Building a Community Garden in Foreign Countries

I was approached by a lady at Roger's Community Garden (formally Neighborhood Community Garden) @ UCSD who wanted to know about building a community garden in Honduras where her church volunteers every year.

Specifically she wanted to know what plants she could plant there.  This was a difficult question to answer because for starters I have no idea what people eat in Honduras and also because there is so much education that goes into teaching people how to grow their own food.

I thought I would share some of the emails we have exchanged with each other in hopes that anyone who reads this will get an idea as to what goes into starting a community garden.

Dear Earl,

It was nice to meet you at the Community Garden at the UCSD. You have a great team of enthusiastic people, one of your team members gave us an informative tour, thank you so much! As I shared with you our church has a partnership with a church in Honduras, in the city San pedro Sula. The church in Honduras is located near the border of a river where people live in makeshift homes. There live about 2000 people along this river, the community is called Rio Blanco. We have the plan to build a Community Garden near  the church. The idea is that people can grow their own vegetables, perhaps sell them at the local "Pulperia's", little shops spread out in the river village. Since you seem to have experience with setting up a Community Garden, do you have tips for us? Warnings? Advice what works and what does not work? What kind of fruit/veggies would benefit young (pregnant) moms and kids the most? Would love to "pick your brain". Let me know what your thoughts are. 

Thank you again for receiving us in such a welcoming way yesterday. We loved the fruit of the garden :-)

MG

Missions Director

 

 

Hi MG,

Thank you very much for your kind words. 

There are many things that consider when building a community garden.  First selecting a great location is key.  Optimally most domesticated crops prefer at least 6hrs of sunlight and most summer crops prefer 8-10hrs.  You can get away with half the amount of sunlight, but you risk lower yields and higher chance of disease.  Though there are vegetables that prefer part shade during the hottest part of the summer, such as lettuce, swiss chard, kale, broccoli, and other leafy green vegetables which are rich in minerals and vitamins.  Along with ample sunlight you would want a space with good air flow which will help prevent fungus from growing on the plants.  I do not know of too many crops that will tolerate high stagnant humid conditions.  (Though there is a wide variety of squash and cucumbers that can grow in high humidity conditions.)

However, even with a great location, plenty of water or natural rainfall, and rich soil it is not enough to maintain a successful garden.  From my experience education becomes a big part of it.  At our garden we strive to first educated and explain to students the importance of eating healthy through eating a wide variety of organic vegetables and fruits.  Thankfully many of the students come with some knowledge of eating well. 

Then we have to teach them how to grow the vegetables which can be easier.  We show them how to make compost and apply it every season.  We show them how to plant the seeds and when the best time to do so are.  Once the seeds start coming up then we must constantly be maintaining them and treating for disease/pests before the disease/pest population get a chance to explode.  Weed, weed, weed!  Finally we have to show them when the proper time to harvest is.  Many students usually don't know when to harvest their food so the vegetables usually end up passing its prime.  Finally we have to teach the students how to save their own seeds.

*Seed saving is a crucial part of gardening.  Not only will it help save costs, but by saving seeds from the location they were sprouted and grown you end up selecting for plants that will do better in the given location.  I have found that after about 4-5 generations of selecting seeds, if I were to purchase the same seeds from the same seed company my home grown seeds sprout faster, grow better, and sometimes even taste better.

Finally, the hardest part for us is to teach the students how to cook their vegetables.  When we are forces to grow seasonally and grow foreign vegetables and odd varieties that are better suited for our area many times students come back and say that the vegetable didn't taste good and stop harvesting them.  So we really encourage each gardener to share recipes and techniques.  (Have you ever had blackened black kale?  You cook it in a hot skillet very quickly with a little bit of oil.  It changes lives and gardening habits!)  But it's not easy to adopt new eating habits.

