Vegetable Gardening

These are my ladies. Eight of them. Walking for hours to get training and receive HOPE. Both things they're lacking in their current state. Hard working ladies who just can't get ahead. After all, when drought ruins their crops, they don't collect crop insurance, they go hungry. Joe and I were excited to serve and teach these women for the week:

Each day we taught on a different topic. This particular day, we talked about planting vegetables, composting over the garden bed, and using the seeder that was donated by Earthway Inc. mentioned in this post.

After trying to explain to the women how to create an ox-drawn harrow and not succeeding, I suggested that the ladies bring their hand tools the next day because we needed an even seedbed to make use of the vegetable seeder. They, of course, brought their hand tools and got right to work.

The ladies received training on how to use the seeder with the different seed plates. They were excited to try it out and I was thrilled to watch them. When they were comfortable using the tool and had the seed bed prepped and ready to be seeded, they picked the right plates for the various vegetable seeds we had and started planting. What a sight!

When the 4 rows had been planted, it was time to give a little more education. While water is scarce, and it's a long walk to get water, we explained the importance of watering the seeds to get them to germinate and grow. It will be a hard sell. But if they can see it happen where we planted the veggies, then maybe they'll go through all the work to do the same thing. Yes, it is a long walk to water, but water is so important. So, we watered the seeds while I prayed for rain.

While the seeds were watered on one end of the raised garden bed, the ladies finished planting garlic on the other end.

When the planting was finished, we had the ladies compost the garden bed. It wasn't the best option for compost. But it will help retain soil moisture which is incredibly important during a drought.

Not knowing if they would grasp the idea or not, we did it anyway. And the next day when it was hot and still hadn't rained, we went back to the garden bed. When the ladies pulled back the compost (aka dried grass) and saw that the ground underneath retained the moisture (from the mixing of the top soil with that below it) than the uncovered earth, they got it. Lesson learned today.