillview Hacienda, home of Falconview Backpackers Adventure Hostel on the slope of Green Parrot Valley on the edge of Santa Elena Town in the Western Cayo District of Belize, enquiries by a fairly new USA immigrant and investor, sent to us for information by Central Farm Government Research Station, who wanted to go into Greenhouse production of vegetables; required me to sum up the state of the art in vegetable growing in tropical Belize, for him and his son.
The last book we printed on the subject, the FOURTH EDITION of the BELIZE VEGETABLE FARMERS BIBLE ), primarily for government employees and the University of Belize Agriculture College Library was a year ago, in January of 2008. We only published 20 copies which cost us $700 bz currency out of pocket each printing edition and sold only two. The rest were donated FREE to government institutions mostly. There has been some progress since then in the last year. In summary, the knowledge of how to grow temperate zone vegetables in the lowland tropical climate of Belize, is thus:
• Winter time vegetables should be planted late September. These vegetables require a temperature differential between the night and day temperatures to suit their biological clocks.
• Summer time vegetables can start to be planted late February, as our summer is two months earlier than that of Northern climates.
• The vegetables with tap roots do better than vegetables with shallow roots.
• Current emphasis is on testing and trying different varieties of seeds. We have done dozens of tomatoes and lettuce types of seeds. The best so far, in Belize conditions are the POLINA tomato and in lettuce the loose leaf variety of TROPICAL EMPEROR for commercial usage. Many seeds have different daylight exposure times than we have in the tropics. We have not yet been able to grow a ball head lettuce in Belize for example.
• Of paramount importance is preparation of SOIL. The soils of Belize are mostly CLAY, SAND, MARL, PEBBLES, etc. The amount of LOAM and HUMUS is minimal. The rule is; that you must change your soil to LOAM. This is done by turning over your CLAY for example and breaking it up into small pieces. Then adding things like; coarse WOOD CHIPS from the planer at sawmills. (Sawdust does not work.) Adding some kind of LIME, in our case, we use GYPSUM available in sacks from over the border, and at Juan Chuck Hardware locally in Western Belize Twin Towns. The best LIME is DOLOMITE LIME in remote Punta Gorda, “Belize Minerals” but they do not sell, or deliver yet to Western Belize agriculture area. There are many chicken growers with big operations at Spanish Lookout. Chicken manure is probably the best addition for fertilizer. Not too much, a tea spoon full, for each plant is plenty. We also add ashes from garbage burning fires for potash. The addition of all sorts of organic leavings, like grass cuttings, etc. are also beneficial to making CLAY into LOAM and you know it is good when the soil is crumbly and has worms in it. Adding CHARCOAL is recommended by Brazilian research, but nobody yet produces CHARCOAL in Belize. Clay clumps otherwise in rainy season, to a greasy brick like texture, unusable by vegetable roots. Fine sawdust does that too.
• Adding daily water eliminates growing seasons. We have found by three years of experiments, that you can plant weekly for commercial purposes, but this is too often, as the harvest time of plants tends to vary and spread out more. We would recommend depending on the type of vegetable planting, either monthly, or the earliest every two weeks.
• For greenhouses, there is as yet, no importer of thin feeder black plastic hose to connect from mainline water pvc pipes and to six inch plastic drip feeders for each plant. In commercial field operations, farmers have been using well water and flexible coils of drip feeding hose that is about an inch in diameter, with success. Commercial onion farming is now being done successfully with this method in the fields. Greenhouses require drip feeders if you are going commercial. We use a garden hose for our small experimental research operation.
• Hydroponic operations are being used. There must be 200 kinds of hydroponic operations of growing vegetables systems worldwide, but EBB and FLO, seem to pre-dominate? So long as you supply the nutrient and water for the vegetables you are using a hydroponic system, irregardless of the method. I have currently gone to plastic pot growing, using prepared potting soil, made of humus, wood ashes, lime, chicken manure, and compost tea made from organic decomposition. My only addition this third year of experimentation is to supply just the water. Adding nutrient does work faster though, to get results in a timely harvesting manner. We mix our own nutrients. We also use COMPOST TEA we make ourselves and works great.
• Greenhouses get hot in the tropics. The sides must be left open. The local available plastic rolls are not greenhouse UV protected and consequently between the sun and ultra violet light, the stuff tears up fast, about six months. Which is no good. Plastic roofing is used to prevent the rainy season from diluting the nutrients in ebb and flow systems. Shade cloth is available locally. It may not be necessary, but does keep birds out.
• Technically there is no season for growing vegetables, if you supply nutrient and water. However, we can qualify that, and say that during the rainy season, production will go down, when there are too many days of cloud cover and not enough sun.
• GREENHOUSE growing of vegetables is a controlled environment and you can get your vegetables off the ground, which eliminates a lot of bugs and pests. So far, we use water and coconut oil mix for bugs on tomatoes, and compost tea foliar spray for diseases. The only problems we have had, is with tomatoes in which after several months of re-planting continuously we got TOBACCO MOSAIC VIRUS, which wiped them out. THRIPS on tomato plants also gave us trouble. The water and coconut oil spray works, but has to be applied every two days for THRIPS. I’ve known of soil based tomato operations, that had trouble with APHIDS. In our compost tea, we usually add a bit of chicken manure in the mixing part.
• I am now on our third year of continuous vegetable growing, without stopping for seasons. We feed our family with vegetables several times a week. Our research has shifted to finding the most successful varieties suitable for local conditions. We welcome foreign donation of seeds to try. ( mail to: Box 276, San Ignacio, Belize, Central America. ( mark them FREE SAMPLES )
• Currently vegetable growing is an IMPORT SUBSITUTION situation. The country imports a lot of vegetables from Mexico and the USA. Expertise is growing rapidly and soon we expect MARKET GARDENING will become more sophisticated, better managed and applied properly, to lower risk. BUYERS, OR MARKETING is still a problem in most areas of the country. EXPORT buyers so far have expressed interest mostly in HABENERO PEPPERS and PAPAYA. There exist local exporters of both for these two. Potatoes are doing well by Barton Creek Mennonites and Orange Walk and Corozal Mennonite operations are doing well, in onions and partially so in lettuce. San Antonio, Cayo District farmers are doing well in MARKET GARDENING vegetables on a year round basis for the local TWIN TOWNS river market.

