permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

No, they don't need anything special, but they are a biannual. If you're concerned about pollination you can shake the heads onto each other if they're close enough. If you're growing a hybrid the results may be varied, but they'll still be onions. Keep seed from the best each season.

Today I went looking for customers for our vegetables. I managed to get some ladies who prepare lunch at a local light industry that l will start supplying with veggies tomorrow. We have mostly focused on people who come to buy at the plot, but the sales are very erratic. The new market is so we have a consistent flow of sales. I have had to get out of some shell, talking to people has not been a strength for me.

I feel like currently, there is some time that's available to allow growing of things to carry on in the field, while we can also go around finding customers, so l guess that's some growth. Usually women who sell prepared lunch go to buy their own vegetables so l am hoping if l deliver the vegetables to them, it will offer them a little convinience and l will have a little edge over others. I will see how the first sale goes tomorrow.

Selling went great, if this goes well it means l will be assured of a sale by 10am for 6 days in a week. So instead of making a bulk sale to multiple people, l will first work on my consistency to this customer. I should be able to supply them with vegetables for 6 days in a row, if it's not possible, then l will work on what it is that is stopping us at the plot and then add other customers afterwards. Sales we were already making at the plot will still continue.

We are in that period where the rain gets to be too much. The maize field is less of a head ache this time. It's encouraging, seeing as, it has been the area we have been giving much attention in the past years and now it's giving us a break.

The vegetable beds turned from a beautiful sight into a completely different place in a very short time, all the leaves started wilting and we have had to prune most of the leaves for drying before they turned yellow. We have started raising beds higher and adding more organic matter. The bean plants are badly affected as well, especially the ones outside the maize field.

I now feel a little defeated, we have no veggies going out and l have no strength to keep working, l am taking the day off today to regain my energy. The bean pods are maturing and rotting so l also have been lifting what l could, to help the bean plants to climb into the maize stalks and to keep the pods off the ground. I picked a few pods.

A day off is important. Take care of yourself.

Thank you.

I decided to work on the bean plants, clear that and then continue with other things. I am also consciously looking at blessings. It is easy to be blinded by a cloud and miss them, talking a walk in the maize field has been helpful.

My neighbor grew a nice hedge around her kitchen garden and it looks wonderful. The hedge is so easy to maintain, it can be done by hand. I planted some around our kitchen garden where l recently put comfrey.

We have onions from last year that we set aside to sell when onions are on demand. This reserve is now so handy, it is our buffer now as we wait for the maize to mature. This year we are selling maize as green mealies the value we will fetch should be higher than waiting for our maize to dry.

I realised that when l go searching for customers, l rarely go to people l know, for some reason, I find it extremely hard to converse with 'especially' someone l have any relationship with, when it comes to selling things. I went to the ladies at the light industries and just as l had suspected, someone is already supplying them with vegetables including onions. I decided to try reaching out to neighbors and l was so surprised at how positive the response was. It is still difficult to approach people l know and the technical side to surviving "too much and too little rain " has greatly improved, what l need to accelerate on is figuring people skills. The people care part of permaculture. Honestly if l had a way l would like to work on things and be as invisible as possible.

I weeded the area we planted russian comfery and I am excited to see that most of the comfery is alive. The only effort was put in planting and the weeding that I have just done. I piled all of the weeds in between comfrey rows, to return the nutrients where they belong. Some of the hedge l planted, is also full of life and again things are growing with minimum effort. I planted the hedge in two ways, one using slightly long cuttings and the other ones were suckers. l like how the suckers look so l will be using them when next I grow the hedge.

I saw a clip of some news commenting on this year's predicted harvest 'attached below is a quote' , and seeing how more and more reports show how difficult things are getting for one to just survive it's easy to be hopeless. For a farmer, it seems there is need for increased inputs, to get a harvest with decreased certainty of a profitable yield, for schools a normal day at school is no longer enough, all children (no matter how sharp) have to go to extra lessons for them to get good grades,...e.t.c. I believe this system that is supporting us now, is a choice that we can choose to let go of and choose a hope filled one. This  current one is taking and taking.

I look at the maize field This season and to me that's hope being show cased. I have experienced first hand how it is possible in the midst of unpredictable changes in climate, instability both economically and politically as well as other extreme challenges, it is possible to create a place of abundance. We can build this alternative system and no matter how difficult some instances are, a hope filled difficult time is never the same as a hopeless state

*Farmers Give Up Hope On Bumper Harvest*
Zimbabwe has given up on hopes of bumper harvest during the 2021/2022 summer cropping season due to the erratic rainfall patterns which made planting difficult.

Most farmers could not plant up to the end of December due to unpredictable rainfall which forced many farmers to sell their inputs.

Zimbabwe Farmers Union secretary general Paul Zakariya told Business Times that various farmers planted in January 2022 due to the improved weather patterns.

“We have to be realistic about ourselves as the hopes of a bumper harvest of above 3m have slowly faded away due to extreme weather patterns during the first half of the season where there was minimum rainfall and the beginning of the second half where extreme rainfall patterns were evident since the start of 2022.

“The country has to accept what is on the ground and work with that so that we can have realistic expectations,” Zakariya said.

He said most farmers who planted from January 1 up to January 8 favoured short seasoned varieties seeds which could salvage the badly affected season.

