The rain will be here soon

We've had virtually no rain since December and with little letup the temperatures have remained in the 30ºs C. We're going to begin again soon and see if we can't find some varieties of vegetables that will be able to survive in this climate in Granada, Nicaragua. Our days are short by north american summer standards. Sun up is 6 and sunset is 6. Leaf vegetables seem to be a complete washout with our extremely high temperatures. I'm hopeful that varieties of squash, bean, tomato, pepper and corn will succeed. I'm going to issue a call to seed on Twitter and see if there is any interest in people sending a packet of seed. It's a small investment but it would make a world of difference here. Local seed varieties are primarily sold in bulk, and the bulk quantity is cost prohibitive to most people. The seed for peppers, tomatoes, cucumber and watermelon are sold in a can, sufficient to seed an acre. The variety that most north americans have at their local hardware is unheard of here, as are home vegetable gardens.
Send seed packets to:
Casa Silas,
media cuadra al este de farmacia La Merced
206 Calle La Concepcion
Granada, Nicaragua

Starting new seedlings

While the last of the previous plantings are being harvested at the sites, I've started new flats of tomato, pepper, tomatilla and herbs. I've had a few plant seedling trays made here in Granada. They're being cared for here in the city, where I can have greater control over their development, free from the issues of chickens, pigs and other problems. I'm hoping I can nurture these seedlings to a reasonable size in a controlled environment before I take them out to the gardens to transplant.

Forgive me father it's been . . .

Forgive me father it's been . . . two months since my last blog entry. The current situation as of Monday, is that the gardens are in serious need of rejuvenation. The local corn is the only crop at Estella and Sofia that amounted to anything. The families are eating the corn, though it is a terrible corn, as tough as cow corn. On the streets here, it is roasted in husk over charcoal by vendors. At Estella and Sofia, they prefer to boil it. I've brought back Canadian corn seed and can't wait to share the harvest of that with them. At jardin Ana, Lupe has been very active keeping the garden in great shape, even expanding his area to include another small parcel of land cleared nearby. He is having great success with the local pepper and I've promised him assistance with fertilizer and organic pesticide treatments as well as more and a greater variety of seeds with which to experiment. In a week or so the corn will be finished, the pigs will have finished off the stalks and we'll be ready to begin anew. I've been to the local market and commissioned a woodworker to build me a few nursery trays so that I might raise the seedlings, here in my house in Granada. If we can take seedlings of several weeks growth out to the gardens, we might have a better chance of success overall.

Third Planting

Becky and I returned to the project today. With the higher temperatures here, and the frequent rains of this season, the beans and corn have emerged and started to grow rapidly. Within the span of six days the corn is up three inches and the beans have developed their first true leaves. Today we planted the third planting of corn and beans. In addition to the beans enriching the nitrogen in the soils, all of the plant waste will be used in the making of our compost. We're looking forward now to a bountiful harvest and some tasty vegetables. Next week we'll make some inquiries as to who might also be interested in having their own garden. There are a many people through Estella's yard because of her having a pulperia, and the curiosity level surrounding what is happening with their gardens has many folks interested.

Second Planting

This week Caroline and I returned to the project gardens again. The previous visit we had setup the perimeter of each garden with the chicken wire. The previous setup of bamboo and posts was fine for full grown chickens but, we hadn't considered the damage the chicks would do to the emerging seedlings and young tomato and pepper plants, lesson learned. The new chicken wire has also allowed us to increase substantially the size of the family gardens. Initially, we had kept them to about 8 feet by 4 feet. This was partially because we were dealing with earth we could hardly break with a pick and partly because we had insufficient compost to enrich much more than these small plots. With the rains, the earth has softened substantially, and with relative ease we are able to break earth to a depth of six or seven inches. With additional compost, this plots will hopefully remain viable once the rains cease and the surrounding ground hardens again. The new plots are on the order of 20 feet by 20 feet. Caroline and I brought with us, this visit, locally purchased corn, beans, tomato and pepper seeds from Canada. We planted the corn and beans together in the traditional native manner, with the beans providing nutrients to the corn, and the corn providing support for the beans. Canteloupe had survived from the previous planting and is thriving and in full bloom. At Ana's garden, her son has decided to take the ball and run with it. Instead of us showing him how to plant and care for the garden, he advised us that he had an interest in, and knowledge of gardening and we left him with the seeds to take care of it himself. We'll follow up with him regularly to see what he needs and how his garden is coming along.

