Mt. Kilimanjaro, TZ – Community Update – Kilema – 20 Dec 2013

The families working with the Lishe Bora Garden Shop continue to work hard to create organized and productive gardens.  Currently the high season for vegetables is coming to an end.  This season is also called the short rainy season.  It provides ideal growing conditions for vegetables because it has rainy afternoons and nights mixed with sunny days that provide the mix of sunlight and moisture that vegetables thrive on.  This differs from the more extreme rainy and dry seasons, where vegetables can suffer under difficult weather conditions.

During the high season, the vegetable gardeners in Kilema and the surrounding area grow a long list of vegetables that includes kale, local leafy greens, eggplants, carrots, tomatoes, African eggplants, bitter tomatoes, mung beans, peas, cowpea leaves, zucchini, cucumbers, beets, onions, garlic and lemongrass.

During the high season, families who maintain vegetable gardens have plenty of vegetables to feed their family, but the price of vegetables goes down because supply is high throughout the community.  Later, the price of most vegetables will nearly double by the middle of the dry season in March.  Families that use best practices to maintain their gardens should be able to maintain productivity throughout the year, enabling them to continuously feed their families and increase their income by selling vegetables when prices are high.

This means that implementing best practices will be crucial to maintaining productivity in the coming dry season.  Therefore, teaching best practices is a major focus for all of Better Lives’ partners across the world.  By working in different communities the Better Lives team is able to  learn from a variety of experiences and transfer knowledge between partners.  Consequently, the Lishe Bora Garden Team on Mt. Kilimanjaro is learning from other communities while also contributing best practices and solutions to other communities.

Some of the most important best practices Lishe Bora is currently focusing on in Kilema are proper weeding and watering techniques, how to build effective trellises, and how to maintain the shape of vegetable beds.

On the right side of the picture you can see a trellis holding up cucumber plants for optimal productivity in the MOD family garden.

Weeds consume water and nutrients in beds that could be used by vegetables.  Trellises elevate vegetables so they are less susceptible to bugs and fungi in the ground.  They also increase the surface area of the plant that is exposed to the sunlight.  Maintaining bed shape and mulching helps conserve water in beds during the dry season and facilitates protecting the bed and drainage during the wet season.

This newly formed bed at the Lishe Bora Shop Garden is an example of a bed shaped to help retain water that falls directly on the garden without allowing nutrients to be washed away.