permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

I have one in my yard! We call it fruta do conde or araticum/ariticum (Latin: Annona squamosum). It is one of my favorites as well.
The one in my yard grew from seeds I spat out, so hopefully yours will sprout easily as well.
The internet tells me it can take the seeds 30 days to germinate, so be patient! From there, it can be about two years or more til they are ready to flower. My plant has been there about that long and no flowers yet, but it sprouted in a place with terrible soil and got trampled a few times when it was young.
They are supposed to like well-drained, dryish soil, but I`ve seen them growing in so many different environments that I don`t think they are too picky.

Tereza Okava wrote:I have one in my yard! We call it fruta do conde or araticum/ariticum (Latin: Annona squamosum). It is one of my favorites as well.
The one in my yard grew from seeds I spat out, so hopefully yours will sprout easily as well.
The internet tells me it can take the seeds 30 days to germinate, so be patient! From there, it can be about two years or more til they are ready to flower. My plant has been there about that long and no flowers yet, but it sprouted in a place with terrible soil and got trampled a few times when it was young.
They are supposed to like well-drained, dryish soil, but I`ve seen them growing in so many different environments that I don`t think they are too picky.

I am very sorry I can not grow it here where I live. This man emigrated from that tropical island to cold and rainy Netherlands, where we met and married. We did visit his home-country a few times, but I don't live there. There's no way such a tropical tree will grow here.
At Curaçao a language is spoken (called Papiamento, a so-called creole-language) that's a mix of Portuguese, Dutch and some more languages. The tree/fruit has a sort-of Dutch name there: Schubappel (also written 'Skopapel' sometimes). Meaning: scaled apple. Annona squamosa is the Latin name.

I am sorry to hear about your husband. It's really nice to hear from other people who know the fruit thank you for sharing.

You know when I got the fruit it was not too ripe, it was hard and all, so l had to keep it away for a few days for it to ripen. When l opened the cupboard l had put it in, the largest one seemed like it was exploding. When l was given it, it had looked like some creature in the reptile family, l only accepted out of being polite, and when l saw it swollen, for a moment, l thought it had come to life, I backed away for a bit to get myself together, l laugh to myself now.

It's been almost a week since l had gone to the plot. I found Ngoni scrapping duck droppings (whatever they call them), excited about how he  had found feed for us to add into the beds. Unlike chickens manure from ducks hasn't been as visible and as much as what we used to get, maybe because they're a few of them.

I had even bigger news for him, we can now get enough manure and proper seedlings to put in our beds. A friend that l have never met in my life, whose wish is to see thriving lands in a regenerative way, sent us money. The timing could have never been better, we just need to do our best with resources we now have and honestly we are very fortunate. I went around to check prices for maize/ maize meal and already a bucket which was going for $5 is now going for $5.50 and I bought 10kgs of processed maize  meal for $5 and this was around $3 something, less than two months (roughly) ago. Last year maize maintained it's price for the whole year, l am talking about it's price after last year's harvest period. The plan is to secure food as we are not sure what the year will be like towards the end and we were granted this capacity by this generous friend, I appreciate. It is easier to plan and work when there is some certainty of one's next meal.

We are going to buy onions to plant in all spaces with Vegetables as per plan and we already bought some today. We have also bought rape which is like kale to fill up the empty vegetable beds as they are on demand and we also had a tour at a place where seedlings are grown and people are making a living out of it. Well it kind of makes our seedlings growing trial a joke, but l guess everyone starts somewhere. Speaking of which, I realised that the onion roots from our home grown seedlings were too exposed and I think I did not plant them deep enough. We got a few for planting though. So instead of using a lot of seeds to practice growing, I will do a few and learn all the mistakes until l get it right for future's sake, but this will not interfer with productivity at all, because soon we will have put the onions we had wished to grow for this season.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:
I am very sorry I can not grow it here where I live. This man emigrated from that tropical island to cold and rainy Netherlands, where we met and married. We did visit his home-country a few times, but I don't live there. There's no way such a tropical tree will grow here.

i don’t want to derail Rufaro’s thread too much, Inge, but for those of us in more temperate climates, the pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is a close cousin from this family and the fruit has many of the same characteristics. similar flavor and texture, certainly.

I would suggest you plant maybe a dozen of your onion seeds separate. Mark the six that come up strongest.

If it were me I would plant them somewhere they would not get special treatment, but I torture all my plants. Of those you plant, keep the strongest. Put them somewhere they will not be disturbed for at least a year. DO NOT sell these plants. When they seed, you will have as much seed as you want to experiment with, at no cost to yourself. One onion plant produces hundreds of seeds.

