Garden Today, Dinner Tomorrow

This past week I put to use everything my parents have ever taught me about farming and gardening. I taught bio-intensive agriculture at a vocational school to students ages 18-20. The school has different areas of study for students to select as their focus such as sewing, hotel and restaurant management and cooking. The school sat in a gated area as common for most buildings Arusha. Within the gates are four buildings for classrooms, bathrooms, a teacher's lounge, and office. A large garden lay behind the buildings where each class was responsible for planting and maintaining its own plots. All of the crops are grown for the school to use either in the cooking classes or for the occasional lunch that is served. Since it is a vocational school students attend either a morning session until 2pm or the afternoon session, beginning at 3pm. Therefore the garden was filled with plants the school uses most often: onions, corn, zucchini, lettuce, and other vegetables native to Tanzania. Overall the garden looked to be thriving, but it was in need of some upkeep; the sides of the plots had fallen and weeds were beginning to grow up in between the vegetables. The headmistress explained later that the students are usually too tired to have energy to spend more time in the garden. Some, she said, have only the bread and chai during the 11am break which serves as both their breakfast and lunch. Then, after class, they must return home for chores and other responsibilities so they do not have the time and energy to care for both the garden and their home duties. I was thrilled to be there to introduce new gardening methods that would help them save time in the long-run and improve both the quality and quantity of their corp yields.

The lesson plan for teaching bio-intensive agriculture (BIA) goes as follows:

• All about BIA: definition, features, and benefits

• Composting
• Double-dug beds
• Companion planting
• Crop rotation
• Plant nurseries
• Pest management and natural solutions
• Garden record keeping and maintenance

While these basic concepts are not new to me (mostly thanks to dad and mom), the Tanzanian methods of achieving these were a learning process. For example, using banana leaves as the shade cover in the nursery is not an option in the states (unfortunately for us). The students had many good questions, especially about using natural solutions instead of chemicals on plants. I was able to answer these only with the help of a certain wizened and well-learned GSC staff member who had spent years working with agriculture. We spent half of the time in the classroom, going over the theory of BIA and the methods that make it possible, and the other half we spent working in the garden building a compost bed, a key-hole garden -which I helped build last week in the village, so I'm on my way to being an expert at it (ha...be careful of my deceiving sarcasm)- two double-dug beds, and two nurseries. I think the construction of these new structures will improve the quality of the garden and hopefully motivate the students to take just a little time everyday to maintain it. Or students can use these methods later in life when they must provide for their own family. One of the many great things about BIA is that there is a gardening method for any amount of land a person has; whether an entire field to grow many plots of vegetable or just a small patch of grass to keep a sac garden. So no matter where the students go after they finish their studies they will have the knowledge and the skills to produce food for themselves.