WINTER CROP OF LETTUCE ENDANGERED BY LACK OF SEEDS

The last three years of experiments, by the Belize Development Trust ( internet based NGO of volunteers ) for different lettuce types, resulted in TROPICAL EMPEROR lettuce coming out as the TOP year round lettuce for Belizean conditions. This was a leaf lettuce type, that only really had trouble in July and August. The winter crop should have been planted late September, but there has been a shortage of seeds.
The PROSSER AGRO PRO store in San Ignacio, part of the twin towns, reports they sold about three quarters of a million seeds in containers of 25,000 seeds for $61 Bz. Taiwan Vegetable Mission and the Food and Agriculture Organization bought up most of the available seeds to distribute to farmers damaged by the floods last October, this year. The DEMAND for seeds for the lettuce crop annually is about two million lettuce. This has developed as an import substitution successful drive, led by the Agriculture Department at Central Farm. The Agro Pro manager here, out in Western Belize Agro Pro PROSSER store said that a new shipment is now at the border and being processed and will eventually wind it's way up from border to the coast headquarters of Prosser and eventually to him here out Western Belize. We await anxiously as our winter season is half way through already. A check of the local TWIN TOWNS Macal River market shows NO LETTUCE on sale anywhere. Nor was there any habenero peppers when we looked and asked. Tomatos at this time of the year become scarce and are currently selling for $4.50 a pound for the last month.

NEWCASTLES DISEASE HITS TURKEY FLOCK IN BELIZE

NEWCASTLES DISEASE STRIKES TURKEY FLOCK IN CAYO DISTRICT

The government is hot on destroying the flocks of birds being raised on two farms in the Mennonite area. Newcastles Disease has been confirmed as the culprit. This is not like avian influenza and there is no cross species, bird to human transmission. You can still eat the meat.

Hydroponic organic vegetable experiments in Belize

We were trying to an experiment for Central Farm Government Research Station in trying to grow a ball head lettuce in Belize. Nobody yet has succeeded. I've tried about 18 types of lettuce. This particular one, was either Great Lakes #18, or Lechuga Escarola. Either way, you can notice the long twisted stem in my hand, as the lettuce refuses like all the others to form a ball head. My daughter Sharon had brought the seeds for me to experiment with from Miami-Dade County where she has a nursery and landscape business called FLORA TECH LANDSCAPES. First time she has been here to Hillview in eight years or more. The guy holding the lettuce is yours truly running this blog. Ray Auxillou, age 71 years young and still busy and mentally and physically challenged within the limits of old age. We have two small nurseries of our yard at Falconview Backpackers Adventure Hostel.
http://belizehydroponics.tripod.com/
http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/adventuresinbelize/

CHARCOAL COMPOSTING ELIMINATES SLASH AND BURN MAYA AGRICULTURE

CHARCOAL MAKES GOOD COMPOST!

Recent archeological finds; that the central Amazon supported hundreds of millions of people BEFORE the arrival of the Spanish wiped them out with new diseases; has sparked a new interest in adding charcoal to your compost. The Amazon is interesting, because otherwise it has poor soils, or lack of soils, like found here in Belize. Here in Belize we mostly use the clays and marls and sand to hold the plants and roots and feed the plants IMPORTED FERTILIZER. This costs lots of money and does nothing for the soil quality, if that is possible? The other method uses ASHES, as in slash and burn milpa agriculture. Other people in other countries do use charcoal. The advantage to charcoal is that it uses nutrients from the charcoal in creating good loam, for growing food. The ancient Amazonian Indians supported their hundreds of millions of people, for nearly 9000 years successfully. It has been found that the scientific assumption, that such populations were not possible in the otherwise soiless Amazon, is false. The archeological findings show that Amazonian indians used beds of charcoal mixed with compost to increase the fertility of the soil. In fact, layers of this have been found nine feet deep all over the Amazon interior on shallow soils otherwise deemed impractical for supporting large populations. Above you can see a vegetable bed similar to that prepared by the Taiwanese Mission at Central Farm in the Cayo District of Belize. Notice the layering of charcoal. We do use ASHES from burnt wood in Belize, but the nutrition only lasts about two years and sometimes three years with a thinner crop; then rotational slash and burn farming must be practiced by clearing new jungle. The old milpa is then allowed to re-generate over 30 or more years or so. A very inefficient wasteful method of growing food and farming in general. When you use charcoal with your compost, the result results in a nutrient rich loam that grows plants for centuries. If one combined charcoal, with rice leavings, perhaps the offal from Tilapia fish farming as in skeletons and heads, plus ordinary compost organic food matter, the result should be equal to that proven by the Amazonian ancient knowledge of the Indians of South America.
Nobody is making charcoal yet in Belize that I know of, but it is easy to make. You can make it in your back yard. You simply make a furnace, like using a rusty 55 gallon drum, with a fire heart in the bottom and some blocks, or rocks to hold a grill. Inside the drum on top of the grill and fire heart, you place a smaller 5 or 16 gallon container, in which you place air dried lumber, which you can pick up in the Mountain Pine Ridge for free, eaten by the pine beetles. In the bottom of this small metal container ( called a retort ) you bore a few small holes and then set the fire heart going. The holes are in the bottom of the retort can. The fire heart burns wood like any fire, but the heat does not set fire to the wood stuffing the retort can, which simply dries out even more into charcoal. It takes about 3 hours to produce charcoal in your backyard this way and you lose shrinkage of about a third. You can also bar-b-que with this charcoal.
There is certainly a charcoal producing industry market in Belize for this. Young entrepreneurs anyone? Will Extension Officers and the Agricultural College teach this ancient method of making good loam soil in Belize? We certainly need it.

