Permagarden

This weekend we learned how to make a Permagarden (permanent garden).  The Permagarden technique is something universally done among Peace Corps volunteers in an effort to promote families in the community to develop and sustain their own garden, making for cheaper, healthier lifestyles and even a possible source of income.

As most you of probably already know, I am not a keen lover of gardening but for some reason the idea of setting up my own garden once I get to site sounds kind of fun! (Maybe it is because I am definitely lacking vegetables in my diet…)  But let me tell you, starting a garden from scratch is quite the process!

We started the day bright and early learning about composting.  (Dad, I can give you all kinds of tips now for your garden in the backyard!)  We used machetes and hoes to collect, chop, dig up, and gather green and brown materials to make our compost pile.  It rained super hard last night, so it was a pretty muddy adventure climbing through shrubs and gathering the materials. 

We dug a small hole about 10cm deep and then laid sticks across it to allow for some air flow.  Then we alternately added brown material, green material, soil/manure to make a pile about 1m tall.  We covered it with banana leaves to help retain some moisture and hopefully our pile will start to decompose in a few weeks to make some nice compost!

Then we turned to the garden.  The past group of volunteers had started a garden, but no one had kept it up, so we started with weeding and cleaning up the area a bit.  Then we made our planting beds, first digging up the dirt with the hoe, then forming mounds about a meter wide, then double digging and mixing in charcoal, manure, and compost with the soil, then building berms around the perimeter of the garden, and making pathways between planting beds.  Then we planted lemongrass and sweet potatoes around the perimeter in the berms which apparently are natural repellents.  I had no idea you could just plant the stalk of the plant and it will grow!  We filled our planting beds with tomatoes, corn, lettuce, and beans. 

Here is the final product!