New fencing for Los Huertos

Today, I was joined by two other volunteers from La Esperanza Granada in our fencing project at the gardens. The addition of the fencing will allow us to enclose a larger area of land and to experiment with a greater variety of vegetables. With wire purchased locally, $1/ metre, Mark, from La Esperanza Granada, drove volunteers Caroline, Becky and I out to the project. It's been raining almost daily now for the past week but, with rain threatening we were still able to enclose two of our existing gardens and to begin another garden. Within the area of the new gardens we also broke the ground. The rains have softened the soil to a depth of at least five inches. Two months ago, this would have been impossible. I'm hoping that if we can enrich the organic content of these soils and mulch sufficiently, that this soil will never again return to it's compacted, nutrient depleted former state. As a demonstration project, Huertas Sofia and Estella are ideally suited to inspire. Estella operates a pulperia from here home. A pulperia is a limited general notion store - milk, eggs, soft drinks. There is a fair amount of foot trafic to her door and I'm quite certain the conversation will often turn to what she is doing in her yard.

New fencing on La Huerta Sofia

Originally uploaded by Casa Silas

Sofia and her children, joined by Becky and Caroline from La Esperanza Granada installing chickenwire fencing to keep the free range animals from getting at the gardens

Chicken fencing at La Huerta Estella

Originally uploaded by Casa Silas

Caroline y Becky from La Esperanza Granada helping Estella, Flor y Jimmie with fencing on their new garden

99º In The Shade

Sofia's children having an inspection of their ever changing garden. Once we get the wire fence in place, we'll be able to more fully use the area of their yard. Presidente Ortega has made public references to the idea of all available land being more fully utilized in the country. How fully they intend to implement a "Victory" gardens strategy remains to be seen but, the idea certainly needs to be extended. Even if community-sufficiency isn't possible in beans and rice, the ability to increase the nutritional level of all family diets is certainly possible.

Why can't it ever be easy ; )

This morning I borrowed Luis' bike and Camilo and I rode out to La Epifania to have a look at the garden. 8 km up hill to La Epifania in 97º heat was a bit of a trial but, the return trip downhill was a picnic. I'm really hoping this transit strike will be resolved soon. I think we're in the eight day now. I'm also looking forward to having my own bike soon. This is a great city for cycling around. Sofia's garden still has some growth moving forward. Ana and Estella's were devastated by the free range chickens. I can't convince them to keep the chickens penned so, it looks like we'll have to pen in the area of the garden, adding more expense than I'd hoped to have to spend for fencing. The compost pile is increasing in mass. Today we added two more large bags of market waste and two bags of sawdust from a local furniture maker.

Rains have begun

Last night was our first rainfall in six months. Now we need to get mulching and store as much of the water in the soil.

From our failures we learn

Today was a rough day all around. All transit except horsedrawn is on strike at the moment. I had already committed to pick up a few bags of vegetable waste from a market vendor. I didn't want to leave them holding the bag, so after making sure they actually had something to pick up, I hustled around the market and found a carreton operator (horsedrawn trailer) to take me the 8 km to La Epifania. Initially, his price had doubled to $10 for the roundtrip. Commonsense prevailed and we settled on $5. By bus, the trip is a few minutes, with the carreton it was more like an hour. The daytime temp was over 97º by lunch. It was a scorcher in the back of the carreton, and not the smoothest ride, needless to say. That was the first of my disappointments. Last week we transplanted our first successful seedlings of tomato, pepper and canteloupe. Well, between insufficient watering and the free range chickens not much remains of our transplants despite our cane fencing. We still have time before the rains come to generate more seedlings but, first we have to figure out what we're going to do about the chicken problem. My first thought was soup but, Juan and Estela thought that was a bad idea ; ) We can either fence in the chickens or we can fence in the gardens. Either way we're looking at some costly chicken wire, at a little more than a dollar a metre which is the only short term solution available here. Materials like wire and wood cost almost as much as in the north. Budget permitting, we have some work to do before there'll be a harvest.

