Story of 4 Little Moringas

It was a dark and stormy night...December 22, 2017. 

With only a sheet tucked around their trunks for warmth,

 my beloved moringas were struck by the SUDDEN FREEZE.

I woke in the morning to this sight.

Just days before we had discovered that our drought tolerant moringas had grown another foot since they had stopped being watering by the monsoon rains.  Bees buzzed around the blooming flowers. The pods would soon be big enough to eat. Life was good.

After the freeze, I shared my disappointment with sympathetic followers who responded with kind words. Some commented that the moringas might return if the roots were still alive. I held onto that hope. That was my one consolation.

That, and harvesting leaves for tea.

Some of them had grey sections from mold and sap seeping out of them, but there was still an inch of green at the bottom of each plant.

(Thanks to the sheet I wrapped around them?) 

In my earlier research I read that to have full bushy plants you can harvest easier (rather than long willowy ones), you need to top them after they reach 2-3 feet tall.  But I never could bring myself to do that to my baby moringas. 

The freeze finally forced us to cut them back. 

Dan cuts back the moringas in March. 

The mulch in the basin had started to decline, so Dan cut the branches and trunks into wood chips and left it around the stumps.

This is what Brad Lancaster calls "chop and drop."  

        

Breaking this chip into smaller pieces

Dan watered the mulch. That mulch retains the moisture longer and as the wood chips break down it nourishes the soil too.

Trees love their own clippings!

It was Spring, so we started watering it (one can) every evening to see if we could get our moringas to come back.

And they did! 

We noticed the first branch sprouting on March 17th

(despite grey mold on the upper part of the trunk.) 

By April 1st, there were signs of growth on a second stump...

Can you see the growth on the bottom right?

And a second branch started sprouting out of the first plant! 

It's cool how the leaves grow over the stump. 

April 7th

Now they look like this! 

For a few weeks we gave these two a can of water every other day.
Now we are trying out watering them every 3 days.
Soon we will let the monsoon rains do their job.

Now we are watering a THIRD moringa every day
to allow it to catch up with the other two!  

So 3 of our 4 moringas survived the freeze.

One little, two little, three little moringa! 

We're afraid this one isn't coming back, but who knows?

Will it ever sprout?

Stubborn moringa finally sprouts! 

I was ra...ra...wrong. That "dead" moringa finally did come back! 


Last year, the moringas froze before the pods were big enough to eat or to collect the seeds. We should have planted them before June 7th. This year's moringas already have a jump on them! 

Here's to second chances!  


More moringa stories:

Planting monsoons and moringas in our street-side basin

Mucho Munchable Moringas

Sinking in the Autumn Rain

I was overjoyed that it finally rained last night!  First thing in the morning I scurried outside to see how my garden was doing. The cowpeas were thriving, snug in their bed of pala verde mulch and some fallen corn stalks.

 One still had a flower!

The tomato plant seemed to enjoy the fresh rainwater. With a little help from some mulch to keep the ground consistently moist, the tomato had gone from orange to red overnight.

When we first started this garden we used some stinky compost (not good), but I tended the soil with used coffee grounds and tea leaves until the soil is really rich and nice now. That, and palo verde mulch, is all we use in this kitchen garden. Tryin' to keep it native - to see if we can actually grow food with only what we have at our place. 

When I first went out, I got sticky mud on my feet from trekking through our backyard basin. By late morning the ground was already hard and dry.  But the little mounds of mulch around the fig trees were holding the moisture nicely. A good reminder that we need to finish digging the basin and fill it with mulch! 

It wouldn't be morning without checking on the moringa in the catchment basin. The pala verde mulch was thinning a bit, but along with the roots of the native grass and some moringa branches with yellowing leaves that I had "chopped and dropped," it was forming a nice sponge to hold the rainwater. I noticed that the mulch also prevented erosion from the rain. 

This little guy (can you spot him?) flittered by to enjoy the sweet moringa nectar. Our moringa is great at attracting pollinators of all kinds!

I'd say that was worth celebrating! So I grabbed a branch. (They come off easily at the stem. It's a very giving tree...) Thought I'd try my hand at making some moringa tea.