SIX MONTHS WINTER APARTMENT VACATION RENTAL DEAL

WINTER VACATION HOME IN TROPICAL WESTERN BELIZE

We have now three apartments for rent. Normally they are an annex of FALCONVIEW BACKPACKERS ADVENTURE HOSTEL, for University age youthful world travelers and adventurers, we rent them in tourist season by the night, week, or month.
It has been decided that from our first apartment, which turned out very popular, that we completed two more apartments and are contemplating renting them for a block of six months to people who are escaping the cold of northern climates. If you would like a more economical rental deal, then a six months prepaid rental for just $2000 USA, would secure any six month block of time you wish. You can probably split the time and share it with relatives or friends.
We are located in the foothills of the Belize Alps and are a 100 house village, mostly civil servants, on the slope of Green Parrot Valley. We have fine views over our valley and also across the wider Belize River Valley to the Yalbac Hills. This is a rural suburb village of Santa Elena Town, which is part of the TWIN TOWNS, which includes San Ignacio Town.
The area has a steady low key tourism industry, built around the Mayan temples found here, underground caves and day trips up into the more remote Belize Alps. There are assorted things to do, along with attractions, like horseback riding, canoeing and kayaking the rivers and a small artist colony into Mayan pottery and oil painting artists. For more information check our website at: http://folkmusicfl.tripod/adventuresinbelize/
The major thing it is warm and the climate is one of eternal spring. Our summer is during April and May.

For apartment photos, take a look at: http://stellapinzon.tripod.com/apartmentwesternbelize/
We will have up photos of two new additional apartments by Xmas. They are just being finished. You can walk to the center anywhere in the twin towns in 45 minutes. Taxis around here are about $4 usa. There are car rentals. Most of our economy is based on agriculture and includes, cattle ranching, citrus orchids, regular Mennonite type mixed farms, small scale dairy farms and such things. There are spas, VERY EXPENSIVE luxury resorts ( $2000 us a night ), jungle lodges and that sort of thing.
As a base, our apartment is wonderful, you can go and explore the offshore Barrier Reef islands, which can be more expensive and come home to your apartment in a more low key type foothill affordable atmosphere. There is no rush around here. Do it today, or do it tomorrow.

Tomato and Lettuce research experiments in Tropical Belize.

Here we are in the downstairs nursery, experimenting with different kinds of tomato varieties for the Government of Belize, Central Farm Research Station, Director. This batch got wiped out in mid summer, due to overwarm night time temperatures. We have found in Tropical Belize that the thermostat for vegetables has to be very close. Most imported seeds for temperate zone vegetables require ten or fifteen degrees farehheight differential, between warm summer days and colder nights. When they fail to get that temperature of coolness at night, the growing biological trigger goes into non-stop overdrive and the plants spiral out of control. There are plants with very close temperature biological switches, and some that do not care at all. Finding these for Belizean summer conditions ( April, May, June & July and sometimes most of August ) is the problem at present. This plot eventually got wiped out by THRIPS and then MOSAIC VIRUS in continuous planting and tomato cropping. Currently this same plot is now growing lettuce and testing varieties for the FALL and Winter season, which do have a cooler night time temperature differential.

HYDROPONIC RESEARCH IN VEGETABLES IN BELIZE

• BELIZE DEVELOPMENT TRUST ( NGO )

• VEGETABLE RESEARCH PROJECT

An NGO in Belize that has been doing volunteer work to improve the economy for the past 16 years. We have an electronic library on the internet, development issues subjects since 1992. This photo shows Ray Auxillou, with the third floor vegetable nursery, doing experimental research work in cooperation with the Government Central Farm Research Station. This year will be the third year for temperate zone tropical vegetable agriculture, using mainly temperate zone seeds. The first year was testing the hydroponic hand fed system in soil containers and the second year was doing trials in lettuce and tomatos to choose varieties suitable for the two major seasons by temperature in Belize. Four books have been published on the research and many new government policies and programs have been started utilizing the data found and collated.
Currently a new crop of lettuce and tomatos are being planted for winter season trials. It has been found that using water and nutrient feed, crops have no season in Belize and can be grown year round at any time. The only difference is two seasons based on night time temperatures, the summer and other, which do require different varieties. Planting times have been found and recorded for best success by months. Search for best working varieties is ongoing by both Central Farm Research Station and the Taiwanese Vegetable Mission to Belize.

Western Belize News Service

• SEPTEMBER THE MONTH OF THE RAIN GOD CHAC, IN BELIZE !

This is the month of rains and so far we are just getting mostly night time showers. Not too strong, or too much, but enough to make the corn grow well. Many flowers are bursting out in beauty now with the rains and it is a time of planting winter crop varieties and to put flower cuttings into pots for transplanting into the ground. With wet soil, plants grow well, thanks to the seasonal intervention of our Belizean Rain God, CHAC.

