Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Saturday, February 20, 2016

Thriving garden despite the drought

The rainfall in the Caprivi/Zambezi Region has been very sporadic this year causing drought conditions. We have been very fortunate at the Sinanzi Garden because of 2 reasons: 1) the plot of land we are using is near a swam area. While there is little standing water or flooding as there might normally be, it is still a wet area.  2) Elton had the foresight to have a reservoir/well dug down to the underground water table near the edge of the plot.  When all else is dry, for the most part our reservoir has water.  They are able to then pump the water into a holding tank that flows out to the many sprayers and hoses.  

The workers have begun to prepare some new plots to plant the next crops....

We can never have enough cabbage, kale, tomatoes and onions to go around.  These are everyone's favorite vegetables and staples of the diet.

As is corn... major part of everyone's diet.  Pictured here is our garden manager, Joseph and one of our workers, Samuel. 

 In the center of this photo, you can see the pumpkin plants doing quite well.  Both the pumpkin and the leaves can be eaten.


When the corn was ready to harvest, volunteers from the church and community distributed it to many widows in need.  
We are beginning to expand our long-term goals of the garden by also planting fruit trees. Pictured here are 3 guava bushes.  While they take longer to grow, we hope that one day they will be great producers!
If you look very carefully around the leaves at the bottom of this last photo, you can see that despite the very small size of this tree, it has already started producing some guava!