Vegan Gardening

Where can I find a directory of vegan communities in Ecuador?

I'm currently eating a mostly raw vegan diet, and I'm trying to transition to more of a fruitarian diet. But living in Northern Europe, the fruit options here are very limited. I've learned about a few vegan communities in Ecuador that I'd like to visit, but information about them is sparse.

I'm going on a trip to South America soon to visit Ecuador. I've tried googling for "vegan ecuador," but most of the results are just about restaurants. I don't care much for capitalism, eating at a restaurant, or "eco-tourism" (veganism isn't a diet!). I am looking to learn about vegan projects in Ecuador, possibly joining a vegan intentional community there.

But first, to plan my trip, I'd like to get a list of all the vegan intentional communities in Ecuador.

Are there any lists of actual vegan communities in Ecuador?

Where can I find a list of fruit trees that grow in the Amazon?

I'm currently eating a mostly raw vegan diet, and I'm trying to transition to fruitarian diet. But I live in Northern Europe, and the fruit options here are very limited. Obviously I'd be better living some place topical, and I've been seeing some posts from some sustainable communities in South America.

Specifically, there seems to be many permaculture projects in the Amazon that are able to grow their own fruits in fruit-heavy forest gardens. I've learned about a lot of new exotic fruits from some of their videos, but what I really want is a comprehensive list of all the fruits that one can grow in the Amazon.

Does anyone know where I can find a list of fruits that grow in the Amazon (native and non-native)?

I didn't take photos of any of the berries but I was just so excited to see the Bloodroot pop up.

I pruned the ornamental and swamp rose and mostly just lifted up mulch to see who was popping up.

Tomato and pepper seeds have been started inside. We will start some other plants (squash, maybe some lettuces) inside and transplant later. Peas would have gone in today except it was raining.

Soon I'll feed everybody with some kelp meal and maybe some compost.

Zone 5a

It's an unseasonably warm spring. These are our spring perennials.

We were able to get some garlic after we took preventative measures and cut back the scapes. Only a few of the garlic had apparent damage on them (shown below), but the total harvest was less than we recall planting.

We will dig a new bed in another part of the garden and hope for better next year. Luckily we still have a lot of last year's garlic powder to get us though and can use use cloves for some fresh eating and to plant next year's crop.

Will this be the year we finally keep up with the tomatoes? Who knows!

There was some clear insect damage at the bottom of the plants so I took off most of the branches below the first set of string trellises. Hopefully removing the excess leaves will improve air flow and minimize the number of slugs/snails that make their way to the fruit.

The next step if we continue to see damage is to add copper netting around the bottom.

Our garlic patch was looking a little iffy and it turns out it's garlic moths. Bummer. These little dudes lay their eggs in the garlic leaves and stems and they eat their way into the bulbs.

Our plan is to remove the scapes and hope for the best. We have planted in the same bed two years in a row which was a mistake. We got over confident because we thought garlic is a pest-free crop that needs very little attention. Unfortunately, in our part of the world they do have pests.

We will be making a new in-ground bed in the fall to plant next year's garlic. We will likely need to buy new bulbs to plant. We may also try floating row covers to exclude the moths. I thought I bought insect netting last year, but turns out it was frost cover 🤦‍♀️.

We are not going to spray BK like some suggest. We did try spraying vinegar, but I think cutting away the scapes will be best. Neither of us are huge fans of scapes and we were planning on giving them away, so no major loss there. Hopefully some of the garlic will pull through! We had over 100 bulbs planted.

Here are some links I found useful. Please note I am not endorsing any of the pest control methods listed, just sharing what I found:

https://www.ontario.ca/page/leek-moth-pest-allium-crops

https://seeds.ca/d/?t=cd226e0400004203-a694088

https://onvegetables.com/2023/05/17/leek-moth/

https://www.mofga.org/resources/pest-control/leek-moth/

Here is a photo of the bed:

And photos of the damage they cause/the eggs:

Lucky for me this little dude seemed to be interested in the hay today.

A principle we are trying to follow is to grow 3x what we 'need' so that when local inhabitants enjoy what we planted we don't become bitter or disappointed. We are also learning what they favor and realizing that maybe I don't get to have that many annual flowers after all 🤷🏻‍♀️ Next year I'll sink less effort into them.

We are also not having luck with corn this year so we will try and start them indoors and hope the seedlings are less tempting than the kernels.

Vegan gardening means adapting!

We have decent luck with tomatoes, appart from the slugs and groundhogs eating some of the fruit. Our main challenges thus far have been keeping up with pruning and trellising to help minimize the slugs and powdery mildew.

We are growing both determinate and indeterminate tomatoes this year and we will try the Florida weave with t-posts for the indeterminate, and regular basket cages for the determinates.

We feed the tomatoes with kelp or alphalfa meal and keep them mulched with straw which really helps with keeping them lush and hydrated, respectively. This year we hope to add more of our own compost as our compost pile grows. We also started some fermented greens to water with.

I'd be interested in hearing from others about what works for them! It the secret to just suck it up and be really ruthless with pruning?

I started my peas directly into raised beds in May, and they are finally beginning to show flowers. The weather was very weird this spring (cold and the very hot) and I am worried the peas will not have enough time to grow before the heat starts killing them. Fingers crossed!