• NATIONAL HOLIDAY IN BELIZE FOR THE BATTLE OF ST. GEORGES CAYE

Belize is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic country these days. We have a National Holiday on the 10^th of September, in honor of the Baymen, in the battle of St. Georges Caye. This battle occurred out at St. Georges Caye about 9 miles from Belize City, behind the Great Barrier Reef. Several times the Spaniards from Mexico swept across this island and destroying the old capital here, capturing and forcing the inhabitants into slavery in Cuba, or marched up the Yucatan Peninsular in chains, to Merida, where they were tortured and eventually drawn and quartered. The Battle of St. Georges Caye is a National Celebration, because at the time of declaring the holiday, the government of the day, after Independence in the 1980’s was controlled by black people in the old colonial port of Belize City on the coast. Politicians of the time in the early 1980’s wanted unifying symbols and myths to unite people. According to the records, white Englishmen in a war sloop and Baymen, which meant pirates and logwood cutters that made up the settlement, all white Europeans; fought the Spanish, which were other white Europeans over the fairly empty land that was then Belize. The Maya and Mestizo residents of the time are believed not to have numbered more than 10,000 people in remote interior jungle farms and communities. Their ethnicity was not either BLACK, or WHITE. In the 1980’s though, all political power was handed over by the white man from England to the BLACK population along the coast. Allegedly, the slaves of these WHITE Europeans, also assisted their masters in repulsing the Spanish war fleet off St. Georges Caye, as the local community knew the small war fleet was coming. Due to the narrow reef entrance at the Caye, and the use of cannon and grapeshot on log rafts, the Spaniards were fought off, as they were unable to either maneuver in narrow sandy coral shallow channels inside the reef, or enter through the only reef entrance blocked by an English war sloop. There was fearful loss of life by the Spanish, who having lost the element of surprise were unable to land marines in row boats, or maneuver their ships in the ocean outside the Barrier Reef, to attack with their cannon. Since then, no other Spanish invasion has occurred in Belize. The British whites and their Black slaves, later emancipated, laid claim to the land. Borders were assigned by Empire building Europeans during their wars over there in Europe. The MAYA residents and MESTIZOS, then as today, ignored the white man and the black man along the coast. The subsequent government, even today is still black dominated and this battle is mainly a celebration of white European supremacy and that of the Black descendants along the coast of Belize.

If you check the history of Belize and you can find the illustrated books on the subject FREE on the internet. Try in GOOGLE, The “EARLY HISTORY OF BELIZE”, you can find the history of 500 years of continuous war by the indigenous Maya, against the invading conquistadors from Mexico. Through massacres, religious enslavement and European diseases, unfortunate locust plagues and droughts, the indigenous population of Belize was decimated, until at the time of INDEPENDENCE in the 1980’s only BLACKS and WHITES had any say in political power. This is almost true today in 2008, though more and more indigenous roots Maya and Mestizos are recently being allowed to work as government clerks in the government bureaucracy, formerly restricted to the BLACK population.

What we have now in WESTERN BELIZE RECREATIONAL AREA, Cayo District, is a population mostly of MAYA and MESTIZOS of Mayan mixed blood and about 30,000 white Mennonite farmers, that trace their travels from Russia, to Canada, to Mexico and now in Belize. These Mennonite white farmers arrived about 50 years ago, when there were only 5000 of them. Only in this last election, this year of 2008, did the second generation Mennonite immigrants actually enter politics with a couple of candidates.

This government holiday of September 10^th is accepted by all Belizeans of all ethnic cultures and races, but as far as parades and other holiday accoutrements, it continues to be mainly a BLACK holiday found down in the port towns along the coastline. The MAYA and MESTIZO population in Western Belize, accept the free government holiday with salary, but ignore the historical context of this battle, as it was just a skirmish between invading European WHITES, some with black slaves, over THEIR MAYAN LAND against a Spanish European group intent on conquest. The battle the holiday represents does not reflect the history of the Maya and Mestizo indigenous population of Belize. Nor does the BLACK designed official flag, which is the NATIONAL FLAG. Which has no reference to the indigenous inhabitants. Consequently while this September 10^th, is a BLACK and WHITE ethnic, GOVERNMENT HOLIDAY, it is not celebrated much in any of the interior districts like Western Belize, whose Maya and Mestizo population do not relate in any way, to this skirmish called the Battle of St. Georges Caye.

In the last three decades, demographics has replaced BLACKS as the major population group, though they still control and dominate the government civil service and political process. The interior MAYA and MESTIZOS now are in greater numbers, as the BLACKS tend to migrate to industrialized countries and live in the cities there. The MESTIZOS and MAYA still do not have much impact on the political power structure of the nation of Belize. Though that time is surely coming in the next few decades.

A holiday is a holiday and Belize has a lot of holidays, We live in the tropics and any excuse to have a party and not work is enjoyed to the maximum, by all cultural and ethnic racial groups. After all, we live in the tropics, why work so hard? We are trying to catch up to the French and the Italians for days off from work. Any excuse will do.

• BELIZE DEFENSE FORCE WILL NOT BE SENT TO HELP TURKS AND CAICOS

Hit by several hurricanes, Turks and Caicos islands apparently has received emergency help from several of it’s CARICOM neighbors. Not from Belize though. None of our Belize Defense Force members have gone to assist the multi-island country. We should be ashamed of ourselves? Maybe we could send a cheque, equal to the value of air transport, if we had sent 12 BDF members?

• TURKS AND CAICOS RECEIVES GOVERNMENT INSURANCE DAMAGE

It was reported on Caribbean News that the Turks and Caicos government had insured their infra-structure and loss of government tax revenues, while re-building from being hit by hurricanes. This year they got hit by two hurricanes so far and have received a hefty insurance company cheque for the Government of the Turks and Caicos. Sounds like something our government could do also, as currently a hurricane hit averages a loss of $150 million dollars on average to infra-structure damage and tax revenue loss while re-building goes on in Belize. It also sounds like we should make legislation for our banana and sugar industries, to make it mandatory that these industries insure their crops for hurricane damage?

• HEADS OF CARICOM GOVERNMENTS POSTPONE EPA SIGNING AGAIN!