I washed the leaves thoroghly.  Boiled stems and all for about a minute then strained out the leaves. (It's the water that has most of the nutrients.)  It tasted sorta like green tea. I tried to sweeten it with stevia, but it didn't really work. I liked it better plain. (Maybe it would work with a combination of white tea?)  

Later that afternoon, I was so fatigued from working on desktop activist; I needed a nap. I drank one glass of moringa tea and was replenished immediately. Even had enough energy to write this blog! 

To autumn rain, muddy feet, mulchy gardens and miracle moringa! Cheers! 

Leave the Leaves or Park the Bark

Brad showing off curb cut.

Ever since Brad Lancaster gave us a tour of his lush desert landscaping, I have been meaning to write a blog about leaving the leaves and bark where they fall. We have three big eucalyptus trees that are always dropping something…branches, leaves, or bark all over our back yard.

We have spent hours (days really) trying to pick the leaves out from the crevices of decorative lava rocks, and between sharp agave in our cactus garden. Ouch! It was a revelation (as well as a relief) to discover that it was good for our plants to leave the leaves and bark as natural mulch. (Native trees are especially good for this.)

Let me tell ya, it was pretty friggen’ cool to learn about curb cuts from the man who initiated the first guerilla cuts in Tucson - back when they were still illegal! A curb cut is where you cut out a section of a street curb allowing water to flow from the street into a catchment basin. The water then sinks into the ground and irrigates a desert tree (usually mesquite or palo verde). That is why the trees that line Brad’s street in the Dunbar/Spring neighborhood are so big and full - creating an oasis in the desert. 

A catchment basin with mulch, a bush and a mesquite tree.

Brad explained how he made the catchment basin by digging a 2-3 foot hole, lining the hole with rocks with sections on different levels. He filled the hole with wood chips, and planted desert grass, bushes and trees in the different sections depending how much water they required. The wood chip mulch works together with the roots from the grass and bushes to create a sponge to hold the water, and allows it to sink into the ground, refilling our aquifer. This is what Brad calls "planting the rain."  The roots from the grass also act as a filter to remove any gas or oil picked up from the street. How cool is that!

Brad also shared how he used the chop and drop method to make natural mulch around his trees. He dug up some of the mulch to show how rich the soil was under it. Unfortunately, in Tucson, our idea of a tidy, well-kept yard requires raking up all that good stuff and throwing it in the trash to become part of a landfill. 

Dan pours dish water in channel instead of directly on the Mexican Honeysuckle. 

Dan and I have been experimenting with other ways to use these techniques. As some of you may recall, we have been incorporating some simple rainwater harvesting features in our backyard. I dug a little channel from our brick patio to the hummingbird trumpets. Then we started watering them with dirty dishwater. We didn’t want to put the soapy water (even environmentally friendly soap has sodium) right on the plant. So we poured it in my little channel. I noticed the impact of the water was causing erosion, so I lined the ravine with dried leaves from the eucalyptus trees to slow down the flow. (I googled to make sure the toxic leaves wouldn’t hurt the plant. Some people thought it might actually benefit the plant by keeping away bugs. But all toxicity fades when it dries up and starts to degrade.) 

Note: I asked Brad if it's alright to keep the eucalyptus leaves - since I had heard they put poison in the soil. He replied that eucalyptus trees like them. 

We also alternate with clear water (the water left over from rinsing vegetables, etc.), to ensure the soil doesn't get sodium buildup.

Bark lets water sink in while rocks help block splashing.

Then Dan began watering the eucalyptus trees with dish water. But when I threw the water on it, it splashed mud back at me. (Kinda like spitting in the wind…) So I decided to try a mini version of a catchment basin – so it wouldn’t splash me. I dug a six inch hole and covered it with some old eucalyptus bark that I crumbled into smaller pieces with my hands.

I dug a hole under the bark and voila... WATER! 

Yesterday, I was curious about how well the water was sinking in, so I dug up the bark and found water under the dirt. The bark was keeping it from evaporating. 

Of course, this is all a process (a learning one at that...) Someday we would like to get a chipper to turn all those sticks and bark into natural mulch to replace the boring gravel that keeps the rain from sinking into the ground. I think Brad would be proud.

For more information on how to "plant the rain" read Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster or contact Watershed Management Group.