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Published: July 27th 2011
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The project I have worked most closely with is ¨huertos familiares¨ or Family Vegetable Gardens. This project involves traveling to the rural communities outside of Managua and working with the families to grow their own fruits and vegetables. While each community is different, many of the families grow their own beans and corn (two of the staple Nica foods along with rice). Some families have 1 or 2 members who work outside of the community in various jobs, and some have members who travel to Managua to work. That being said, after the bills are paid and basic foods bought, these families have little money left over. Their diets therefore consist largely of beans, corn, and rice… and little vegetables. Vegetables are expensive and can mean travelling outside the community to buy them. With our vegetable garden project, the families are able to grow their own produce and thus improve their diet.
Working in the gardens however is not as easy as it sounds. The soil in the communities is very poor; the insects, fungi, worms, etc. kill plants and are difficult to control; and the availability of water is very limited especially during the dry season. This leaves us
the task of coming up with new, creative ways to improve the soil, control pests, and maximize the limited water.
We promote organic agriculture, so therefore great majority of the techniques we use are all natural. To improve the soil we are using a raised bed method called ¨camas altas¨. Generally these are beds 6m long, 1.5m wide and 30cm deep. The bed is split into 8 sections 75cm apart. These sections allow for crop rotation. Once externally marked the sections are dug one by one. First organic material (worm decomposed manure, compost, egg shells, or ash) is layered over the section. The section is then dug out allowing the organic material to be mixed into the soil. The soil is thrown into the empty section which proceeds it, and the final section is filled with the soil from the first section (perhaps pictures will help to visualize). During this process it’s important to sift out any rocks, and if the soil is too rocky or sandy is it thrown aside and new soil most be brought in from a different location. The depth of 30cm is important to allow the roots to expand easily.
Once the beds are
Doña Fidelia digs her first raised bed!
Great example of 8 sections dug out and filled back in again ready to be planted! ready, planting can begin. Plants that grow upwards (tomatos, cucumbers, squash, etc) are planted during the full moon. Plants that grow downwards (carrots, radishes, etc) are planted at the new moon. Once planted watering them is very important. The ideal system would be a basic drip irrigation system to ensure constant humidity of the soil. However, since money does not always allow for this, we use a drip system with bottles instead of tubes. One way is hanging 3lt bottles over the plants (close to the ground to minimize evaporation). The bottles are hung upside-down with a small hole in the cap to allow it to drip continually. The other way, is cutting the tops off the bottles and burying them around the beds with just a little bit of the bottle showing. This way when the water evaporates from the soil it will get caught in the bottles and drip back down again.
These methods not only allow the plants to develop more fully with continual water supply, but also help in maximizing the use of water. In the rural communities where we work water is difficult to get and expensive. Two examples:
Dominga in Los Planes:
Los Planes is the community closest to Manauga and the most easily accessible. Even still, water is a problem. For Dominga and her family of six getting water is expensive. Where she lives community members use well water; however there is no piping to get the water from the well to the house. Therefore water is brought from the well in big barrels pulled by 2 oxen and generally guided by a couple of boys. The trek to the well is long from Domingas house, taking the boys and the oxen hours to retrieve it (oxen are slow moving creatures). Dominga, however, does not have her own oxen and cart, and therefore must pay someone to bring her water every week. Dominga being a very determined woman and immensely proud of her garden, has thus starting coming up with her own ways to preserve water. For example, she saves all the water from washing dishes (washing them with only soap instead of adding the customary splash of bleach). This water she pours in trenches she has dug around the plants. The roots then can absorb the water from the soil, without being burned from direct contact with the used water.
Bio Filtro in progress #2
A smiling Estela carries a bucket of volcanic rock to fill in the filter. She also claims she has starting showering with half a bucket of water instead of a whole bucket…therefore leaving herself with a half a bucket extra to water her garden.
Estela in Los Filos: Estela is in a different situation than Dominga. Her house in Los Filos (a community resting on the edge of the mountain tops above Dominga) does have piping to her community well. The problem for Estela however is that water comes only a few hours every Tuesday morning. In this time the family of women fills up all their buckets and barrels for the week and tries to do as much laundry as possible. Even with the advantage of the water coming directly to their house, the women still have to pay for the water…and with no one in their family working outside the house, this is difficult. At Estela´s house we have constructed an experimental filter to reuse their water and therefore give them sufficient water for their garden. The size of the filter depends on the amount of water used in the household. Estela needed a filter 5m long, 1m wide, and about 50cm deep. It was quite the project to dig (the
details will have to come in another entry) but two months after starting… the filter was filled with sand, volcanic rock, dirt, and a specific plant whose roots also aid in the filtering process. The tubes have been connected to the kitchen, shower, and lavadero (washboard sink) and the filter is producing gray water clean enough for plant consumption! The success with the filter in Estela´s house has allowed her to triple the size of her garden. We now have 3 functioning filters in the communities and are about to construct 3 more.
There is still much to be said about my work with the Huertos project… but looking at the length of this entry I think I will save it until next time. Hopefully you learned something from my recap…I certainly have learned a great deal about organic agriculture in my time here!
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