You mentioned that spring onions are coming up on their own for transplant at your plot. This is what you want, eventually; onions that self-seed and survive without inputs. When your seed onions ripen let a few seeds fall right there, and again keep the strongest for seed the following year. No cost to yourself, and by the third generation there should be no labor cost either. Just let a few seeds fall where they ripen, and ignore them except to make sure the strongest survive, with the largest bulbs.

Seeds are an input, something you need to either buy or produce. Far better if you can produce them yourself.

"Seeds are an input, something you need to either buy or produce. Far better if you can produce them yourself."

I agree with you Lauren. We used to hunt around for choumollier suckers, but we got more opportunities and time since we started keeping enough of them ourselves. We recently tried it out with sweet potatoes vines and if we didn't have our own we would have definitely missed the short window of rainfall we got this year.

We are lucky that the transition into a modern civilization didn't happen too long ago, so there are some first hand stories of the ways things used to be when a lot of things would not have a price tag on it. Kids would go out to either run errands or go to school and on their way back, pick things like edible leaves, fruits, termites...e.t.c, things that would qualify as proper relish, which naturally shared the responsibility of providing for the family. From the stories it seems the kids actually enjoyed the adventure that came with looking for food, the icing on the cake was the look of genuine gratitude when they would show their mothers their find.

I do not think creating forests that are open to everyone which can provide things freely is a goal that is too feasible at least for now, but having a homestead that generates its own inputs for sustenance is the closest l can get to mimicking how things used to be. Maybe someone else in a different generation can take it a step further.

Rufaro Makamure wrote:I do not think creating forests that are open to everyone which can provide things freely is a goal that is too feasible at least for now, but having a homestead that generates its own inputs for sustenance is the closest l can get to mimicking how things used to be. Maybe someone else in a different generation can take it a step further.

Maybe not feasible right now, but definitely something to think about and plan for.

The onion sets we planted are starting to look gorgeous. We still have to wait though to add mulch in the beds, because the king onions are still tiny.

When we started collecting grass that we will use for mulching later, we were piling it along bed-sides. We realized that the free range area for ducks is a perfect place for storing our grass. The ducks' droppings will add more value to the grass and there will be added comfort for the ducks too.The grass outside the beds is way older than that in
the free range area but it actually looks the opposite.

I have been doing a little research in the past days to find a fundraising idea to support the main project of growing a self-sustaining plot/homestead.

One thing that is in abundance is the banana fruit and I found something I can make with it, that is feasible and that is not in the market, at least common market. A turon or banana fritter. I tried it out today and I have a strong feeling it will sell and it's such a unique but simple product. I need to just add a few touches like try it out with cinnamon to make it a little complex to add value.

My sisters will be coming for the Easter holiday, so they will be my critics and from then on I will try it out in the streets.

The other thing that has been on my to do list was approaching the city council to try and get them to help my friends and I, to do level 2 of the Gigatonne challenge ( the one where we are composting waste from illegal dumpsite to help reduce carbon emission which I mentioned earlier). This too has a potential of having us earn a living and for me it will help me connect with other people around me which is huge for social networking.

I just submitted a written pitch today to city council and I am crossing my fingers, that they will like it and will be onboard.

PS: I took an image of a vendor's spot in my neighborhood, it's not as close and clear, I didn't want to cause any trouble but it gives an idea of how much bananas are cheap, if one vendor can afford a whole cart. In town it's even worse, it's not a cart full of bananas after every corner but possibly after every stone throw away and we only eat bananas as fresh fruit, with banana cakes being found in the big supermarkets. In homes it's rare to find a banana as an ingredient for anything other than being eaten fresh.

It's been weeks since I have visited the plot, I am proud to show how there is so much progress regardless. There are some values we have been building on that are now showing and I am glad.
Based on what I have come to understand wealth is built from, (i.e. Land, labour and capital),

-we now grow soil to create value on the land we have and we get as much of the resources we can from what's surrounding us. Ngoni has been making chicken soup, even for sweet potatoes and he is now big on mulching, without any external push

-labour has to be productive labour. This is an area which as obvious as it sounds was/is the hardest practically. Productivity is something we are learning and trying to increase the value of our labour in relation to time and effort. We have been gradually growing and we both are trying to understand each other in this context. We seem to be at opposite extremes where I would rather we grow gradually while watching our capacity and avoiding getting to shorten the lifespan of the things we already have, to be specific the pump. There aren't any running hours that came with the manual so it's pretty much guess work and my judgement could lead us to under utilise the pump. Ngoni on the other hand is for taking risks and sometimes it has proven to help in getting us to the next step but in some instances we loose in times we could have avoided it. We have increased the vegetables, added beans and onion to plants we are learning to grow and with maize we have increased the probability of a harvest though all the external factors are going against this. Ngoni in the past weeks replanted the one side which had vegetable beds with old plants and when he bought chicken manure, he offered to go and clear the manure so as to get more. All this he initiated. He is also experimenting with tomatoes and okra,  both which he is using water from the well. The tomatoes are looking so healthy and so far they have overcome the nights that are getting colder and colder and he is excited to prove to me that this risk was worth it. His effort is more and coming from an inner drive.

