Gardening has been somewhat difficult this year in Zihuatanejo. The heavy and late rains of November and December, when we usually have little or no rain at all, flooded out my seedlings, and I had to replant more than once. It was a little discouraging to watch the tender plants come up and then get flooded out. The shoots that survived the downpours and humidity seemed to barely grow at all over Christmas and early January. Once February and came along, though, the vegetation became infused with the energy it had been sorely lacking until then. Suddenly, my garden began to flourish, and now, at the beginning of April, I’m happily reaping the fruits and veggies of my labors.
In addition to the veggies shown below, my garden also is producing Swiss chard, green tomatoes (very poor harvest this year), amaranth, Goa beans, jalapeño and piquin hot peppers, papayas, creole cucumbers (kind of a cross between a cuc and a cantaloupe), garlic chives, regular chives, thyme, sweet marjoram, lemon basil, cinnamon basil, tulsi, epazote, and wasabi arugula.
My latest sowing was of some habanero chile seeds–the new shoots are breaking the soil now–and some red-stemmed Malabar spinach, which I haven’t tried before. The Malabar spinach (not a true spinach, but it can be used as a succulent green both in salads and in cooked dishes) is supposed to love the heat, growing wildly healthy at temperatures of over 90 F/32 C. We’ll see. I previously tried white-stemmed Malabar spinach, which grew, but certainly not wildly.
