Kilimanjaro, TZ – Lishe Bora garden shop – 20 Sep 2013

The battle to control pests is ongoing up in Kilema, especially with the cutworm caterpillar.  The garden team is trying many different techniques including; spraying with chili and garlic sprays, and putting maize flour or charcoal at the base of the plants as a deterrent.  Some techniques are more effective than others, but the cutworms are still a challenge with young gardens.  The Lishe Bora team is planning to experiment with other methods such as; inserting a stick in the side of young seedlings to act as a mechanical barrier and placing protective collars made of plastic/paper cups or plastic drink bottles with ripped-out bottom around the young plant just after planting to prevent the cutworm from attacking the stem.

The garden shop has located a good booth in the local market to sell the vegetables.  The booth includes a roof and sign space, quite the luxury in Tanzania!  They have ordered a table for the booth and plan to buy the rest of the supplies this month.  The target is to have the market stand up and running by the end of October 2013.

A Better Lives sponsor donated a motor cycle with trailer to the Lishe Bora garden team.  Nicknamed the “Toyo” because of the brand, the Toyo will help the garden team with transporting materials for making compost and family gardens, as well as make it easier to get all the vegetables to market.  The garden shop manager, Mary, is having a lot of fun learning how to drive it!

When working in a foreign country, things can get misunderstood quite easily.  Such was the case when Mary and her team told one neighboring Mama to use some of their compost on her corn fields.  The team and the Mama agreed to do an experiment to see the effect compost can have on a corn crop.  The plan was to plant half of the farm using compost and half without.  When the team took a supply trip to town, the Mama came over and used two gardens worth of compost from the shop’s store on her entire farm.  The team returned to find that the Mama unknowingly used the stock of compost they were planning to use for the next family garden implementation.  Because compost takes 6 weeks to be ready, the shop had to postpone putting in the next family garden.

To prevent this from happening again, they will stock at least 3 gardens worth of compost at all times and only give compost to farmers when a team member is present!