170+ species and a New Year's temple visit

 

Entry by Laura Luttrell with some parts from Blair Rynearson

As of January 7, we have visited and collected plants at 47 local homegardens! In order to facilitate communication we have employed a small number of local friends with varying degrees of English speaking ability throughout this time. It has been very helpful to have someone along that can translate our meanings and ease the flow of conversations, but it is also exciting that our Sinhala has now improved to the point that we are able to ask many of the questions ourselves (but, that’s not to say that we understand all the responses)!

                       

A fairly typical expanding homegarden with young coconuts, flowers, sugar, bananas, and more

We have now been introduced to families all throughout the towns of Kudawa (25-50 minutes walk down the road) and Pitakele (5-25 min down the same road and sometimes into the hills), who now understand that we are learning about homegardens and have a nursery, which we will plant out into our own traditional home garden at the research station. We have asked many questions to learn which species they plant, what they are used for, and how they are grown. Throughout this time, we have found the Sinhalese people to be unfailingly friendly. When they learned that we were interested in how their gardens were planted and managed, this phenomenal trait was amplified. They volunteered hours of their time, walking us through their properties, fielding our questions and offering us tea and produce from their backyards. At times, we would point to a tree with fruit, and they would tell us the name, how it was planted, and give us some fruit to try (it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it). We were then instructed to save the seeds, and were given instructions on how to plant them.  

Logan happily receiving the gift of a young coconut tree

 

Laura was excited to receive more orchids for our garden

       

   

Ayurvedic treatment to help my hand heal

We have learned of many plants used in Ayurvedic medicine including plants for snake bites, healing bones, indigestion, stomach bugs, headaches, eye problems, infections, and much more. Within fifty yards of their house is a well-stocked pharmacy! After much local interest in my broken hand and their unfailing response that I should use Ayurvedic/Sinhalese medicine, I recently went to a local Sinahese doctor and received topical plant treatments to speed its healing and am now applying a muscle relaxing oil he gave me that is aiding me to regain mobility in my pinky finger and hand. Another X-ray proved that the bone has been mended together, but it sounds like one more month until it's completely healed.     Interspersed with the medicine is a complete spice cabinet: turmeric, ginger, cardamom, black pepper, vanilla, chili, garlic and many other plants that add flavor, but with which we are still pretty unfamiliar. And let’s not forget the produce department: yams, sweet potatoes, squash, cucumbers, manioc, beans, various types of curry plants, and salad leaves of a greater diversity than I have seen at any American farmer’s market. Fruits are also plentiful: coconut, mango, avocado, guava, soursop, custard apple, mangosteen, rambutan, jakfruit, breadfruit, lemon, lime, papaya, and more! To top it all off, they even have their own "lumber yard." There are abundant timber species, mostly native, with a few other well-known exotics like mahogany and teak.      

Jakfruit is commonly made into a curry dish

   

We are impressed to find that your average villager can identify hundreds of plant species, their various uses, and how they are grown. Most everyone, it would seem, is a storehouse of intrinsic knowledge. It’s daunting to think that our task is to recreate a traditional home garden designed by what we perceive to be highly specialized horticulturalists and landscape architects. There is much work to be done on trying to learn why, where, and how to plant the hundreds of species that we collect. It has become apparent that six-eight months is too short a time to scratch the surface of understanding the complexity of Sinharaja area home gardens... but try, we will!

Thankfully, the local gardeners are more than happy to support us. They fill our bags with seeds, clippings and bare root seedlings of species that they like and find useful. Logan started asking farmers about their favorite plants, which led to discovering what some villagers find to be their most useful or unusual varieties of common plants. 

