fertilizer – Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center

By Michelle Domocol

In a previous articles like, Bees and Belonging and Starter Citrus Garden, I’ve offered delicious fruit garden designs and fruit-growing instructions for your own manageable and convenient supply of juicy fruit.

In this post, I’ll present a new citrus design, from my ebook, Inflourish Cebu Kitchen Garden Designs, you can start in April. I’ll also share coconut husk fertilizer and vermicompost techniques we practice in the farm. They help us maintain citrus trees with minimal non-chemical fertilizer.

Zesty Citrus Garden. The Zesty Citrus Garden is full of beautiful, blooming citrus flavors for your favorite dishes, salads, desserts, dips sauces, and marinades. Buongon Salad, fresh Limonsito juice, and CocoLemon Yogurt are some of my favorite citrus treats. Fruit juice and zest from limonsito, biasong lemon, kumquat and pomelo also flavor party juices, teas, and tasty cocktails. For these recipes, check out the ebook or our other recipe books.

In the Zesty Citrus Garden, you’ll have a beautiful collection dwarf citrus trees –both native and naturalized species. These tasty trees not only flavor your meals, they also nurture essential pollinators like stingless bees and native butterflies.

In this design, the numbers represent the following fruitful plants: **1-Passionfruit; 2-Dwarf Tacunan Lubi; 3-Buongon; 4-Limonsito; 5-Biasong; 6-Lemon; 7-Makrut Lime, 8-Kumquat; 9-Dayap Lime; 10-Cabuyao**

The outdoor bar and background mirror are framed with Passionfruit and Dwarf Tacunan Lubi. These two plants attract essential pollinators and help the other trees produce fruit. In-ground and potted Buongon, Limonsito, and Biasong form a fragrant citrus island backing a circular cushioned chair and ottoman. Behind a parallel set comfy outdoor seats is a gorgeous raised bed of more citrus trees like Lemon, Makrut Lime, Kumquat, Dayap Lime, and Cabuyao. Thankfully some of these citrus trees have grafted or dwarf varieties that can stay short and compact for convenient harvesting and smaller garden dimensions. Just look for plant nurseries that carry compact varieties if you have a cozy garden space.

Coconut Husk Fertilizer. Every few months, we check if our fruit trees need non-chemical fertilizer to help them grow fruits. If they do, after we’ve watered their soil, we add a 1/2 cup of liquid fertilizer. The coconut husk fertilizer is just a mix of coconut husk pieces and water. It sits and ferments for a few days before pouring it onto the fruit tree’s soil.

Vermicompost. We also have the option to add vermicompost and vermicompost tea to the soil. This could be added to the top of the soil or to the potting mix before a plant is placed in the ground or container. Browse through this slideshow of photos and excerpts of our farmer’s instruction manual to remind them of the DOs and DON’Ts for vermicomposting:

Vermicompost Earthworm 3-level apartment
Reminders in farmers’ manual
Foods for Vermi Worms
More Reminders to keep the Special earthworms thriving
Special vermicompost worms
Chopped Bani (Banana stem) for earthworm food
Comfy Dried leaves and torn cardboard for vermicompost bedding
Bedding and food added to the bottom of the Earth worm Apartment

Vermicompost comes from special earthworms that eat certain types of food. After they eat, they produce a beneficial manure that is nutritious for plants and non-toxic to humans. There are many different systems to house vermicompost worms. Our earthworm gardeners live in mini 3-level worm apartment made of 3 storage bins. This apartment keeps the earthworms alive & thriving, holds their food, and helps us extract beneficial manure and compost tea from the earthworms.

I hope this design and fruit production tips inspire to start your sweet, tangy citrus garden journey. Have a fruitful April.