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| My garden! The man in the picture is my gardening friend. And see those two six-gallon yellow jugs? That's what I use to fetch water (50 lbs when full). |
As you can see, there are about a dozen garden beds, including two nurseries. One nursery is covered with leaves, and the other with a white cloth, to reduce the intensity of the sun and to help keep the plants moist all day. When the plants in the nursery grow larger, they will be transplanted to some of my empty garden beds.
My major problem for the moment is water. The rainy season has not really started yet, so we are only getting once-a-week rains. My garden, however, needs to be watered twice a day. That means that for the most part, I have to fetch all the water to water my garden from a local pond or pump. Each water run takes 15-20 minutes, and some days I do eight water runs or more. Ultimately, I have been dedicating 2-4 hours each day to the garden. Here's hoping I get some good eating out of it!
Most gardening work is done with a short hoe. Every Beninese person owns one of these because nearly every Beninese person works in the fields during the rainy season, and all such work is done by hand (no tractors!). The hoe is good for digging, weeding, and most everything else. I have personally found the club-like part that holds the blade to be useful for clubbing scorpions.
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As for whether this garden is successful, only time will tell. I am also working on spin-offs to make this garden relevant to my work in my community. In the meantime, pray for rain, but not too much!
And chickens like snails. Then you'd have more beer for drinking.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't tell us what you're growing in your garden. Poppies? Hemp?
But if I don't let the chickens in my garden, how will they eat the snails?
ReplyDeleteDefinitely no poppies or hemp. My only flowers are marigolds, and there are a lot of vegetables.
This looks very ambitious and impressive. For a vegetarian this would be hog heaven. If it all comes up you might be able to share with your neighbors. We are advised to use beer for slugs in gardens, so I guess it works for snails too. They are only a problem with wet conditions so with all the rain we've had lately we might have to do that.
ReplyDeleteJean Ralley
On Tuesday we planted more things yet! And last night we ate the first bounty from the garden: lettuce.
ReplyDeleteSuccess!! I hope you have something to make a little dressing.
ReplyDeleteJean
Does mayonnaise with vinegar count? For dinner, we had a meal that you usually only find in big cities in Benin. Volunteers call it spaghetti salad: lettuce, pasta, sliced hard-boiled eggs, and onion with mayonnaise and vinegar for dressing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, speaking of dressing, the local shop used to actually sell vinaigrette, but their whole supply went bad because no one was buying it. We could have done an oil and vinegar dressing ourselves, but we were imitating the Beninese meal.
Alex
Pasta salad. Doesn't get more American than that. Maybe you incorporated the lettuce, which we would have put underneath. Mayo and vinegar works. Now if you had had some of those tomatoes that would have been good too. Bon Appetite!
ReplyDeleteJean Ralley
Unfortunately, my tomato plants aren't doing very well. Even the ones I planted more than a month ago are only three inches tall.
ReplyDeleteMy spaghetti salad has been very popular as of late. I need to thin out my lettuce bed as it is, so I have been using the extra lettuce for spaghetti salad and sharing the salad with others. Last week I made spaghetti salad with a visiting volunteer, and this week I made it Tuesday night to eat with a friend, last night to eat with two colleagues, and I'll make it again tonight to eat with the same two colleagues.
Ramadan started Tuesday night and for whatever reason, spaghetti salad is a very popular dish for breaking the fast every night. A number of women are selling spaghetti salad on the street these days for that reason, but none of them sell it with lettuce because the Beninese tend to grow lettuce in the winter only.
It would be nice to see some pictures of your garden now.
ReplyDeleteI'll try to take some and post them. Some things are growing nicely, but other things you will barely be able to see because they're not growing well due to lack of rain and difficult access to water.
ReplyDelete