For example, when I first started growing my own food I had great success with swiss chard.  Swiss chard is an attractive plant in the garden and grows very well.  My first chard grew for two years before it started to bolt (flower) and became inedible.  Of course I planted a whole row of them so when my corn, tomatoes (two crops that should not be planted next to each other), beans, peas, etc were not doing too well I had TONS of chard.  Every meal had chard in it.  Every potluck dish had chard in it.  I was giving chard away left and right and learning to cook it every which way.  Years later I found out no one enjoyed eating it.  I was the only one eating because I knew it was healthy for me.  Now I rarely eat chard and definitely stopped growing it....  Unfortunately, I am not the only gardener to share this experience.

The moral of the story is that I may be able to provide you with a list of vegetables that are healthy and good for me to eat, but Hondurans may not eat it.

On the plus side, it looks like there are TONS of fruits that will grow well in the Honduras.  Pineapples, oranges, coconuts, mangoes, bananas, papayas, passionfruit, guavas, etc.  I found that within community gardens it is nice to have communal orchards from where all members can partake in.  People who have no experience gardening and doesn't know what a potato plant looks like can usually recognize fruits on a tree.  It is also nice to have someone who will remain close to the garden for a long time to help maintain the tree.

When our garden first began there was a lot of opposition to planting an orchard.  Why?  Unfortunately, the majority of the founding members did not understand the point of planting trees that would not yield for them.  Fortunately, the few trees they allowed to be planted are now yielding and current members see the benefits of planting trees for future members.  The best time to plant a fruit tree is at least five years ago so get it going early.

Fruit trees planted in the outer perimeter of the garden can also provide several other benefits to the garden.  The roots can help stabilize the soil, lock in moisture, provide shade during hot days, protect crops from heavy winds, produce decoy fruit for the birds and other animals that may prey on precious fruiting crops (such as tomatoes).

It is important to also plant flowers and herbs in the garden.  Some flowers such as chrysanthemums, nasturtiums, pansies, etc are edible and make good companion plants as they attract beneficial insects/pollinators or act as decoys for pests.  Mint grows well almost everywhere and acts to deter some pests.

As for vegetables... it is important to eat a wide variety of produce.  As I have mentioned earlier, dark green leafy produce are easy to grow and full of minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants.  Collards will probably do well in Honduras as it is mainly grown in the South where the temperature and growing conditions are more likely to be similar to Rio Blanco.  However, if the people do not understand the vegetable they will not eat it.  It is important to select varieties of vegetables that are grown locally and understood by the people.

A friend gardener once told me that the best place to understand the people is to go to the local market and see what they are eating.  Look for old ladies growing specialty produce and try to get seeds from them.  Plant the dried beans, corn, pepper, and seeds from produce grown locally that you enjoy. 

If your goal is to take seeds back to the community garden then look for seeds that were developed in areas with growing conditions similar to Honduras.  There are lots of Asian varieties of greens, cucumbers, herbs, tomatoes, etc that were developed in hot humid conditions.  Also do not be afraid to try hybrid varieties.  Though it is difficult to save true seeds from hybrid varieties it is worth growing them as they will perform better.   If you contact Baker Creek Seeds (www.rareseeds.com) the sell seed collections selected for the humid South.  They (along with many seed companies) will donate seeds to non profits and community gardens.  Every year that seeds sit, the germination rates drop so the companies are willing to give them out for free.

If there is ample space it is also a good idea to incorporate animals into the community garden, such as chickens or rabbits.  Both animals provide great compost and can be maintained at a low cost.  If you are interested in learning more about incorporating animals... that's going to be a separate email.

Other random notes:  Peas and beans do not like super rich soil and will not grow well around garlic and onions.  I found it necessary to have a group of folks to over see the activities within the garden.   For the longest time we have had issues of people renting plots, under utilizing it, and not maintaining it.  By citing these people, encouraging them to grow more food, or asking them to leave we have created a much more productive environment. 

In our garden a mixture of personal plots and communal plots have worked out extremely well.  We grow certain crops to share with every member of the garden so that he/she may maximize what they can grow in his/her personal plot.  However, this all comes down to how the garden is set up. 

I realize this is quite the lengthy email.  If you would like me to elaborate on any of these points or if you feel like I did not address all the topics (such as how composting works which is crucial to maintaining a healthy garden) please let me know.

Thank you,

Earl