On the tenth of September, Caribbean News reports that Heads of Caribbean governments meeting in Barbados on the subject of the European Union, Economic Partnership Contract being shoved down our throats, in a shift from military colonialism, to economic colonialism methods, has been unable to agree. GUYANA outright refuses to sign the EPA. Guyana has two crops like Belize, one is rice and the other is sugar. Our two crops at risk are sugar and bananas. The new Imperial Empire power is now the European Union. Though the USA are expected next year after their election, to start competing for the Caribbean with the European Union.

Our Belizean Prime Minister has announced he will submit and sign the EPA, to protect the jobs offered by our sugar and banana industries. Prime Minister Dean Barrow is basically going to take Belize back to colonial days with his decision. This is WAR, an economic war. Why will our Prime Minister not fight? I wonder how the CABINET decision went in UDP votes? We are not going to be ruled by a British Governor, or even a EU governor, but basically our future is going to be cancelled and it certainly looks like the last 11 years of progress in the nation of Belize to self sustainable, fiscal and economic independence are to be thrown away as we sign into a new indentured type economic slavery contract. The sad thing is; there are no guarantees of a preferential tariff, or continued markets, or even an escape clause in the EPA, that allows Belize to change our mind and withdraw from the EPA, should the economic circumstances change. Perhaps by WTO lawsuits from other countries, or the forked tongue white European tendency to double cross, third world countries. Sounds like lousy lawyer work to me! At least have a withdrawal clause if the darned thing doesn’t suit us. What kind of foolishness is that?

One can only compare the character and principles of the much admired strength of the leader of Guyana compared to our own Prime Minister in Belize. What a difference when it comes to independence. In puzzling over the differences, one can guess that it is because of two different political systems that are practiced in each country. Plus in our own country, the new government party this year, have seemingly lost control of the bureaucratic control process and been poorly served by BELTRAIDE and the FOREIGN AFFAIRS Department. There is no one to blame but the CABINET, who continue to be embroiled in replacing all the skilled people in government over the last eleven years, with party people, like done in Zimbabwe, if the opposition newspaper political organ the Belize Times is to be half way believed? Eight months and we still wait for leadership to the future independence and self sustainable capabilities of Belize. There are some good people in the new government, but for some reason the rest can’t seem to get organized. The bright sparks in the new Cabinet seem to be Edmund Castro, Rene Montero, and Patrick Faber. The Prime Minister’s rating of governance is somewhere below 40% in a Western poll. We don’t count in rural areas, it is the warped cheating port, Belize City politicians, that control national public policy. Sad to say, they seem to have done a disastrous job in the past eight months. There have been a few bright moments. Grants from TAIWAN are the biggest UDP success. Taiwan provides more foreign aid to Belize, than the USA, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Venezuela combined.

CONSTRUCTION BOOMING IN CAYO WEST

WESTERN BELIZE NEWS Sept 8, 2008

MONTERO’S LUMBER YARD OF SAN IGNACIO TOWN, CHANGES FACILITY TO CEMENT BLOCK MAKING FACTORY.

The long standing famous Montero’s Lumber yard up by the Y junction of the Western Highway in San Ignacio Town and on the by-pass boulevard around San Ignacio town is no more. The lumber yard has been replaced by a cement block making facility. Montero’s had trouble getting a supply of decent lumber for the past 20 months, and most of their hardwoods were termite ridden, or twisted. Their lumber business has been replaced by a competitor across the same corner, over the Western Highway , close by, at the junction of the Cahel Pech side road. This competitor was small scale about two years ago, but has been improving delivery of lumber supplies steadily and today is supplying some good supplies of clear grained medium and hard woods. We certainly like what we have been buying and currently we are buying lumber here ourselves in preference to Pine Lumber who have moved from the BULL RUN location five miles away to the East, along the Eastern highway, to a posh modern, new lumber yard facility dealing now only in imported pine lumber. Presumably from the USA in soft pine? They sell pre-dressed siding, flooring and assorted sizes. The new Pine Lumber location is even further east from Bull Run Meat production and Central Farm Agriculture Research Station, on the Western Highway , by Redmond Farm, with the tall Cuban Royal Palms growing along the fenceline as a landmark. It is probably 8 miles East of Santa Elena Town.

FINDING FLOOR AND WALL TILES an imported construction commodity HAS NARROWED DOWN TO “CREATIVE TILE COMPANY STORE”, ON THE BY-PASS BOULEVARD AROUND SAN IGNACIO TOWN.

Our very small operation at Falconview Backpackers Adventure Hostel in developing real estate as part of the AUXILLOU TOURIST GROUP, has had a lot of trouble the past six months in finding affordable tiles. Most hardware stores, like Dito Juan, Lin’s Hardware, Western Hardware, Allen’s Hardware, Agro Tech Hardware, only have samples of tiles with outmoded prices, but with the oil price speculation on the world market, the imported tile prices they quote have been doubled or tripled. Even so, despite this, nobody has had any tiles in stock inventory for immediate purchasing around Western Belize . We eventual found Creative Tile Store and warehouse on the boulevard in the developing industrial area near the top of the hill, on the by-pass road around San Ignacio Town and they had both choices of tiles at lower prices in inventory stock. We ended up buying floor tiles by price and not by color, or decoration to fit the budget. We were looking for $2 tiles. We noticed that Benny’s Hardware down in the coastal port a hundred miles away, advertise in the port newspapers lower priced floor tiles, but our travails in trying to find floor tiles out in Western Belize, in Belmopan, Spanish Lookout, Santa Elena Town, San Ignacio Town, Benque Viejo and Melchor de Menchos across the border in Guatemala, were finally directed to Creative Tile Store and warehouse, a place we were not familiar with. They did indeed have tiles in inventory. Nobody else did anywhere in the Western Belize Cayo District Area. In the Auxillou Tourist Group, our family operations; Ilna Auxillou has one house under renovation and construction, Sharon Auxillou one house that is being worked on by a sub-contractor, Mrs. Silvia Pinzon Auxillou one house, Wendy Auxillou and Tina Auxillou, together have three houses they are working on for reconstruction and renovation in the Western Belize Recreational Area, all in the twin towns location. Floor tiling can run between $1500 and $4500 dollars depending on your choices per unit in the small houses common to this area. Getting tile at a budget affordable price is difficult out here these days. The construction business seems to be holding steady for the past eleven years in Cayo West.

