permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

There is a second garden which was started a couple of months ago. It is a stone throw away from ours, and it has life in it, plants (chomolia, tomatoes, maize and lettuce) that have been grown outside the rainy season. There is another space being fenced, which shares a fence with garden #2 and our garden is behind the two trees seen in the image. If the three of us are successful in creating good gardens, it could be a good enough encouragement, for other households to use their spaces. Our garden is about 70 square meters and this area, if used wisely can be a source of affordable tasty food, in a time outside the rainy period. Now multiplying the singular patches, in front of the households, surrounding the free space, they sum up to an area of not less than 1400 square meters, laying idle for the bulk of the year. It is a fact from where I stand, that there is so much we can do at a household level that can make food a lot more available, make the space more attractive while we contribute, to a global movement to reduce climate change in our own small way. Talk about killing multiple birds with one stone.  These spaces are commonly used for growing maize in the rainy season and they will be bare for the rest of the year.

We are now getting into the hottest month of the year and already we can feel the heat. Things have been slow for the month of September. The seedling area, just like the maize field is now a permanent step ahead. I seem to have managed to ascertain a continuous supply of seedlings.

The kitchen garden is still a struggle, because of pest control. The plants that were attacked the most were new seedlings and pepper plants, now even the surviving beet plants are targets. I am continuing to try things out until I finally can control things in the garden. What I am sure of is one way or the other, we are going to have a variety of vegetables throughout the year, coming out of that space. The tomato plant is looking really great. As for the rest of the garden, l have decided I will include a picture of the whole garden when there are clearly visible developments.  

To keep a positive attitude I am taking on a challenge. I love to dance a lot, but it does not come easy, so in preparation for celebrating a pretty looking garden, l am picking a dance that I will learn. There is one which I found really hilarious and complicated, and it might be the one I will follow. I hope I will have guts to share my celebratory moves when the time comes. I have included the dance.

At the plot things are moving forward. I am especially happy because of the progress at one of our neighbor's, the one who has decided to do the zai pits. She has covered about half of her field and she is doing a great job. This is the last month before we receive rain, I think it is wiser for her to start looking into securing manure and grass for the part she has worked on for best results, then if it works out for her she can use part of next year to finish the rest of her field. We discussed this and she said she will consider. I really hope it works, her success, will be a trigger for the spread of zai pits, ground cover and the use of manure in fields.

We have managed to clear the money loaned to the plot by mum, for the month of September, though we are withdrawing this target for now until after the harvest for this coming season, because of inflation which is difficult to keep up with, we are still counting this a success. At the beginning of September, we bought feed we expected to last us the whole month, if we restricted the amount of feed we would give the chickens. It was not long until we noticed the impact of not giving the chickens enough feed. The eggs became smaller and the number of eggs collected further reduced. It was then that we decided to get an advance to buy more feed with, that we would pay back during the course of the month.

In the same month we sold the highest number of items than ever before. We had eggs, chomolia and onions throughout. Before, eggs and onions were mainly for us and most ended up being given away. The frequency of these items being bought was low, but this time we had low and mostly constant prices to attract customers. (It turns out it is the number of items we sold and not necessarily inflating prices that increased our revenue). The fact that we planted the onions within the chomolia beds, means the only additional cost was of buying the onion seedlings. This is what we based on when we were pricing and as for the chickens, they produce white eggs and these are not too common in the market and lowering our price was a way to get more customers.

The cost of growing chomolia and onions is so little and this is what is supporting chickens on top of what we are getting from eggs. We expect to continue developing and finding alternative feed sources and eventually take care of all the chicken expenses through egg selling. Already, the maggots, mulberries, together with continuous findings on how we can move away from commercial feed have proven to be great tools in achieving our goal. We have planted some cowpeas on the sandy part, commercial feed has almost doubled this month, some article highlighted how cowpeas can be a good source of protein for poultry, so we do have a chance in reducing hiking feed costs.

In the kitchen garden, I have been spraying recent seedlings with water that I am getting after boiling onions and chillies, everyday before the sun sets. The number of seedlings eaten over night has reduced greatly. Today the was only one with part of its leaf chewed on, instead of the whole plant. The experiment that I repeated and has proved to be the least strenuous is that of planting marigolds together with the seedlings. I have planted the rest of the marigold seeds I have, the good news is the marigolds l planted first are almost flowering so I will be getting more seeds from there. I guess there is extra effort that is required to control pests when using randomly collected mulch.

I did a lot of thinking, on why I should wait for the success of the garden for me to dance. It is easy to put aside creating good memories, especially when there is no occasion or big event happening.   So as we walk through a sustainable life development process, making good memories will be a part of it. We have been creating time through improved home management, I cannot think of anything better to do with our evenings than to enjoy each other's company, watching TV will not form part of this.

So I danced for my mum, imitating a funny video I watched on some social media. Entertainers deserve to be paid, that job is no joke.

We are also reading a great book to help us on personal grooming, called "Living today", it is a good book and it covers some basics to things like hygiene, dressing etc. We will take  it easy with the grooming, to avoid chasing after too many birds in one go.



