Sow It Forward Part Two

If you didn't see the previous post, check out what we're doing with Kitchen Gardeners International here. So I left you last time waiting for the truck to pick up all of the soil we needed to start our garden. Because the school has no soil of its own, we had to visit the neighbors and request soil from their construction site. 

the kids spent the morning filling up bags

...and even more bags

luckily we had the help of a few older guys

They had the enviable task of loading all the dirt into the truck

We got all the soil back to the school, then mixed it up with ash and cow patties to make some good compost, then filled in our garden space. It had to sit for fifteen days, so we watched and waited for the planter plants to grow, and grow they did.

tomatoes in the front, cabbage in the back

chiles

 As we waited, we prepared a space in the back of the school and the girls planted cucumbers.

preparing the soil and putting in three rows of cucumbers

 The school garden has started to get attention, so some community members decided to take advantage of the seeds and the expertise and start their own gardens. This is Elemeni after making a bed full of compost.

Enma explaining that we needed rows, not a flat bed

...so we made rows

 After a few weeks, we planted green beans in our flower bed.

guiding the beans with old broom handles

I planted a cucumber in one of our bottle planters, and it has baby cucumbers growing now!

Elemeni's cucumbers are impressive. It's hard to see, but the tomatoes in the next row are growing well too.

Those radishes we planted way at the beginning, they're almost ready to eat!

The garden project is working well, though it's hard to keep things growing when the rains haven't come yet. Some of the home gardens are struggling, but the fact that community members took the initiative to start gardens of their own is awesome. We have some leftover cabbage seeds and we haven't planted any onions yet, so those are next on the list. Ariel, one of my favorite kids ever, started a garden at home, as did Leo (he's one of my dedicated bracelet-makers). They're both 4th graders. Some of the school plants are definitely struggling, but at least the cucumber and green beans are doing well. Soon I'll plant chiles and tomatoes there too. I think we have six home gardens in various stages of growth, but I might be winning on that front - my newest batch of tomatoes has green little baby tomatoes peeking out! It's awesome to see everything growing and see some of the kids take charge of their learning and apply it. I'll post again when we have some veggies to harvest!