Una cerveza por favor. This is a much heard phrase in Spain. It is the way to ask for a beer and it is one of the first sentences I mastered when studying Spanish.
But… I will not be needing this sentence anymore because we are going to try and make our own beer. We already have a big package of natural ingredients, two huge plastic buckets a a lot more stuff. I look forward to making a all natural beer.
We need to think about a good name for our beer. Does anyone have any ideas?
Lemontime is over. Now it is time for figs!
Last weekend it was plant-a-tree day and of course we went out and planted some trees. The trees were planted near a forest close to Moya. Ana planted a Madroño, a typical tree from Madrid. I planted a Laurel and Alex also planted a Laurel. It was a nice event which included a picknick and a nice walk through nature. After planting the trees some heavy rains broke out, so the trees got a nice drink.
I have heard at least a few times the story about planting the top of a pineapple, that supposedly should grow into a new pineapple. It sounds a bit strange to me, but there is only one way to find out for sure.I’m going to give it a try.
I’ll try the experiment with a tasty pineapple that originated from one of the Canarian Islands, so the climate should feel similar to the pineapple. Maybe it will work and I’ll be able to harvest some pineapple soon.
It is not much, but still. The first year of owning a coffee plant resulted in exactly half a bean. De rest of the beans dried up, deteriorated beyond consumption or just disappeared.
Hopefully the next year will be better. Right now the coffee plant is without any leaves and it looks pretty bad. Hopefully the plant will survive its first year with me and will deliver a bigger harvest next year.
My coffee plant has had a rough time. First our balcony was being painted which required me to move the plant around quite a lot which resulted in a loss of about 90% of the little future coffee beans. Then I had to leave the plant all alone for almost a month while our son was being born. This resulted in the complete dehydration of the resulting beans.
I tried to plant the dehydrated beans, to try and get a few more plants, but sadly my wife threw away the pot and seedlings during a cleaning fit. I did manage to harvest some mini coffee beans from the plant, and planted these, but I’m not very positive about the future of these beans. Next year I’ll try again.
It looks a bit strange, but it’s really cotton. It was amazingly interesting to see this cotton plant grow and to see how a cotton ball was created.
The cotton plants still have a few seeds that will probably form some more cotton balls. Afterwards I will have a few pieces of natural cotton. Just not enough to make something decorative and certainly not enough for a garment (maybe I can make a little toe warmer).
The process from flower to cotton went like this.
The coffee bush is growing nicely. There were quite a lot of little white flowers and now the coffee beans are developing.
I expect I will have to be patient a few weeks more and then I can start picking some of the beans. I don´t expect a big harvest but maybe I’ll be lucky and get enough beans to make myself one small cup of coffee.
Of course I also plan to sow a number of the beans, so I can have even more beans in the future and will be able to enjoy my own coffee.
De avocado groeit uitstekend en het is al een flinke boom geworden. Nog geen avocado’s, want dat kan een paar jaar duren, maar ik heb goede hoop dat deze plant blijft voortbestaan. Omdat de boom dreigde ons plafond te toucheren heb ik de top eruit moeten knippen. Zodoende zou hij nu in de breedte moeten groeien en dat gaat voorlopig goed.
Enige nadeel is dat voor het verkrijgen van avocado’s je een mannetjes en een vrouwtjes plant nodig hebt. Een avocado is zowel mannetje als vrouwtje, maar heeft altijd een bepaald ritme, bijvoorbeeld ‘s morgens mannetje en ‘s middags vrouwtje. Dit betekent dus dat je minimaal 2 planten nodig hebt om een avocado te verkrijgen. Maar omdat er tot nu toe nog geen bloemen in de plant zitten is kan ik dit probleempje laten rusten totdat ik een bloem zie.
De pinda plantjes groeide aardig, en ze hebben zelfs voor kleine pindaatjes gezorgd. Maar de nieuwe pindaatjes waren zo klein dat ze niet eetbaar waren. Ook de pinda plant was aardig vatbaar voor ongedierte.
Om aan de pinda’s te komen moest de plant gerooid worden, en moest ik de aarde flink onderzoeken. Zodoende heeft ook de pinda plant inmiddels het tijdelijke voor het eeuwige verruilt. Het was wel grappig om te zien hoe de pinda’s groeide, van klein geel bloemetje, tot uiteindelijk minipinda’s in de grond.