GUATEMALAN MILITARY MARIMBA BAND TO PLAY IN BELMOPAN

BELIZE WILL ENJOY SHARING WITH CENTRAL AMERICAN COUNTRIES ON SATURDAY SEPT 13th of the BELIZE INDEPENDENCE CELEBRATIONS IN THE CAPITAL BELMOPAN - FOLKLORIC ARTISTIC FESTIVAL PLANNED.

The Belize Independence day is actually September 21st, but the Central American and North American countries of Costa Rica , El Salvador , Guatemala , Honduras , Nicaragua and Mexico will be sending folkloric artists to the capital of Belize in honor of our Belizean Independence Day celebrations. The artistic performance will be small, as befitting a small populated country. ( About 300,000 people ) and held this coming Saturday at 4 p.m., at the Governor General Field in the capital Belmopan , September 13th. 2008. The capital town itself has a population of 7000 people around the immediate area.

The childrens ballet “PILMIJTOIANIJ” from Vera Cruz, Mexico from a long way away, will be coming to perform, Chetumal , Mexico a frontier town, will be contributing a reggae group called “HIERBA SANTA” and will offer musical concerts. The entrance is FREE! I am extremely excited myself in hearing and seeing the Guatemalan Marimba group “UJUUM MAYAB”. The last time they were in Belize I missed them at a Benque Viejo town, frontier Fiesta on the Western Border with Guatemala . The Benque festival not being publicly announced to warn us. This Military MARIMBA ORCHESTRA is famous in the nearby State of Peten , Guatemala and belongs to the First Infantry Brigade of Peten. We nearly went to war with them back in the 1960’s and early 1970’s over Belize . They use two jungle made wooden MARIMBA orchestra instruments along with a drum set and the orchestra numbers twelve people. Three musicians play one Marimba instrument and four musicians play another different octave marimba wooden made jungle instrument. There are also up to five other musicians joining in with other instruments, like drums. This MARIMBA orchestra plays a wide repertoire of dance music. Belize will be contributing some ethnic cultural traditional dances from different sections of Belize .

Belize also has a declining population of traditional marimba players with over 150 years of history behind them out in Western Belize .

The Festival will also play down in the port on the coast, the political control capital of the country at the Bliss Institute on Sunday. The purpose of the Festival is to strengthen ties between Central American countries and Mexico in North America .

I’m really excited to hear and see this Guatemalan Marimba band as we have run Maya Mountain Folk Music Festivals for over five years, mostly to do with the Marimba. Photos can be seen on the internet at: http://falconview0.tripod.com/annualmayamountainsfolkmusicfestivalofwesternbelize2004/

http://falconview0.tripod.com/mayamountainsfolkmusicfestival/2005belize/

http://falconview0.tripod.com/belizeteenagemarimbacontestof2004/

http://falconview0.tripod.com/mayamountainfolkmusicfl/


WESTERN BELIZE HAPPENINGS can be found regularly on our NEWS SERVICE at:

http://westernbelizehappenings.blogspot.com



News Service presented compliments of: “Falconview Backpackers Adventure Hostel” Santa Elena Town, Western Belize .

WHAT WILL PM BARROW DO FOR BELIZE?

WHAT WILL PRIME MINISTER BARROW OF BELIZE DO?

by Ray Auxillou, September 2^nd., 2008

Today is the day, that PM BARROW is supposed to either sign, or not sign the EPA, which is the CONTRACT offered by the European Union, written by the European Union and offered to the CARICOM countries. Some will sign and some will not. CARICOM is a medly of independent sovereign states, that join forces sometimes, voting on international affairs and have somewhat similar training for lawyers and judicial systems, Caricom also has a mutual tariff arrangement, which is supposed to give duty free access for things made, or repackaged within CARICOM from imported raw materials. Once we shared common educational goals based under UK rules, but in the recent eleven years have diverged from much of the other CARICOM countries, to one of self sustainable sovereignty, which now includes two Universities in Belize and a college system geared to local industrial development.

The European Union wishes to blast open our markets in CARICOM, but cannot get a unity of Sovereign States to agree to sign any kind of common CONTRACT with them. We have no central government in CARICOM with any such authority. Those smaller CARICOM island countries accustomed to exporting their citizens to the industrialized worlds and have no ambitions to go to an independent self sufficiency wish to sign the EPA. The EPA offered is what the Europeans call the ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT. Which means for accepting and aiding us to market our sugar and bananas in Belize, they get to sell us DUTY FREE all the hundreds of thousands of products they add value with, from imported raw materials from around the world. Belize of course, up to now, had the ambition to start exporting value added products ourselves and did not want to remain a raw commodity bulk exporter. What is happening with this EPA from the European Union being shoved down CARICOM member throats, in order to open our markets to their myriad products at preferential tariffs over the rest of the world, has to be signed individually by each member state of CARICOM. For CARICOM has no central government, there is no supranational organ to implement such decisions and make them binding on each sovereign state within CARICOM. Our Prime Minister BARROW has not discussed this signing with anyone, the media can find out about? It will be his unilateral decision. Not for the UDP party, not for the CABINET and not apparently with any advice from his bureaucrats? What will BARROW do? This is our ONE MAN government at work. The Economic Partnership Agreement ( slavery by another name, using euphemisms ) is going to be his decision ALONE, as far as anybody can see in Belize ? The slavery contract is for a minimum of ten years and perhaps longer. The whip of the EU to be used on us in Belize are threats of trouble with our sugar and banana exports to the EU.