For those who planted in 2022, extreme feeding is needed to compensate for the lost time but excess rainfall patterns are threatening the late planted crop due to leaching.

According to agriculture experts, crops do well in hot humid conditions but this cold humid weather require excess fertiliser.

With contracted farmers having already sold the inputs, various crops are turning yellow due to the lack of nitrogen which needs top dressing fertiliser.

Such conditions attract excess fertiliser application.

Top dressing fertiliser pricing per 50 kilogrammes bag ranges from US$40 to US$90.
Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union president Shadreck Makombe said too much rainfall in January could also affect crop growth.

“Various farmers would have planted short seasoned varieties from New Year up to last week but the excessive rains could inflict serious damage on the crop growth and push up cost of production.

“Farmers now need excess fertiliser and chemicals to control weeds, a situation which is likely to affect production as farmers had already used the fertilisers.

“Having said this, the chances of bettering last year’s output are rapidly fading away as the rains were consistent from the start,” Makombe said.

Makombe said there is a need for the setting up of irrigation infrastructure to mitigate such weather challenges.

Unpredictable rainfall patterns may have dealt a heavy blow to Finance and Economic Development minister Mthuli Ncube’s 5.5% gross domestic product underpinned by agriculture.

With limited irrigation infrastructure the country may have to look to other sectors.
Zimbabwe requires 2.2m tonnes of cereal yearly and the country is on good standing given strong strategic reserves from last year’s harvest.

Meanwhile, experts this week warned farmers to apply insecticides on crops to combat pests associated with heavy rainfall being experienced in the country.

“Most crops are prone to be affected by locusts that can destroy crops due to heavy rains.
“There is a need for farmers to be on the look out for those that can destroy crops in this season,” Agritex chief agronomist, Rutendo Nhongonhema, said.

Nhongonhema said during the rainy season, various diseases can affect crops resulting in drought in other parts of the country.

Zakariya urged farmers to practice moisture conservation techniques.

“Water harvest techniques must be applied in order to conserve the water due to climate change.

“I urge farmers in areas receiving low rainfall to use irrigation schemes rather than expecting the rain season,” Zakariya said.

Another agriculture expert, lrvine Craig said: “The season was late but it might not result in poor harvest so we encourage farmers to continue ploughing.

“There is a need to apply adequate fertilisers on the crops in order to spread nutrients on the crops.”

Those tall plants in among the comfrey, are they an amaranth relative? Or possibly sunflowers? Some sunflower roots are edible.

Those are sunflower plants. My aunts planted them when they visited and when they did not germinate properly we planted the comfrey.

We have started harvesting the green mealies and they are so big.

One of my uncles visited and in the past years during his visits, he would look a little disappointed at the lifestyle l had chosen, but this time around, l sensed a bit of respect and he seems more willing to understand how l live and it means so much.

Selling of the green mealies is going great. We decided not to go to the market with the mealies and we have been reaching out to people in the neighborhood and it's working perfectly. We have been going with the maize to the customers, and now some know that we are selling and they are now coming to the plot.

From this test we are glad because we can still maintain a very low carbon footprint from growing the maize up to when it gets to the customers' plate. We have not used any form of transport other than a wheelbarrow and our muscles so there was no fuel to burn, the maize grew from grass and a little bit of compost as any form of feed to the soil eliminating our contribution to greenhouse gases that could have been as a result of the application of artificial/human made fertilizers (minute contribution but worth it). We had no pests to worry about at all this time. Then there was no packaging, we get back our bags as we deliver. So it's an achievement worth celebrating.

We have sold most of the big cobs and we need to assess whether the remaining cobs are worthy going to customers with, or we leave them for those that come to the plot and we divert our time and effort towards growing vegetables. Selling was now taking all of our time which, in the past week,  was very necessary but we now need to strike a balance with other things.

Tomorrow I plan to meet with Ngoni the man helping me so that we plan out our year and also I need to find out their position in terms of working with me, as a lot has changed. They have been awesome and I hope they will want to be with me for a long time. It's cold and there is no sign of it raining, I can hear our dogs barking outside as I write  and I am so happy. They had stopped barking and were inactive in the past days.

I have been so restless because of the meeting l intend to have with Ngoni, I think this has changed. I stumbled into a book 'One minute nonsense' and it's indeed a lot of nonsense that makes so much sense.

So, I have been looking for a non religious or non scholarly book to read in our house, "a close to mission impossible task". After failing to find a simple enough book, I picked this particular book which I thought was religious but had simple english.

Well it turns out the book is not as religious as I thought. As I am reading, I thought about my meeting for tomorrow and I realised I need to figure out why I need the meeting because we talk almost daily. I am generally a nervous person, usually when l meet people no matter what age it's like l loose any opinion and I am filled with self pity. Why this is, I don't know  yet, but l know it has to do with  some kind of reality l created in my head and I will  work to change this. Below is a quote from 'One minute nonsense ' which relates to real and  non-real:

The Master claimed that the world most people see is not the world of Reality, but a world their head creates.
When a scholar came to dispute this, the master set two sticks on the floor in the form of the letter T and asked, "What do you see here?"
"The letter T," said the scholar.
"Just as I thought, said the Master. "There's no such things as a letter T; that's a symbol in your head. What you have here is two broken branches in the form of sticks."