                   

A homegarden view from the patio area

    

Ella batu is a small tasty eggplant

After so many interviews in the community and a lot of additional hard work with the plants, our nursery is starting to look impressive. We have amassed over 750 individual plants, and over 170 species, including what we perceive to be the core species of most homegardens and many, many, pretty flowers! Beyond the core species, we have been collecting many interesting and special plants from villagers. Having gathered some of the more unusual species from each family we visit has led to us possibly having the most diverse collection of all! The survival rate of our seedlings has been surprisingly high, mostly we think because the climate here is so perfect for growing tropical plants, but lately, we’d noticed that our seedlings were struggling to adjust to the intense afternoon sun. To give them a break, we installed shade netting over one part of the high fenced area and started moving the seedlings that needed more shade. The survival rate of our plantings is shockingly high. Most samples are collected as bare root seedlings or cuttings that are placed in polybags filled with a mix of organic topsoil and sand. We have followed the lead of knowledgeable locals and used no root hormone or inorganic fertilizer. We only water the plants if it doesn’t rain, which used to be a relatively infrequence occurrence, but lately has been everyday! I guess monsoon season is over... In addition to the seedlings, we have planted 263 polybags with seeds and many of those have germinated, so our nursery is steadily expanding. Next on the agenda is to figure out where to put all these plants! We’ve been talking with villagers about appropriate spacing and growing requirements for many of the plants. Already, we’ve planted a few species directly into the ground, as they weren’t going to make it in a little polybag... (note the large bananas in the fenced area). We also already have a few epiphytes on trees, pineapples out back, and a few flowers along the path. 

The high fenced area with shade cloth applied is housing our root crops and trees

Our unfenced area contains many planted seeds, spices, medicines, and flowers

 

Our "water feature" received a beautiful lotus flower & other water loving plants

On New Year’s Day, we went with our caretaker’s family to a Buddhist temple in a nearby town. We participated in ritual offerings, which included leaving flowers, burning incense, and lighting coconut oil. It was a rewarding cultural experience, despite the inevitable downpour. 

A recently restored Buddha statue  

Laura ready to visit the temple, offering lotus flowers

Logan on the way to the Buddhist temple

Attack of the wild boars, and our response

Written by Logan Sander, December 21, 2016 (edited by Laura)

This past week saw several new developments in our nursery. While the three of us were traveling we received disturbing news from Somaratne and Dr. Singhakumara: wild boars (ura) had ransacked our nursery, eating our banana, coconut and taro seedlings! The true extent of the damage wasn’t as bad as we had feared, and upon our return we were able to salvage several of the plants. Still, this meant we would need to take measures to counteract what had been our chief anxiety about the nursery to this point: wild animals. Coincidentally, the evening we received this news Laura and I had just visited the National Museum in Colombo and its fine exhibit on traditional agriculture and livelihoods. Aside from the obvious solution of fencing in our nursery, we saw a working model of a non-physical deterrent: a “water-ghost.”

The exhibit said that farmers had often used these “water-ghosts” whenever pest animals were eating or destroying crops. To operate, water pours into a piece of bamboo “pipe” until the bamboo’s chambers are filled, at which point its center of gravity shifts and the bamboo swivels downward, dumping its water onto the ground. With this, the center of gravity suddenly shifts again and the bamboo pipe swivels back, rapidly striking a rock. A half-coconut shell is loosely attached to the striking end of the bamboo, creating a high-pitched percussive effect on impact. This sound is supposed to startle and unsettle approaching animals. It’s unclear to me if this would be effective on wild boar, but in addition to a fence it seemed like a fine opportunity to give a water-ghost a try. It would certainly be fun to build and would give us another chance to showcase traditional appropriate technology in our homegarden.      
 

Piping water from our water-tank’s overflow to our nursery

The water-ghost took all of an hour to construct, with Tillekaratne and Somaratne’s help. We piped water from our water tank’s overflow (with our newly- made bamboo pipes) down to our nursery and into the water ghost. Success! Every 4.5 seconds the gentle sounds of birds and insects in our little valley are punctuated with a low-pitched popping sound – something like a whiffleball being struck by a hollow bat - audible from a distance (including the field station) but not at all unpleasant (so far...). Hopefully we read the right placard at the National Museum and this isn’t actually a wild elephant call! 

