Gardening update on Earth Day 2018

Happy Earth Day.  This week I have a few pictures of the school garden and my garden.

 Before I turn to the gardens I wanted to give another view of my village of Munich. Last week I talked about the hurricane scars of the abandoned houses. This week I wanted to show some of the occupied houses of the town to balance the picture. It is a nice place with nice people.

Houses on my way to school

House next door house

Part of this house is a shop, with living above.
Another house along the way

This week I had a meeting at PC office. I was volunteered to be a safety warden. The role is to help manage and support consolidation and evacuation events. I guess I was not the only one thinking about the hurricanes…

2/3 of the way up the hill to the PC office with St. George's in the background

The 4H group has started the major school garden as we are move into the rainy season soon. The main crops are tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, and lettuce. Bananas, plantains, dasheen, sorrel, and such also grow around the grounds of the current and old/new school. These pictures are staged – as the students would not be in school uniforms if they were really working in the garden.

Garden at large

"Working in the garden"

Lettuce flats

Got a camera? Got a pose.

We have several other groups in school besides 4H. A picture of the Brownies singing a song.

Singing and laughing.
My garden is progressing. The corn has tassled and my remaining tomato plant has a few flowers. The sweet potato I use as a mulch and for salad is doing great (I think I’ve said that in Ghana I ate the leaves for a salad as lettuce was hard to come by. Here, I add the leaves to my salad for flavor. Sweet potato leaves are not generally eaten here – although sometimes they are cooked.)


The beans are fine and beginning to set. I’ve not seen the garlic now that the corn, beans, and sweet potatoes are grown, so who knows. I planted another sweet potato plant that I’ll use for tubers – in a mound of dirt from the water tank installation. It is still getting established (I just cut and planted some vines of the other plant a couple of weeks ago so the plants are just working on getting roots down into the ground.)

My little tomato plant

Mainly corn and beans with some sweet potato vines creeping out
Sweet potato setting down roots.

The corn looks promising – but I only have a narrow strip so it might be that the silks will not be properly pollinated leading to ears with few kernels. Still, this is primarily a learning exercise. It also helps with integration as I have one more thing in common to talk about (except I’m not depending on my garden being productive).

A real farming carrying some produce back to his house.

Love always,
John

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