Project - Horticulture

From September 2012 to August 2013 (I am embarrassingly behind on writing blogs), I co-taught organic agriculture classes as one of my main activities. It was quite a learning experience for me, as it is the first opportunity I have had to participate in formal education. We had four sections, each of which came to the school farm for two hours each week. For each section, we selected a project appropriate to the knowledge level of the students. One of these projects was horticulture, or vegetable production.

Some of my students planting seeds in a freshly made bed.

Growing vegetables in eastern Ecuador has been a struggle for us in our garden, and for everyone I have talked to. The excessive rain washes the nutrients out of the soil, the heat stresses plants and stimulates fungus growth, and the insects devour anything that the mold doesn't get. But much of these problems arise from inappropriate horticultural techniques. Simply put, the techniques and varieties of vegetables that most people are used to are not appropriate for this climate.

The purpose of this group's project was to experiment with some different techniques and species. We focused on methods that can be done with little capital investment. One such technique was developed in the mountains of Austria by a genius named Sepp Holzer (look him up - it is well worth the time). Hugelkultur is the practice of making raised planting beds by burying scrap wood, branches, etc. under a layer of mulch, fertilizer, and soil. Master Holzer uses the technique for water storage - all of the rotting wood acts as a sponge to hold water and make it available to plants during dry seasons.

We thought the technique might be appropriate to solve two problems with our soil/climate - waterlogged conditions and low nutrients. We hoped the extreme height of the beds would improve soil drainage and the mass of organic matter would provide slow-release nutrients to the plants.

A thick layer of scrap wood

Fertilizer and fresh, green (nitrogen rich) organic matter. We tested two different heights.

Covering that large of a pile with soil (by hand) proved to be a daunting task for the students. I managed to get them excited by dividing them into two teams and making a competition out of it. But I was so busy with motivating and shoveling that I forgot to take any pictures. Sorry!

We planted the beds with vegetables that are adapted to wet, hot climates: wing bean, achokcha (a type of squash), jungle bean, sissoo spinach, and taro, plus a variety of support "weeds" to hold the soil in place, attract pollinators, fix nitrogen, and distract pests. We even had some sweet potato and banana volunteers!

Taro (large ear-shaped leaves on the left), wing bean (on a pole sticking up near the left), achokcha (star-shaped leaves on the right)

Banana (big leaves towards the left), sissoo spinach (right side of pile).

As you can see from the pictures, this technique of growing vegetables is very different from the straight rows that most gardeners are used to. I personally love the chaos of this more natural plant arrangement.

In the end, the kids all had the opportunity to take home a fair amount of vegetables. Unfortunately, vegetables are not a part of the culture of eating here, so I wouldn't be surprised if most of the produce ended up being fed to chickens. (We have led cooking classes with other groups to help increase the utilization of vegetables).

In discussing the project with the kids, we identified the following lessons learned:

• Native species or those from humid tropical regions are the only varieties worth planting where we are
• Production was higher in the more natural planting arrangement of hugelkultur than in the traditional straight-row method (the first picture of this blog)
• The hugelkultur beds were too much work to make by hand for the benefit they gave. It would have been better to have a tractor to move the soil.
• The hugelkultur also needed a lot of maintenance early on to keep putting on soil until the plants grew enough to prevent water erosion.

 If I were to do this again, I would probably use much lower beds. The extreme height is really appropriate for seasonally dry areas, but unnecessary for the humid tropics. It was helpful to have slightly raised beds to aid with drainage. Regarding nutrients - the rain is so heavy here that any system besides closed-canopy forest will need frequent fertilization.

..Isaac..

This post is part of the Peace Corps Projects and  Forest and Farm series.