Videos of the original dancer as well as mine imitating the moves

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Rufaro Makamure wrote:In the kitchen garden, I have been spraying recent seedlings with water that I am getting after boiling onions and chillies, everyday before the sun sets. The number of seedlings eaten over night has reduced greatly. Today the was only one with part of its leaf chewed on, instead of the whole plant. The experiment that I repeated and has proved to be the least strenuous is that of planting marigolds together with the seedlings. I have planted the rest of the marigold seeds I have, the good news is the marigolds l planted first are almost flowering so I will be getting more seeds from there. I guess there is extra effort that is required to control pests when using randomly collected mulch.

I use a "bug spray" made of onion, garlic, and hot peppers in vinegar. Chop everything up, let it sit for two weeks or more, then strain and add more water for a dilution. It seems to work rather well.

We have received the first few drops of rain this season. I was almost done with planting the maize when it rained, now we wait for the continuous rains to come, which is highly likely at the beginning of the coming month. We decided to plant and water the maize, when we receive the rain continuously, the maize would have emerged and the period where the maize needs most if the water, will coincide with the times where there is a high probability of  rain. As for the planting expenses we have incurred so far, the only thing that has demanded financial input is grass, and we got a lot of it this year, otherwise everything else including labour was internal input.

We have stopped buying commercial feed for the chickens. We are sourcing cheaper means for grains and protein, we are collecting leaves and pods from leguminous plants. Seeds that have been seating in our house for some time are coming in handy, I found a few sesame seeds as well as lentils, which were gathering dust in the cupboard and we are mixing everything with ground cereal.

My uncle from Hurungwe came. The dam he uses has dried up in a way he has never seen before. People are digging the base of the dam to allow water to flow from where it still remains to areas that can be accessed easily by both humans and animals. His plants dried up and he is already preparing his beds for the rains. From his assessment, the garden would have given him returns, by the time we get to the dry season next year, as he is starting to plant earlier than he usually does, so the effects of the dam drying up, if it occurs again, will not be much. He has also finished most work on his water cart, which is a great thing.

He explained more on the security of his garden from animals. Goats were getting in through some spaces under his hedge and he has planted more in between the gaps. There is also a side which was attached to adjacent gardens that is now open, as these gardens have been abandoned. He has put twigs and thorns to cover the spaces temporarily as he waits for the hedge he planted to grow.

We have been sharing ideas and planning our next steps, the next meeting, I am the to visit him. We talked about the advantages of zai pits and did a ground cover demo, with three portions, one with nothing covering it, the other with grass and the other with soil loosened and covered with grass. We poured water and looked at the depth of the water and the period it took for the different spots to dry up.
We have also emphasized on the main goal of why we are doing what we do, which is to secure food for our families first, together with ensuring some stable income to cover basics, from the resources we have. The question that we are using as our driving force is "What if our lives solely depended on the areas we are working on and there was no option of going out if the country, getting another job, getting support from family...etc, how would we constantly improve the places to adapt to changing times and not leave any chance to failure?"  

I visited Mrs Moyo's field today, the one who is trying out the zai pits method, she has mulched a few of her lines. She has also put goat manure in almost all her holes.

There is just as much as planning can take you and sometimes outcomes are defined by circumstances outside our control.

Today is the second day since our pump failed. We have been using the well, but it meant cutting down the places to be watered and the maize field is one of those places. I could see the maize plants wilting more and more, even our vegetables were showing signs of stress. There was little we could do, and today it rained... There is so much great relief because today's rain has bought us time between the continuous rain and the fixing of our pump.  

Our pump is working now, which is good because the rains have not come yet. The rain has taken longer than usual to fall this year. In the past years, it has been shifting in a more subtle way. There was a time when rain would fall by mid October, it slowly changed, until end of October was the normal. This year, we are almost getting into mid November and the majority of areas have not received proper rain. There was a really good chance of it raining, at the beginning of the month with percentages on precipitation chances, ranging between 50% and 84%. We could see clouds forming, with some certainty of rain, but it would get extremly hot in the afternoons, clouds would form and in the evening, it would then become windy and a little chilly and no rain would fall. This week we are expecting it to rain, though the chance is lower than it was at the beginning of the month. We have started replanting some areas where the maize was affected to beyond survival. I have stopped completely working on the flowers and the kitchen garden, for now, our water resources and time are not allowing us to.

Despite the water troubles, our field has life in it, we are so thankful for that.

It is now raining...! . Both the field and the chomolia beds look healthy. Chomolia is on demand, we are getting customers who come from great distances, than we normally get. We are putting more suckers to enable us to cope with the demand, as we are turning away more people than we serve.  

The neighbor right next to us has started preparing his land, they are using holes as well.

Two uncles who stay in opposite parts of the country are adopting zai pits. The other one got manure from his animals the other is surrounded by trees and he got a lot of manure from under the trees.

Fertilizer and seed is becoming more and more expensive, finding alternative farming methods is becoming less of a luxury, but a necessity. I an glad we have an alternative to turn. I do not want to imagine what the possibility could be if we only relied on conventional farming.

We have managed to mulch most of the sandy part and we decided its better to thickly mulch the area our mulch allows us to. We now get electricity for most of the afternoons so we can use our drip system, we finished laying the pipes.

My sister in-law showed me which leaves to pick from cow peas plants. These can be used as relish, so we will see if we can add this onto our income generating list of items We have started picking some cow-peas, which we intend to add to chicken feed mixture.

Wow, the mulched area looks great!!!

Rufaro, I'm always interested to see what you are doing.