Perma-gardening aka Moz 17 Gets Dirty

One of the events of training I was most looking forward to was the perma-gardening. Having never had a garden growing up, nor the space to have one at school, gardening was a skill I lacked. In a similar vein to how I took pride I having killed, gutted, and cleaned a chicken myself, growing my own vegetables seemed very appealing. Luck for me that the only organized project we did during training was to setup a highly efficient and systematic mini-farm.

Perma-gardening is taught to PCT’s (Peace Corps Trainees) as a unit in our extensive HIV/AIDS education. Since proper nutrition is an important, controllable, and relatively cheap component of the treatment of HIV/AIDS, it is a high priority for PCV’s. Once at site, volunteers have few resources and only what support they van get from the community, so we’re always on the lookout for low hanging fruit. By developing a way to maximize the nutritional content yields from a small parcel of land (most perma-gardens are no larger than 100m^2), Peace Corps is giving volunteers a very simple yet effective tool for promoting community development and health.

After a quick training session on Friday covering the basics about perma-gardens, myself and the 15 other PCT’s met early on Saturday and Sunday mornings to do the actual work. Though I won’t go into all the details, perma-gardening has 5 main components: composting, water management, soil preparation, planting diverse crops, and maintenance. As anyone in my family can tell you, I have always loved to build sandcastles, so the water management segment was more fun than work for me. The idea is, using the natural tendencies of rain water, to accomplish the 4 S’s of water management: stop, slow, spread, and sink (very different from the 5’s of organization I learned in IE).

• Stop: Using berms that surround the outside of the garden, block the natural downward path of water so that during rainstorms your fertile topsoil isn’t washed away
• Slow: Dig collection pools so that where water does flow in, it does so at a slow pace; further protecting the soil and storing some water for latter
• Spread: By placing ditches between  all the vegetable beds and ensuring that they are downhill from the collection pools, water can flow and enter every area of the garden
• Sink: Using a technique known as double digging, soil is opened up and aerated to a relatively deep level for a garden, allowing more water to be absorbed and more nutrients to be cycled.

Though this technique can require a lot of work to set up a garden, the yields are 2 to 3 times better than just simply planting crops. In addition, the variety of food stuffs produced (our garden has tomatoes, corn, lemon grass, sweet potatoes, bananas, and lettuce) adds a lot to the average Mozambican diet of xima (grits) and amendoin (peanuts).Having now learned a very efficient (woooo efficiency) and effective way to setup a garden, I’m sure I’ll put all those seeds in my Maputo bag to good use. Also, after seeing the camaraderie and cooperation that developed in my group through the work we had to complete (on a 34C/100F day), it became obvious why these types of community projects are such an important part of most volunteers Peace Corps service.

Glad you made it

Welcome to the farm

Who’s your daddy?

I’m your daddy now

I’m here seeking only what I need

In your mind I’ll plant my seed

It’s for sure

Guster- Airport Song