-capital: All the time we have spent together learning and growing is allowing me to include capital building, without needing to be at the plot 24/7. I have been selling initially turon/ banana fritters. These have in some cases really sold and in some cases failed dismally because it's a completely new product which either is liked or not accepted. The inconsistency has not been profitable and now I am selling samoosas. I can't tell yet on profits as I have just started, but l am determined to grow the capital we have, instead of us just being a pipeline, where capital slips through/ past us.

I went to the plot and I liked what I saw. The Sandy part of our field caught my eye especially. It's been stuffed with so much grass, I am sure at the end of the year there will be a visible change on before continuous feeding and after images of the soil. Mitchell is also going to school now and she will be with her parents which is another thing to celebrate.

They have started working on the zai pits in the field which is also good.

I am continuing with exploring selling samoosa, now pies..., e.t.c, until I find the right thing that sells consistently.

We have reached a state where  growth has just plateuaed and no matter what kind of information or idea that comes, our growth is just so small and insignificant. To change this I planned to become actively involved in a regeneration SEEDS group, hoping that through interacting with the different people, with unique backgrounds, maybe different skills and perceptions can develop. To do this, I have been trying to push level 2 of the gigatonne challenge which  was introduced through SEEDS. This time it's even harder than what I experienced in level 1. Reducing carbon emissions could be important, but the priority around me is survival, and mobilising a team to tackle this challenge has been/ is still an impossible mission. I targeted people with some kind of exposure and open mindedness and after two weeks we have dug our fist pit for composting. The people who helped me in digging the pit are Ngoni and his wife and it is really because of our relationship and they say they are still yet to understand what carbon abatement is about. What I like about the challenge is we might be creating jobs for ourselves and this is what we need to keep our project running and the icing on the cake is that it is still in line with regeneration.

We are now entering the final week of the Gigatonne challenge. In this week we should be preparing to present the work we have done, that is how much waste we have managed to collect and compost and whether we have managed to reduce the month’s target of carbon abatement equal to 10 tonnes.
Currently our team has an empty pit to show for the month. The month has been filled with an attempt to build capacity to be able to tackle this challenge. For level 2, we are supposed to collect about 9000kgs of waste that could have gone to a landfill and compost it. When I picked my team members, I focused on people who could spare sometime for collecting waste, open minded enough to even consider collecting waste without a direct payment/ incentive and I was not big on the financial position. Level 1 was easy enough, we just needed to fill up a couple of wheelbarrows to get 400kgs of waste from nearby illegal dumpsites. I overlooked the psychological effect this process had on team members. We would have never guessed the work we needed to do, though it was doable. I suspect team members did some reflecting after level one and the disadvantages were outweighing the advantages. These are people who live in a place where an incentive for doing something is limited to a direct monetary payment, who are just getting by and the room for risk taking is small, so doing something basing on faith that we might be creating jobs for ourselves is a little bit too much to ask from them, but I do not see too many options within reach. They do have some knowledge about the climate change crisis but sustenance for the day, is the highest priority when it comes to daily activities. They did not have to spell it out for me when I approached them the second time for us to take up level 2, which now required 10 times more effort and still without a direct incentive.  I was not too worried about capacity because it was obvious to me that the city council, which is responsible for waste management would be willing to support us with transport and access to even more waste and a space for composting. Then after level 2 it becomes a job we are actually paid to do, which is what we all need. The city council has goals in line with carbon abatement and it already has a trailer/ tractor that sometimes collects waste from illegal dump sites and we were going to be free labour for the month. I did not think I had too much convincing to do. I sent in a pitch, and then a proposal and it looked like all was well, but up to this day the document is yet to be read.
This derailed everything and further demotivated my team. But I had to figure out something and new doors were opened. We now have a company that’s willing to help. I know together we have the capacity to reach the target in time. I have my last shot at selling the idea of our capability on Monday and less than a week to collect and compost 9000kgs of waste.
Already they have been able to help us with human capital, our team members had dropped to 3 but they have boosted our number.