This signing, or not signing, to occur today in the Eastern Caribbean by our Prime Minister, is but ONE battle in the war for independence of Belize , if our Prime Minister refuses to sign. If he has decided to sign the EPA contract, then the war is over and this battle is lost and we are effectively subjects now as colonials once again of a new master, the European Union, who have taken over the UK role in Belize. ‘ Within twelve hours we shall know the fate of Belize for the foreseeable future?

This effects mostly the future of the HEARTLAND of BELIZE and that of the Cayo District, the Western Belize Industrial Area that is developing export capacity, as population expands. The economic effects for the future are wide and far reaching.

Vegetable Growing Research in tropical Western Belize

PILOT PROJECT TOMATO SHADED GREENHOUSE
IN BELIZE

by Ray Auxillou, April 2008

( funded by volunteers of the Belize Development Trust NGO )

Research staff: Ray Auxillou
Contributing Volunteers: Brian Keating, Sharon Auxillou Urscheller, Wendy Auxillou, Bob Brotherton, Lynn Jackson, Gale, Taiwanese Vegetable Mission of Government’s Central Farm, Manuel Trujillo-Central Farm research head.

WHAT WE KNOW FROM THE FOURTH EDITION OF THE BELIZEAN VEGETABLE FARMERS BIBLE published by the Belize Development Trust.

Vegetable research in tropical Belize has identified a number of parameters in vegetable growing; from temperature, soil adaptation requirements, seasons, nutrient mixing applications, germination problems and alternative methods, better seed varieties, compost tea making and applications, soil ph testing, best shading and roofing and many other variables found in the FOURTH EDITION of the Belizean Vegetable Farmers Bible. Available for reference at the two public libraries in the Cayo, Western Twin Towns of Belize. A half dozen copies are on sale at AGRO PRO feed store in Santa Elena Town at $70 Bz each.

As of March, 2008 we have now identified a number of necessary knowledge items from two years of past experiments, to effect a new project for the first PILOT PROJECT of a tomato shaded greenhouse. This project is intended to lead into a commercial 1000 plant shaded greenhouse. From there you could go to a 10,000 plant shaded greenhouse with not much trouble.

The MILPA farmer grows in soil to two rainy season restrictions a year. The commercial shaded greenhouse system has a steady production on a weekly planting, year round basis. Vegetable production is continuous in a shaded greenhouse. Through the controlled application of water and nutrient feeds constantly producing harvests of crops are experienced.

The first shaded green house measuring 6 ft X 14 ft, growing 60 plants at one time was successful, using the most basic, hand fed, hydroponic system. This first shaded greenhouse continues to produce vegetable salad crops for the “Falconview Tourist Backpackers Adventure Hostel”. Harvesting is done twice weekly. Planting about once a week.

The second PILOT PROJECT intended to be a lead experiment into an eventual commercial sized operation shaded greenhouse, is intended to test the problems and varieties available for commercial production of tomatoes on a year round production basis, using the same basic hand fed method as the first shaded greenhouse project. The size is 13 ft x 19ft and it holds 200 tomato vine plants.

Many varieties of tomatoes are being grown and tested. The best so far, has been the 2 ¼ inch x 3 ¼ inch, ( 6 oz) POLINA Israeli hybrid, available from Agro Jiron feed store, in San Ignacio Town. New varieties are now being grown, and hoped to be larger and better tomatoes. The experiments are geared to attempts, to produce a 14 oz tomato, for commercial production on a year round basis.

The first shaded greenhouse experiment identified so far, as the best leaf lettuce varieties; the ICE lettuce, the Chinese Lettuce of Pok Choi and Jon Choi and Tropical Emperor hybrid at this time. Many varieties of lettuce were tested. More than a dozen.

Seeds brought into Belize do not necessarily work well under local tropical environmental conditions. The beautiful Mexican BALL HEAD lettuce seeds for instance, were a failure in Belize.

