On July 01, 2012, I asked my two older nephews to cut down some Fortune plants around the south side of the property that had become tree-like in size. I planted these some years ago on a 2-feet wide space on top of an 8-feet high stone retaining wall. Some years ago, this retaining wall came down during a heavy storm and I spent a hefty sum of money just to have it fixed. It used to be a 13-feet high retaining wall. The workers had to redo the whole thing all over again but this time, they split the height and made it into 2 terraces. Starting from the bottom of the hill, it is 8 feet high and then it has a 2-feet wide space before the next terrace which is 5 feet high. The 2 terraces are slanted slightly at the tops. So to help prevent another erosion on this side of the property, I planted these Fortune plants because of their capacity in holding the soil together with their strong root system. It's just that these Fortune plants are now about 16-18 feet tall so it is time to cut them down to about 5 feet high. This is to prevent any stress on the retaining wall below especially during a windy storm. We're doing this in anticipation of the onslaught of the typhoon season here in the Philippines which comes around this month of July until late October to early part of November.
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The Fortune plants behind me on the left side of the rabbitry.
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Sayote or Chayote plants climbing over the Fortune plants.
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| The tops are heavy with Sayote/Chayote fruits and leaves. |
My hubby and I spent 3 days to finish the cutting and chopping of the big pile of leaves from the Fortune plants. It was fun but we had blisters on our hands after we were done cutting leaves manually because we do not have a shredder machine. We found out that the rabbits don't care to eat the leaves of this fortune plant for some reason. They do eat most of the plants including the leaves of the banana plants that we have around our property but not the Fortune plants. So we had to cut these leaves into smaller pieces for the compost pile.
