Agri-blog

Yup, today was agricultural day on the compound.

The women who work in our guesthouse have already made use of a few spare patches of ground to grow some greens, as well as some pumpkin (which I just noticed yesterday!). Their gardens are growing so much better than any garden I've attempted in the past few years here. I've been itching to try my pumpkin experiment again, though it's with a bit of fear and trembling since the whole experiment was so disappointing last year.

But we're still a little determined. Since I've now realized that the women in the guesthouse must know where to procure some good pumpkin seeds, I'm going to ask them for some seeds tomorrow.

And Annamarie planted a little beef tomatoe plant today. Several weeks ago, a friend of ours who lives in N. Uganda came to visit, and she always comes bearing gifts of produce! In her garden, they grow these lovely big beefy tomatoes - the kind that we slice up and but on burgers at home! Which is a really nice change from the every day Roma variety that we get here. Annamarie planted some seeds from a poor little beefy tomato that didn't fare so well on the bumpy roads, and now we have little tomato seedlings growing up! They're so cute, and this morning, Annamarie moved them to a bigger tin can, to give them some extra space to grow and thrive and bear fruit.

I also planted a couple of avocado pits into the ground in front of our house. I haven't had so much luck keeping the seeds that I've stuck in a jar of water alive, so I thought I would try the direct-to-the-dirt method. My local friends here told me that they will grow like that, as long as you plant them with the right side up. So I dug a few little holes in the area in front of our house, and hopefully in few weeks, I'll start seeing some baby avocado trees sprouting up. Avocado plants/trees are really beautiful - lovely shaped leaves. So I really hope these ones grow.

But like I said, I haven't really had much success at all with gardening here. Others have gardened on this same compound with astounding success. But me, not so much. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong... but maybe, just maybe, this year will be better. I still have hope in my heart.