What has been found is that soil has to be loose, very easily drained and so coarse. Most of the time you have to mix it up yourself. In a greenhouse project we use either plastic grow bags of different sizes, plastic buckets and chlorax pots. Cost and availability being the deciding factors.
a) In the Tomato Shaded Greenhouse project, we have identified humus, the very thin 1 inch layer of top soil available in lowland wild jungle as the best contained supporting material for vegetables in bags or pots. We had hoped to get coconut fiber from Central Farm, but I was informed in the last visit, the project was too labor intensive. They don’t have the time.
b) The soil is prepared by soaking the bottom third of the soil in compost tea, to make available micro nutrients.
c) The top third of a container of this humus is mixed with GYPSUM, a calcium additive that helps vegetable plants to get started and develop strong root growth. DOLOMITE LIME would be better, but we cannot get the producer, Belize Minerals of Punta Gorda, to ship it to the Cayo West area, from Southern Belize. Dolomite Lime is different from GYPSUM because it includes Magnesium Sulfate and most vegetables need 2% of this mineral added for good production. Gypsum is available for sale locally and is reputed to release the nutrients from local black clay.
d) We have experimented with different containers and found that the large plastic grow bags from AGRO PRO, Santa Elena Town work the best. They hold about six pounds of soil. They have different sizes we tried. No other local feed stores carry suitable grow bags. We tried two tomato plants, planted into a five gallon plastic bucket, but it is difficult to stop the soil from compacting, reducing aeration to the roots. Our best choice is a large black plastic grow bag, which have many holes in the sides and bottom for drainage.
e) Currently we are harvesting POLINA tomatoes. We have just transplanted a number of large tomato varieties, such as BEEFMASTER, BURGER, CREOLE, using whatever is available through the generosity of volunteers in the USA and the UK. We prefer HEIRLOOM varieties, which are adaptable and reproducible, from our own seeds. The HYBRID varieties are one crop types and revert back to the genes of one or the other of the two parents from their seeds.
f) We learned a lot. Originally our tomato vine plantings ( indeterminate types ) were based on 60 plants. It quickly became clear, that doing continuous shaded greenhouse production, that if we widened our bench on which the grow bags sit, we could double and triple our number of plants in the same space. This is due to the fact that vines are continuously running, growing out. The leaves required at the top of the vine, after pruning, for photo synthesis move up steadily. This allows a next set of bagged tomato plants to be grown next to them, as the leaves of the next plant are at a different height and can catch the sunlight required. We are currently potting and transplanting more plants to see how many we can get into the space.
g) QUESTIONS: The experiment in this pilot project raises some questions requiring more testing.
h) We want to know how many tomatoes we can expect from a vine before it will top out and stop growing? We are guessing at four?
i) We need to go to a drip feeding system to each grow bag. We did collect a courtesy sample from the Taiwanese Vegetable Mission of an old drip feeding system they had chopped up with their roto-tiller as they changed to a different watering system in soil row based crops. We require about 200 plastic stakes as drip feeders, the connecting .050 black plastic branch feeder hose and the plastic T fitting, to plug into an overhead ½ inch black supply hose for water and nutrient by gravity feed. The feeder lines slide over the drip stakes, that are pushed into the soil of the grow bag. Research from Guatemala; producers of irrigation supplies enquiries, by e-mail, receive no replies. These people are very rude. The phone system from Belize by BTL to Guatemala is prohibitively expensive. The difficulties of ordering from hydroponic suppliers in the USA, are expensive because the orders are too big to come by ordinary mail, yet too small to be shipped down by ship and run through customs with the additional costs of having to go to the coast and waste a day or two, plus the cost of freight forwarders and customs brokers. The shipment is too small for the mandatory costs. There are no importers bringing in bulk irrigation supplies yet, though there is a modest demand at this time locally, which will grow. We need a roll ( $42 usa ) of the .050 black feeder hose and matching 200 plastic drip feeding stakes, plus T fitting to insert into the overhead water line, from the hydroponics supplier ( HYDRO GARDENS ) in Colorado Springs. We would also need the slightly larger black plastic hose ( ½ inch ) for running the overhead gravity feed water system. This is not too much, as we probably only need a 150 feet of the latter, but 600 feet of the thinner spaghetti type feeder hose for the drip feeder stakes. At the moment the overhead drip gravity feeding system is of necessity on hold. Though hand applications of water and nutrient is labor intensive as our experiments grow bigger with many more plants. The reason for black hose, is algae buildup in clear hoses when sunlight hits the lines.
j) WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED! We have learned that shaded greenhouse operations can be operated successfully on a continuous production basis. There is one catch to this and that is there are two seasons for shaded greenhouse vegetables. Unlike the soil based MILPA farmer whose two seasons are based on the seasonal two rains. The shaded greenhouse operation seasons are based on TEMPERATURE of the outside night time air. The FOURTH EDITION of the Belizean Vegetable Farmers Bible, published in January, 2008 gives a list of vegetables that are temperature sensitive. These group vegetables, into those that are productive during the colder months of the year and those that are productive during the hotter summer months of the year. See the Fourth Edition of the BIBLE on vegetable growing for a list of which vegetables work best at which season.
k) PLANTINGS: Vegetables that require colder night time temperatures can start to be planted in September, weekly through February. Those that are hotter temperature summer vegetables can be planted in February and grown through to approximately September. For example: Tomatoes are a colder night time temperature requiring crop. Sweet Bell Peppers and most peppers are summer crops and go dormant during cold months. Some vegetables can be grown year round. Lettuce can for example!
l) GERMINATION PROBLEMS: If you can get the seeds to germinate, then you can grow the vegetable. Though fruit performance will increase if it is in the right season. Winter vegetable seeds do not germinate well from April through August.
m) We are ready to go commercial almost, with lettuce shaded greenhouses and are waiting to solve vacuum bag packing experiments. We plan to do an experiment on this with ebb and flow methods, growing lettuce, using a pump and two reservoirs. We are waiting on the needed equipment and there is no hurry due to lack of land. At the moment we also lack the land for expansion. So, that particular lettuce producing, commercial shaded greenhouse is currently on hold. We do have a bid in though, for a nearby piece of land, which is currently in probate.
n) I think we are going to be ready to go commercial size on the tomato production with a 1000 plants, once we settle on the best variety to grow and if we can successfully acquire some land to build on. These tomato experiments are ongoing, for the next three months. Decision time is probably going to be around June? We also lack the drip feeder stakes, the hoses and fittings.
o) We are currently collecting SWEET BELL PEPPER seed varieties and will start very small scale tests in growing in pots, within the next few weeks. We are only interested in large 4 inch sweet bell pepper seeds. The commercial shaded greenhouse requirements would face the same problems of lack of pumps, reservoirs, drip feeding stakes and irrigation hoses. Which we cannot seem to find to buy locally.


FROM THE REACTIONS OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND THE GOVERNMENT POLICY MAKERS, OUR VEGETABLE GROWING PROJECT AFTER 15 MONTHS OF PERFORMANCE HAS ACCELERATED DEVELOPMENT IN VEGETABLE PRODUCTION. THIS BELIZE DEVELOPMENT TRUST PROJECT IS BY ITSELF, A SUCCESS ALREADY FOR CREATING AN ATMOSPHERE OF INITIATIVE BY OTHER PEOPLE. Accelerating development was the goal and that has worked.