Every fifth Wednesday Centre staff and interns join our gardening team for a big planting day in the Kusamala Market Garden. We spend the day watering, seeding, and transplanting from the nursery. By the end of the day we have planted 25 of the 100 beds in our market garden. It is a long day and our staff is always grateful for some extra hands.
This past planting day some members from the Mtendere Co-operative stopped by to lend a hand and learn from our gardeners.
As a part of an ongoing collaboration between Kusamala and Mtendere, the co-op members have built a permaculture demonstration garden in their community. They will use the garden to spread awareness of the benefits of permaculture in their community, increase household food security and diet diversity, and sell excess produce through Kusamala’s vegetable box program.
During their morning in the garden, Kusamala’s head gardener, Enoch, gave the co-op members lessons on bed preparation, seeding spacing and depth, transplanting techniques, intercropping, and crop rotations. We rotated through the garden beds so that everyone had an opportunity to learn about plant spacing and to practice planting the different crops that we grow in the market garden.
We were very happy to host the co-op members as we continue to strengthen the relationship between our two organizations. We hope that community members continue to use our staff and the demonstration centre as an education tool.
The visitors thanked Enoch for the time he spent sharing his knowledge with them and walking them through our planting process – it seems Enoch is a natural teacher, something we will be sure to remember for our trainings!
For more information on the work we do with the Mtendere Co-operative please visit our partners page.
