Many Hands Make Light Work

The past couple of weeks have been challenging in the Lotus orchard. The pump in the pond has not been functioning at 100%, and this meant trees were not getting the regular allocation of water.

We have been very fortunate to have the help of the community to manually water the trees in the Lotus orchard. This is no small task, involving planning, coordination and patience.

The first step was to stage water at the Lotus orchard. Kubo can carry a tank of approximately 140 gallons. However, we had 160 trees to water with 2 gallons per tree. We needed in excess of 300 gallons to water the trees. On Friday, Kubo made two trips from the pond to fill five 50 gallon barrels in the orchard.

“Kubo” was needed for part of the heavy work. The tanks carried by “Kubo” had to be filled with water from the pond.

On Saturday, Kubo was parked uphill from the trees with the barrels of water. The water from the barrels was pumped downhill to fill many buckets.

The volunteers would take buckets and apply 2 gallons of water to each tree.

This continued for each row of trees until all trees were watered.

We also want to nourish the trees. This time we used Compost Extract. First the tree was watered and each tree received 1 cup of Compost Extract. The moist soil will activate the Compost Extract. What is Compost Extract? It is similar to Compost Tea; the ingredients are the same but the brewing isn’t done. The Compost Tea is more concentrated. In a later post we will discuss Compost Tea and Compost Extract, when and why to use them.

There are several hundred trees in the Lotus orchard. It took most of the day. And Kubo had to make one more water trip to complete the watering. It was hard work, fun and great community feeling. Thank you to everyone who participated.

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