Gardening Attempts

Words of the Day: Gardening edition! Should have asked my parents for help with this.

el huerto- a vegetable garden

el acedon- hoe

la pala- shovel

el rastrillo- rake

la carretilla- cart

las hileras- rows

la estaca- stake

Casa Materna- A place where pregnant women from rural areas are brought about a month before they give birth to have better access to medical care

"Canas arriba, ganas abajo"- The woman in charge (encargada) of the Casa Materna told me this hilarious saying after she remarked at how I have so much white hair for someone so young. My best attempt to render this in English is "White hair up above, still wants to make love."

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About a month ago, my sitemate started a garden at the Casa Materna- the idea being to improve the nutrition of the pregnant women and encourage them to start small huertos at their homes, if they don't already have them, using seed saving techniques. It was her idea and she's done most of the work, but I've helped out here and there.

On a great tip from the encargada at the Casa Materna, we rented tools from the Mayor's Office. You know you're in Central America when the Mayor's Office owns gigantic scimitar shaped machetes!  Christina was working in a town that's really far away, so I helped her out by picking things up. This was an amusing experience for several reasons. First off, I didn't have the best handle on gardening vocabulary. Stubbornly not wanting to admit that I had no idea how to ask for what I wanted, I accidentally informed the man that I needed 3 carts, thinking this was the word for hoe and then proceeded to contradict myself, saying I didn't want any carts at all. Oops. Then, I carted the tools all over town, which attracted some confused looks. Watchya doin, Teacher Emily?

It turned out that a group of kids we wanted to help with the garden weren't around to help on the weekend we were going to start the garden, but an awesome agriculture volunteer visiting from Chinandega named Brittany helped Christina clear the area of weeds, form rows and plant some seeds. Despite being the site of an old bar, the soil is pretty good, with a nice number of earth worms, although there's not a lot of it. The area is also protected from drunks and chickens by a lot of fences and concrete, which is certainly in its favor.

We weren't sure what would grow, given that some of the seeds were of questionable quality and that it's rainyyyyyyy season right now, but a surprising number of things didn't drown and in fact germinated quite nicely. There are about 20 bean plants growing completely out of control, a few melons, some straggly lettuce, squash, radishes, 3 very sad corn stalks, a jamaica plant (used to make a tea), 3 moringa trees (a "miracle" tree that is used in reforestation efforts in Africa and has leaves that are full of vitamins and miracles), and some mango sapplings.

The gardening project isn't currently very sustainable, given that we don't really have too many community members involved in its day to day maintenance. Part of the problem is that there is constant turn around at the Casa Materna. Besides, the women are VERY pregnant by the time they get there, so they can't help much with the gardening, given that they've got their own watermelons to deal with. Therefore, what we would need in order to maintain the garden, is a group of people who are food secure, have a lot of spare time on the hands and don't mind getting down and dirty.

However, hopefully over time, we can get more people (particularly kids) involved in its upkeep, use it as an example of a huerto to encourage community members to have small gardens at home, or send seeds/saplings with women when they return to their communities. We'll see what this little seed grows up to be!