Strawberries y Blackberries

We are also hoping to find a local supplier of strawberry plants and blackberry canes. Both of these are cultivated in other areas of Nicaragua, so this should be realized soon. Both of these crops would be highly marketable locally and increase family income. With the blackberry canes it is also hoped that we can plant them as a perimeter crop to keep the chickens and pigs from the gardens located within those areas.

Sandra with Andrew

The thorny branches distributed over the soil are to prevent the chickens and pigs from disrupting the germinating seedlings. Under the black plastic is our compost heap.

Andrew

Parallel to our garden beds we have created compost heaps using vegetable plant waste purchased in the market. The families with the gardens do not generate enough kitchen scrap available for compost as all they might have are fed to the pigs. Andrew and I surveyed the market for a supplier of plant scrap material. The material is relatively inexpensive at .50 for a 50lb rice sack. The cost of transporting material to the gardens is the greater cost, at 5.00 per trip regardless of whether it be by truck, or cart and pony.
To minimize odor and pests we purchased heavy black sheet plastic. The plastic also intensifies the heat within the pile and accelerates the decomposition process. We have also contracted for the purchase of sawdust from local furniture makers. With the vegetable material and the sawdust, the finished volume is greater as the sawdust breaks down at a much slower rate of decompostion and will retain much more moisture.
With regular funding for the purchase and transportation of compostable materials we will no longer need to purchase the relatively expensive soil from Catarina. As our compost availability increases, so will our ability to expand beyond the three trial gardens.
Each of our beds have now been thinned and replanted with our seedlings of tomato, chiltoma and melon.
Our next step will be to increase the area under cultivation to allow us to plant corn, beans and local varieties of squash.

Huerta Estela

 Juan was very quick to erect this bamboo fence surrounding their garden plot. At this stage Michal and I have broken the hard-pack earth and amended it with the soil we purchased in Catarina.

Huerta Sofia

This plot, Huerta Sofia is a hard-pack plot with amended soils as well. This location has filtered sunlight throughout the morning, with full sunlight in the afternoon. We're using it as a seedling bed, and transplants will be taken from here and distributed as needed. The plastic cover is to retain moisture. The rocks are to retain plastic ; )

Huerta Ana

At this plot we chose to not break the hard-pack, instead raising the bed with a rock barrier and infill of Catarina topsoil.

With Michal y Patricia

Michal arrived from Poland in March. With Patricia and I, we purchased our first tools for the project. Shovel and pick in hand we returned to our plots and broke ground. There have been no vegetables grown here in living memory and the earth is as compacted as if it were for a road bed. With the pick we broke earth to a depth of four to six inches in areas four feet by eight feet. To this soil we then amended the soils from Catarina, and at Estela and Sofia we mixed these thoroughly.
Catarina is the horticultural centre of the southwest of Nicaragua. It's microclimate is moderated by it's altitude at 300 metres above Granada. Hundreds of types of ornamentals are grown in Catarina for domestic use and for export, but no vegetables or vegetable seedlings are grown. The majority of vegetables in Nicaragua are grown in the northern part of the country from Sebaco through to Jinotega. The higher altitude north, about 3000 feet, is considerably cooler year round and receives much more moisture. The practise of soil conservation and organic composting is widely practised there as well.
With the amendment of our purchased soil we created the three raised beds ready for direct seeding of chiltoma, tomato and melon. The initial germination results were very disappointing for the tomato and chiltoma but, the melon were quite successful. Replanting was necessary for the tomato and chiltoma, and the secondary seeding produced many more seedlings than we could actually use.

