Permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

I am learning that toads eat slugs and it can be my solution to my slug issue. The problem is..HOW THE HECK DO I GET A TOAD INTO MY GARDEN? I do not see myself handling any toad any time soon. I don't mind it in the garden, it's the touching or lifting it that I cannot even imagine.

Rufaro, I hear the same thing in my community. We discard almost nothing, which is so important to me. My neighbors say "but the trash man comes three times a week, why bother composting?" "I can buy vegetables, so why should I care about growing them?"

All I can think is that there was a time when I also didn't feel passionate about this whole subject, and I can't be responsible for other people's priorities. I share what I grow, and I know passersby are always commenting on my fruit trees (that can be seen from the street). Maybe someone will see these things and get curious and try making changes of their own.

I hope your long beans do well. They are probably my favorite and most reliable summer crop. They take a long time to establish but produce so much, and do very well with unpredictable weather (which I know here in Brazil we're supposed to have this summer, probably you as well).

This week was filled with hosting of relatives. First it was my aunt and then one of my nephews was graduating and I was the one standing in for his mother.  I am glad I could be there for him.

At the plot mai Kumbi has onions and a lot of kale, so she asked me if I could get more customers, to add to those that are buying from the plot. I did but she was not happy about the prices we were offering, she turned my customers down and she found a different market. Her enthusiasm now is really commendable.

For the peanut butter business the issue of employees is not something we can overlook, so I am supposed to meet one woman who worked with Apo for years, but stopped. Now she is the one he calls when he has noone to help him and she comes when she is available. I want to find out from her, what it would take for her to help Apo for about three months continuously, as he works out the motor issue and also so that he can find time to go and buy  nuts

I had a successful meeting with the woman whom I think will be a good support for Apo. She told me her experiences with him and she said there is a lot of improvement that's needed when it comes to how he handles people who help him. She said she strongly believes in the potential this business has and she is willing to let go of the stall she has, for her to work full time at Apo's. What she asked for was for her to have her rent, transport to work, bills and food for the month. What she was promising was all her effort and concentration to see this thing grow into a proper business.

This meeting was something I ran through Apo and he was on board, that was before it happened. Imagine my surprise when I went to him and the moment I started telling him how successful the meeting went, he was crushing everything that had to do with this woman's engagement in the business. I was confused. If he didn't want her, I felt like he should have mentioned this from the get go and I wouldn't have wasted my time or the woman's time.

I called mai Kumbi today, wanting to make an order of flowers from her. She was so excited about the onion sales she is making. Her words literally were "guess what..." she said it like a little child who cannot wait to tell something really exciting.

There is a little pressure on me to quickly grow our capacity. I threw out the idea of finding space in the existing beds for okra. She is still skeptical about mixing crops and it's okay for now. I need to work on my sample garden bed which I will show practically, how we can benefit from mixing things in one bed. If we increase the  number of products we sell, our garden can get more out of our customers, (one customer can come for kale, onions, tomatoes...e.t.c) and we will be doing this using the same space and labor we already have. The amount we can get out of a single bed can increase, if we have different vegetable being picked out of it. Growing only kale or onions in our beds limits our capacity, and it's something I need to address as quickly as is practical.

One of the pots gave me my first harvest from pots and I was able to make a lettuce and tomato salad. The tomatoes are still from the plot.

I found a watermelon seedling, on the manure which came from the kitchen compost and I transplanted it. The potato plant which is growing on a pile of pruned banana leaves was bit by something as it was starting to flower. The plant was the healthiest I have seen so far on any potato plant and there was absolutely no spraying. I guess the microclimate that has been created on the area its on, is ideal for potatoes.

Rats have been eating the pumpkin plant leaves. I have covered the plant with mesh wire to protect it.

The beets and lettuce I had planted in a container have stunted growth. I have transplanted these and put them in the keyhole garden. I took a picture of the beetroots that I planted in the keyhole bed at the same time as these. The leaves for the keyhole garden ones are big and have a good green color, where as the other ones have extremely small leaves.

I have been giving mai Kumbi some peanut butter to sell. My objective is to have every opportunity for her to add onto her income from the plot. Those that come looking to buy vegetables, if they see peanut butter they can also buy it, this will be some money into her pocket, which will add to making the plot attractive to her. I did not explain this in detail though. When I asked if she was willing to add peanut butter to the products she sells, she was happy to. I was surprised to hear her say that she is giving one very old lady who is a vendor in town to sell. She says the woman struggles and she barely has anything on her table to sell. When I asked her how she intends to pay the woman back, she said she will get a huge bundle of kale and give it to her so that she can split it and add it to her stock. I am yet to see how this will work, if it does, we would have added a person to our circle of influence, in terms of improving sustenance. I still think we have an even bigger market at the plot which can be exploited, but I won't push this for now, as I wait to see mai Kumbi's strategy.

With Apo, I keep going back and forth between leaving his business alone and continuing to poke my nose into his business (that what it is really because he has never asked me to). I found myself asking him to meet with me to hear him out on the issue of employees. He came and I was glad he did, because he didn't have to. We talked at length about how if he really intends for this business to grow beyond a certain point he needs to create a system that does not rely on just him alone for every single thing. He does not trust people especially those he has already worked with. He does not quite get me and I also am struggling to understand how he does not see that he needs people. The meeting was mainly about the woman who I am hoping he works with, whom he always leaves behind when he goes away. She is a very sensitive topic with him. I do kind of get him, just like I get the woman. The two have done hurtful things to ech other from a business point of view, but this is not too different from most start up businesses that are around us that never grow beyond a certain point. This time around I want to experiment with them to see if we can change few things in the normal business culture, I have a strong feeling it will change the work relations of these two. There is exploitation of both the employee and the owner. In the current business set up, on one side when one goes to work they do not care about whether they are productive or not, what they want is a salary at the end of the month. There is zero accountability. Then the owners do not really care about the wellbeing of the employees. It does not matter to them whether the jobs they create pay the employees enough to cater for their basic needs or not, there is a minimum that is usually given to people and employers want to keep it there. In both cases the result is the business growth suffers and this is what I want to try and change.

Apo told me one thing that left me shocked. Isn't he had left his nuts in Gokwe, he went to collect them last weekend. When he left he had packed them in 90kg bags then when he went back he unpacked all the bags and put them in 50kg bags which he could load easily in a car. In one of the bags he found that nuts had been mixed with maize. He was lucky that he unpacked the bags when he was still in Gokwe and he confronted the lady whom he left the nuts with and she suspects her children sold some nuts and put maize at the bottom of the nuts to give an illusion of a bag filled with nuts.