We chose to divert the stream of water flowing from the water-ghost into a small pond we constructed. We have been having trouble with our water system when we needed to water our plants; the rapid shifts in pressure when we open and close the valve on our water line tends to separate the plastic pipe somewhere up- valley. This can be incredibly inconvenient, as the water pipe is occasionally strung 20 feet above the river! The pond allows us to dip our watering can and avoid the use of the spigot and this dilemma altogether. We conveniently found a deep, pure clay deposit right at the edge of the river where we bathe. We used a few shovel- scoops of the clay to line a hole we dug and built up with rocks and then connected our new piping to fill the pond. So far, the seal appears to be nearly perfect – even with inflow turned off we don’t lose water out of the pond! 

Applying river clay to create a small pond

 

Nepenthes (pitcher-plant) stem used to lash sticks together

Our “water-ghost” and pond

Our other animal deterrent project was to build a fence. This was fairly straightforward: cut and bury posts, nail stringers between the posts and unroll and hang metal fencing. Most of the wood cut for the fence was from small, short-lived early-successional trees. We enclosed one section of the garden with 5’ chain-link fencing; another with 3’ chicken wire; and the final section left unfenced. The plants we know boars and other animals (mostly goona, or wild deer) like to eat go in the tall, chain-link fence. The other plants that show evidence of browsing (apparently from smaller animals) go in the shorter fence. Germinating seeds and unpalatable plants are so far unfenced. To us this seems like an economical and reliable method of making sure our nursery receives minimal damage from the local wildlife. Of course, an elephant would see our fencing as a feeding trough, but elephants are relatively rare in this valley. Locals report that there are two elephants that occasionally come here, but at intervals of a few years... We’ll keep our fingers crossed that we can have the homegarden planted out and established by the time they make the rounds again. Five days later and our nursery is much more secure (actually, a little prison-like), and just a little bit noisier...

Bringing chain-link fencing from the road to the field station

Building the fence. Posts were from fast-growing secondary species cut near the nursery

Wildlife exclosure or plant prison?

 

The completed “tall” fence

Working on the “low” fence

  P.S. It has been brought to our attention by a local researcher that our pond closely resembles a wild boar wallow. Expect updates as to our countermeasures’ efficacy... 

"Shopping" for lumber

 Written by Logan Sander, December 3, 2016 (edited by Laura)

Shopping for lumber is a little different when the nearest hardware store is two hours away and the final 20 minutes of the trip requires that we haul in our purchases by hand. Despite this, we still have many needs for processed lumber, from repairing the stairs that ascend the hill towards the field station to building the planter beds and other nursery infrastructure. To solve this problem (and because it’s what they’ve always done), people in Pitikele make their own boards from the trees in their homegardens and around their homes. In particular, whenever rot- resistant boards are needed for outdoor projects local people use kitul, or fishtail palm. Palms are an extremely important group of plants throughout the tropics, and in particular the kitul palm is both economically important and a keystone of Pitikele cultural life (more on the uses of kitul palms in a later post).            

Tillekaratne high in a tree after the kitul palm was hung up

Somaratne and Tillekaratne located several older kitul palms on the property and together we set about felling them. These trees had already flowered and were in various stages of mortality. The first tree was very large and was felled with a 2 man cross-cut saw. After releasing this tree from the stump, it fell directly into another large tree and a tangle of vines and branches – not the desired outcome. Our friends, however, were not phased – Tillekaratne promptly grabbed his axe and climbed the tree ours had fallen into. At this point, concerned for his safety, we tried all manner of communication (mostly non-verbal) to get him to come down to safety. He and Somaratne expressed a total lack of concern, and we eventually calmed down and let them proceed with their work. Swinging the axe with one arm and hanging on with the other, he deftly freed the kitul palm while managing to stay in the other tree... not something a forester sees every day in the woods! Once we were all back on the ground, we bucked the palm into the lengths we needed with the crosscut (about 8’) and Tillekaratne made a series of splits with the axe running the length of each segment. The core of a kitul palm is a wet, sweet- smelling pith: very soft and mushy. The outer wood, however, is extremely hard and rot resistant. With the fissures in place, Tillekaratne would twist his axe 90* (something that would break the thin strip of wood through the eye of the axes we’re familiar with in the States) while we jabbed and pried with the digging bar and poles, eventually splitting the 8’ segments into a several boards. The final step was to chop away the mushy pith with a mattock and Viola! We had twenty finished boards. These boards were hauled through the forest down to the nearby river, bound together by vines, and floated back to our nursery. Every part of this process was hard work, but our reward was valuable rot-resistant wood and a fascinating cultural learning experience. We turned two more palms into boards over those couple of days (with all five of us working) and that gave us enough lumber for our nursery beds and new stairs to the field station.