Huerta Estela

Michal ready for a bottle of water after the breaking of the hard-pack to a depth of 4-6 inches.

With Michal

As we determined it was best to make our experiments and failures on a small scale rather than frustrate any more than necessary of our particpants. Three families were selected and work began that first week.
Las Huertas (family garden) Ana, Sofia and Estela were marked off as four foot by eight foot areas in each yard. Each located in areas receiving differing amounts of sunlight. Huerta Ana is in a location where it receives filtered sunlight through to midday where it then receives full sun until dusk. Huerta Sofia receives filtered sunlight through to midday and then partial shade until dusk. Huerta Estela is located in an area receiving full sun throughout the day.
The beds at Sofia and Estela were dug to a depth of five inches and then amended with superior soils purchased from the Catarina area. This soil is the horticultural standard for the area. It is not a terrific soil, insufficient in organic matter and extremely fine but, it is far superior to the hard pack nutrient stripped soils of the yard. At Huerta Ana we decided to leave the hard pack intact and instead created a raised bed with the amendment soil over-layered, with a border of local rock to prevent washout when the intense rains come.
At 14º latitude, the sun is very intense here. There are only two distinct seasons here in central america - May through October is the "green" season with rains starting intermittently and light and increasing in frequency and intensity through the season. By the end of October the "brown" season has arrived and we generally receive no further rains until the middle of May. Little irrigation is required during the green season but, regular irrigation is required during the brown season. Water is fully available at La Epifania. Spigots are centrally located near all of their gardens.
Seed varieties are extremely limited in the southwest of Nicaragua. For the purposes of our initial trial gardens we decided with out community partners that tomato, chiltoma (peppers), cantaloupe, pepian (a small marrow type squash used in soups) would have the greatest likelihood of success.

With Patricia

With our first volunteer Patricia Rousseau from France, we visited the community and approached several households about the idea. Initially we had intended a community meeting at the school but, as everyone we approached was interested in the project, raising awareness was not going to be an issue, and we didn't want to oversell what the results might be as this was going to be an experiment and we didn't want broad failures. I felt three small scale gardens of differing location and methods might give us some initial indicators of what was going to work. These were early days, the rains being still months away.
The family yards are quite large and water access is readily available. Small scale livestock raising is a general feature of the community and most also have established mango, sour orange or jocote trees. Each household seems to have a small piggery of one sow and several piglets and a few hens or ducks, all of which are free range throughout the yard, foraging on their own. In addition to the small scale livestock, some families also operate other enterprises such as pulperia, the local name for a general notion or variety store.
The local soil is barren hard pack soil, with many rocks just beneath or at the surface. There are currently no vegetables grown in the community but, most yards maintain several ornamentals, dieffenbachia, croton and cordyline as landscaping.

Niños from La Epifania

The project

La Epifania is a community located at 8 kilometres from Granada, Nicaragua on the left hand side of the road to Nandaime. The community is located directly behind the public school, La Escualita Epifania, a school comprised of three school buildings built with the assistance of the government of Japan. La Esperanaza Granada, a privately funded, volunteer-run organization in Granada coordinates volunteer teachers from around the world with their placement at four local schools including La Epifania. The teaching assistants apply online prior to their arrival in Nicaragua for placement opportunities at the schools. A minimum commitment of a few weeks or months is generally required so that the children can develop relationships and establish trust with the teachers.
Several applications are received each year from willing participants who are unable to make the more lengthy commitment, having less than a few weeks in Granada. La Esperanza director, Pauline approached me about the idea of developing a garden project, involving short-term volunteers and the community. I agreed and suggested the project should be an organic permaculture garden project within the community of La Epifania, where the inputs would be less costly, even locally available and sustainable.