Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Catching up - snapshots of what we've been up to lately!


July 14: A bunch of keen seed planters in our little nursery that is supplying the mandala garden.




July 29: The winners of our permaculture garden sign competition - well done Rukuto Caroline, Ssenjenjo Joseph and Kayanga Andrews.




August 3: Bed 1 in the mandala garden under construction - the first of many!




August 14: On the last day before holidays began, we had an afternoon and evening of festivities including goat for all, a DJ with huge speakers, prizegiving, and a wheelbarrow race. Here Moses and Kalim - two of our star garden helpers, strut their stuff. They came in second.




Dan and Amanda with the wonderful Kalim and Moses shortly after they were awarded prizes at the school prizegiving for being such brilliant helpers in the garden.




August 16: The design for the mandala garden - with thanks to Amanda and her wonderful paintbrushes!




August 17: Putting in a little system to take kitchen water (the concrete floor is washed at least once per day) into a wet bed where we plan to grow sugar cane, taro, water chestnuts and kang kong. It works well and is constantly holding water. Rainwater run off also enters it and we'll make the levels such that water then backfloods up the drain and then into the main garden path system where it can soak down into the waiting leacaena roots ;-).




August 17: We were honoured with a visit from Rachel and Douglas, trainers from St Jude's Organic farm near Masaka, both trained in biointensive agriculture and fluent in sustainable agricultural practices for this region. They walked the site with us and gave us great feedback and new ideas on the design. One comment from Rachel upon seeing the chicken house so far away from anything was "who put this here!?"




August 19: Testing out diverting the compound greywater and rainwater sideways into the greywater swale - Sabina's first! It rained August 25 for about 40 minutes and sure enough water flowed along the contour about 15 metres - so we'll dig some more and await more rain!




August 19: Our most advanced cabbage - through it is a lot bigger now!




August 19: Christophe (an amazing helper here for the holidays who intends to practice permaculture on his family farm in the future) planting in Bed One




August 19: Another shot of bed one.




August 19: Innocent and Antony seiving compost for seed-raising mix - a great stage to have reached. We've found that including plenty of woodchips and cow manure really makes for a gorgeous end product.




August 23: Poles going up in the mandala garden - thanks to Charles, Uncle Dembe Josepn, and Christophe.




August 23: The (in progress) permaculture mural facing the mandala garden - complete with notice boards for garden jobs and seasonal information and what not.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done everyone! Its terrific to see the children excited and participating in the growing of the gardens. Thanks for the great visuals....a picture does indeed tell a 1,000 words!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for keeping the blog up to date despite the power problems..this is really inspirational progress and so many keen helpers gives us great hope that this is a winner!! - Clive