Logan and Blair bucking the kitul logs with a crosscut saw

Preventing the saw-blade from pinching while cutting to length

 

Splitting the bucked logs to make boards

A straight lengthwise split then twist & pry

 

Somaratne chopping off the soft pith

Laura chopping off the soft pith

 

Cleaning up freshly cut boards with various hand tools

 

Hauling the boards back to the nursery in bundles

 

River walking makes for easy hauling!

Tillekaratne's surprisingly strong son Tarindu also helped us out

  Several weeks later, we devised another small project for which we went “shopping.” We wanted to bring the overflow water from the field station’s water tank down to our nursery, so we could easily fill our watering can. For this, Tillekaratne suggested we use some of the larger bamboo growing along the riverbank. These seem to be clumping bamboo varieties, with a diameter of 4-6” and a height in excess of 40 feet. Similar to the kitul wood, we split the canes of bamboo with an axe and pehija (small hooked knife) and twisted ninety-degrees with the tool to split the stems along a line. In this case, we didn’t need more than two splits per cane, as we wanted to end up with open-faced irrigation “pipes”. Next, the solid nodes of each half of the cane were chipped out with the backside of the pehija blade. Within minutes we had several 20+ foot water pipes - much easier than preparing the kitul wood!    

Carrying bamboo canes down the Pitikele road

 

Processing the bamboo canes

Creating lumber out of trees from the land we live on is a first for me. In my work as a forester, I’ve decided which trees will be cut and sent to a mill. However, I’ve never cut those same trees, and I’ve almost certainly never purchased the products that those trees are used to create. Here in Pitikele, we’ve taken a task through to completion - from selecting trees to processing them to their final use in our nursery - much more satisfying than a trip to Home Depot.                

The beginnings of a homegarden: construction of a nursery

Entry written by Logan Sander

After a few weeks of getting oriented and familiarized with our Sri Lankan village life, we began work on our homegarden plant nursery. For us, the nursery will be one of our primary work sites, a place where we can grow, multiply and nurture along the plants that will come to make up our homegarden, tea fields and any other forestry or agricultural project we undertake. Under the guidance of Professors Ashton, Gunitelleke, Singhakumara and our caretaker Somaratne, we selected a site for the nursery near the field station on a flat alluvial terrace next to the stream. In this location we have ready access to water and any construction materials we might need. In many ways the proper functioning of a nursery is as much a social consideration as an ecological one – we expect to visit the nursery several times a day to check on and water plants. It’s important that the nursery be conveniently located, otherwise it’s all too easy for the spontaneous nature of our day-to-day lives here to lead to neglecting the plants. Forgetting to water germinating seeds on a single rainless day could result in their demise (admittedly, rainless days seem rare here in the “rainforest”).             After a rough delineation of the site, we set about clearing the area. Somaratne led the way, showing us how to use the local machete-equivalents (pehiyas and katas) to cut away small trees and ferns. We chopped and raked roots with the idella, a large hoe-like tool used locally for everything from mixing cement to maintaining rice paddies. While crashing around in the bushes we found a small mine, which pretty much consists of a vertical hole in the ground, about 2 meters square. This province (Sabaragumara) is renowned for the gems buried beneath the shallow soils. Several streets in the provincial capital of Ratnapura (“City of Gems” in Sanskrit) are filled with small-scale gem miners and merchants. We also came across a few polybags scattered amongst the leaf litter – apparently ours isn’t the first nursery to be located here! In terms of light management, we cut a few large branches of adjacent trees

Logan axing a tree to provide more light to the seedlings

that blocked light to the ground where our plants will be located. Our closest neighbor, Tillekaratne, and his climbing skills came in handy for this. Within seconds of deciding what to cut he had sprung up the tree, cut the limb, and slid down the trunk like it was a fireman’s pole. At ground level, we retained most of the seedlings of the late-successional trees (mostly Dipterocarps – a subject for a later posting). These seedlings won’t interfere much with light reaching our nursery beds, but will become the future forest when the nursery is eventually abandoned (hopefully after many years of good use!). Ultimately, we ended up with a 15m x 20m clearing that permits at least half of the sunlight to reach our plants. If we need to, it will be easy to expand the nursery into the secondary forest. 

