Life's a Beach | Expat Life in Playa del Carmen

One Saturday every month, Ak Lu'um International School hosts a workshop called Sustainable Saturdays in which the public is invited to come and get some hands on experience learning about sustainable building and living techniques that can be implemented here on the Riviera Maya. They have dabbled in waddle and daub construction, composting toilets and this last seminar introduced us to Biointensive Gardening. Because the entire Yucatan peninsula is essentially one big limestone shelf, good rich soil is tough to come by. So much so in fact that the only way to create a fertile environment for proper gardening is through composting and utilizing bio intensive gardening techniques. As we will very soon have quite large landscaping/gardening tasks laid before us (more info to come...) my pal Mitch and I decided to attend this workshop in order to glean as much knowledge as possible from local gardeners before we embark on our own projects.

Clearing the bed of rocks and debris

Laying down dried leaves and other organic matter

A final layer of well composted soil

We got our hands dirty preparing a small garden bed located behind the preschool bathroom, an area already home to several lovely papaya trees but otherwise unkempt. We raked through the soil, removing rocks and debris by hand until we had reached the limestone below. Several cenote holes were found which we filled with rocks to prevent anyone from stepping in and breaking an ankle. The ground was then liberally strewn with leaves and other organic matter collected from the surrounding jungle floor, covered with a layer of sascab (coarse construction sand) to promote drainage and then a layer of soil created from the compost bins maintained by the school. This will now be allowed to rest and later planted with vegetables and herbs to support the small school kitchen that feeds the students daily.

Stacy's nursery in an old cooking oil container

Transplanting seedlings into tetrapaks

Our leader, expat, Ak Lu'um parent and owner of BambuSur, Stacy Koeckeritz. lead the workshop, offered up information from her experiences gardening at their homes in Chiapas and brought along a small library of reference books for our perusal. She showed us how to create perfect cultivation boxes out of the tetrapak cartons that are so prevalent in Mexico and how to carefully transfer seedlings. We wandered the jungle surrounding the school grounds admiring the passion fruit vines, the papaya trees, banana, wild cotton and prehistoric tarro. It was amazing to see what can be grown successfully in this region. After several hours of hard work, we finished up the day with a delicious home cooked lunch featuring Stacy's wonderful pan de calabaza.

Pineapples trees being started

Lunch time!!

I can't wait to get moving on my own gardening project and see if any of our favorites from home will adapt to this growing climate. So many exciting ideas ahead of us! We are definitely looking forward to the next installment in the Biointensive Gardening series!