Tillekaratne climbing a tree to cut branches

 

Next, to build the nursery beds, we needed some wooden boards. The plants in our nursery will be grown in polybags – 4-6” diameter, 8-10” long tubes of black plastic sealed at one end with a few drainage holes poked into the bottom. As a result, our nursery beds simply provide a structure to hold the polybags upright and make it a little easier to organize our inventory. We decided on a rough size (8-10’ long, 4’ wide – for ease of watering/weeding) and set off into our forest to cut two large kitul palms to make into wooden boards (more on this in the next post: “’Shopping’ for lumber”). After moving the finished boards to the nursery we quickly built the beds: two short boards, two long boards, and 10-20 handcrafted wooden stakes to hold them in place. Within a few hours, and after some minor work modifying a nearby hose, we had 10 nursery beds complete with a central water spigot!           

Constructing the nursery has been a highlight of our time here so far. This modest project represents one of the more tangible pieces of work at this stage in our experience, a welcome change from the endless ups and downs of learning Sinhala and adapting to a new culture. Each day was filled with lessons and laughter from our local teachers, the rise and fall of the sun, evening rain showers, the hooting of our neighborhood monkey troop, and the intermittent excitement of a snake, a gaggle of foraging birds, or the sighting of a wild orchid. We purchased very few materials, instead relying on the resourcefulness of our local friends and the vast storehouse of natural materials from the land. Most of the work was done with commonplace tools and was of simple, common sense design. Any anxiety we felt was self-imposed: the stresses of industrial society seemed distant and far away - no blaring horns or diesel exhaust in Pitikele! Evenings were spent practicing our language skills (or lack of skill) with our friends and reading under the spacious veranda.          

Beginning planter bed construction

Pounding stakes for bed construction

   

Gathering soil adjacent to secondary forest

 

soil site with a screen for sorting out rocks

While we are satisfied with the start we have made, our work is only beginning. Thinking ahead, I can imagine several larger efforts and hundreds of smaller tasks to accomplish before we have a functioning, educational homegarden.   

Hauling soil to the nursery

To give an idea of how long all of this took, here’s an approximate time summary (usually with at least 3-4 people working): 
-Clearing the site: 1 day
 -Cutting Kitul palms and processing them into boards: 1.5 days  
-Building the nursery beds, bringing water to the site: 0.5 days 
-Gathering, processing, mixing and hauling soil and sand: 2 days 

After mixing the rich organic soil with river sand, we planted seedlings

Blair and Tillekratane after a long day of work

 

My first broken bone

A morning descent to the river for a swim on November 20th went awry when I stepped down onto a root and slipped sideways. My left pinky finger got caught on something and I heard a crack... After a moment of shock, I moved down into the river to keep the hand cool while I assessed how bad it was. (Silver lining side note: As I sat there, a European otter swam by about 4' in front of me and stuck his head out to look at me before continuing on!) After a short time, Logan and I decided I needed an X-ray. At that time, I was hoping it wasn't broken, but expecting it probably was. We "zipped" to a surgical hospital in Colombo, which took about 5 hours with a private driver... Unfortunately the old Jeep that we started the journey in wasn't licensed to drive on the freeway (that route is more like 3.5 hours). Although there are cities that could have done an X-ray closer, it didn't seem urgent and we suspected the best doctors are probably in Colombo. Plus, Dr. Singhakumara was kind enough to navigate the hospital system, arrange our accommodations, and involve his daughter, who has just finished medical school and is starting her internship. We were escorted through X-rays, a doctor's consultation, and a surgical consultation at a private hospital all without waiting and the whole visit cost about $15. They even gave me fresh squeezed orange juice and an egg salad sandwich with the crust cut off 😉 So, I have a spiral fracture in my 5th metacarpal (I broke the bone in my hand under my left pinky).

X-ray showing the spiral fracture

The surgeon there gave me a choice between a slow non-surgical recovery and a fast surgical recovery. Thinking a second opinion would be helpful, the next morning the Singhakumaras made some *amazingly connected* calls and we were able to take my X-rays to the top surgeon in Sri Lanka (he has performed surgery for the country's President). This surgeon said with absolute certainty that surgery was not necessary and that my hand would heal fine on its own. What a relief! Our family doctor in the states also looked at the X-rays and agreed. So, since that visit, I've been back to Colombo twice for more X-rays, a cast, and follow-up and it sounds like I'll have to make at least two more trips. Everything is healing well and although my activities have been severely limited, I'm still keeping busy and in high spirits. It sounds like I should be out of the cast around New Year's.

My half plaster cast

Getting orchid plants from our neighbor with cast in tow

 

Distinguished Professors & Nursery Beginnings!

About two weeks ago Logan and Blair’s former professor,    

"Botanizing" with Professors Singhakumara, Ashton, & Ediriweera

Dr. Mark Ashton, came for a visit. With him, he brought four prominent Sri Lankan professors of ecology and several students, as well as several local villagers who have been involved in their conservation projects and research over the years. Our new home bustled with activity and we set out into the forest to learn and get acquainted. We were given a crash course by Sri Lanka’s preeminent forest ecologists covering a huge variety of plants, local ecosytems and culture. We toured home gardens, climbed a few small mountains, and made a rapid descent down an overgrown forest path in a monsoon- like downpour.

               

Me & Logan atop Moulawela mountain in the Sinharaja Forest Reserve with a great rainforest view

 

This forest receives around 20 feet of rain annually!

A Soaked trio: Professors Ashton, Ediriweera, & Nimal Gunatilleke

Professor Ashton also gave us a clearer idea of the project he would like us to work on while we are here... we will collect and document information about the cultivation of home garden plant species, build and maintain a plant nursery, and design and install a home garden for the field station complete with labels and ethnobotanical information, so the site can be used for education about home garden techniques and implementation. Our garden will likely include many of the common fruit trees here like coconut, papaya, guava, avocado, and jack. We’ll also plant bananas, pineapples, herbs, peppers, and lots of pretty flowers, but that’s just mentioning a very few of the hundreds of plants that the villagers here cultivate. 

  

In order to be successful with this project, we have begun learning Sinhala (the local language), which if we become proficient, will give us the opportunity to directly get to know and talk to villagers about their lives and gardens. We will also be hiring a translator to help us gain more specific information, but after Peace Corps, Logan and I have realized that our own language acquisition is really key to integration and understanding the culture. Since my last post, we’ve learned many more words and have begun making sentences and asking basic questions. We are happy with our progress, but are also reminded of just how helpless and inept we can feel without common language. Even though we are waiting for our language to get better and for our translator to be available, we’ve managed to visit a couple of homes and tour their gardens. This got us started recognizing plants and learning their Sinhala names. Our neighbors in Pitakele have been wonderful hosts and patient teachers of both the Sinahala language and the uses of the plants they cultivate.

Meanwhile, we established a site for the nursery and have cleared the area. We had some lessons on how to use the local tools for clearning and chopping (a sort of hooked-machete and a hoe-like mattock) and went to work. We also took a trip to the “local” hardware store (~2 hours walking/busing to our closest town) and bought some tools and supplies to get started. Next up, we’ll help cut down a palm tree to make planks that will hold up our little seedlings and start meeting more villagers. Overall, we’re in awe of the beauty of this spectacular place, have adapted well to the climate, culture, and delicious food and are very excited to about the work ahead on our nursery and home garden.                                      

 

BEFORE: the area to be cleared for our nursery

AFTER: cleared nursery area (same perspective as above

Someratane and Logan clear brush with a hooked knife

Laura uses an "idella" to clear vegetation