Send A Cow

I was looking on the internet yesterday for gifts. I remembered a catalogue I got last year called Send a Cow.

http://www.sendacow.org.uk/default.asp

For people who want to donate an animal to struggling communities to make them self sufficient.

You can send a cow (or a goat, sheep, or fruit trees etc). For example the cow produces milk for the farmers, the manure becomes fertiliser to grow vegetables. If the Cow has calves these can be sold, or used as meat. The cow is symbolic of the community becoming self sufficent. Where life is hard these small acts can reap big benefits. Another initiative they have been doing is about gardening training.

The website had a competition for schools, and children to build the best Bag garden, and for those with more room the Keyhole garden.

http://www.sendacow.org.uk/default2.asp?active_page_id=159

The bag garden is a novel way of growing vegetables in a small space in an inhospitable environment. The examples were from Lesotho which is a rugged mountainous country with extremes of heat, thunderstorms, rain, and hail.

The Bag Garden is simply a hessian sack with a column of rocks in the middle for watering, compost and cow manure, and sticks to hold the sides, and as a way of growing supports. They are very compact.

The Key hole garden is so called because viewed from above the central space is shaped like a keyhole. It is a raised bed effect, with easy access for children, and poorly adults. Sub Saharan Africa is at the sharp end of the Hiv/Aids pandemic, so the garden is easily accessible from the keyhole. It has a basket in the centre for watering, and vegetable peelings for compost. Ash from fires gives Potassium, manure gives nitrates, Rusty tin cans give the soil iron etc.

Send a cow is teaching people how they can grow their own vegetables all year around. The children now eat regular meals, and are healthier, so able to attend schools.

The best ideas seem to be the simplest, well thought out, but brilliant none the less.

Once I move to the house I will try out the Bag Garden (its ten pounds from send a cow). The project here in the UK teaches children about growing vegetables, geography, and awareness of their peers in Africa who have very different lives. The video shows an 8 year old boy tending the keygarden with his sister!

What is amazing is they love vegetables, Cabbages, Spinach, onions, and his favourite Beetroot! Children here in the UK are notorious for not eating their vegetables. These projects in Lesotho show the difference the Keyhole gardens make. All the materials are locally available at no cost, besides the labour involved. Its a matter of getting seeds!

I found the video on you tube hurray, so it can be embedded in this blog post. Its nine minutes long but is very illustrative of my post!

Its another example of the difference that the earth can make in healing individuals, communities, and making malnutrition a thing of the past. The community can see the benefits and start to copy the gardening!

Ebony Knight and MACS

The Ophiopogon Planiscapis Negresens or Black Dragon, or Ebony knight. Also Mondo Grass I think someone called it once. I saw this first at Harlow Carr. I love the way the leaves turned black when exposed to Sunlight.

It is a dwarf evergreen (or black?) perennial that looks good in the front of borders or in raised beds to form clumps, that contrast in colour and texture. The centre of the grass is emerald green.

It likes full sun or partial shade, and well drained soil. It has been awarded the RHS award of garden merit, which means most people can grow it in most conditions. What a beautiful plant though. This is waiting patiently for news on the house front.

I was watching some video clips today from the Gardeners Corner website. It is reported on the GC website by the BBC radio Ulster team. There is an allotment project that helps vulnerable young people gain new skills in preparing, maintaining, and growing an allotment. The Project is called MACS, or Mulholland aftercare services, and is based in and around Belfast I think.

They were all amateurs the young people and their mentors, and asked for email advice through the BBC's email address.They planted potatoes, leeks, garlic, onions, runner beans, carrots, and strawberrys. They must have planted Peas, Pumpkins, Corn, and Swedes but not with the video camera there.

The idea was to grow some things that could be used in two weekly meals arranged at the allotment. A lot of the Young people (16-25 years old) had never experienced gardening, or growing vegetables. They all contributed, and did their allotted tasks in the videos.

It gave them new skills, brought groups of people together in a communitywho otherwise would be isolated, made them work together, and shared the things they grew. Either taking them home, or by eating them at the two weekly meals.

The funny part was what they could call the Allotment which is a dull name. They came up with the Lost Plot, a play on words where to lose your head is to lose the plot. They have somewhere to go now when they think they are losing the plot.

In essence it was like the Monty Don Growing out of trouble series. These were young people in contact with a charitable organisation which aims to support them and integrate them into a network for housing, training, education, mentoring, etc. Montys were Young people with Drug addictions on court orders.

The two projects work on the premise that healing that takes place is putting hands in the soil. and planting seeds. This simple act, and the maintenence of the crops seems to be working out, with the projects aims. There are all kinds of analogys you can draw between life, and planting seeds, growing on, flowering etc.

In the USA they call allotments Community gardens, which seems to be a better way of describing them. On the Video an old gent gives his advice about how to treat an outbreak of potato blight. The older gardeners must have accepted the younger generation in the plots.

My green fingers are itching to get some dirt on them, under my fingernails.The act of touching the soil and planting seeds makes us aware of the seasons, of the weather, and the wildlife around us. The simple act is the stone dropping in the lake, the benefits move outwards like ripples from a single act.

The bloggers who love gardens are a further extention of the gardening community. Thats how so many disparate groups and people can come together with a single passion. Whether its tomatoes, daylilys, orchids, or broccoli the passion binds them all together.

I hope that you who have Real Player can see these videos.The link is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/gardenerscorner/allotment/index.shtml

I am back to work tomorrow, so maybe a late post, or one on Saturday. May all your gardens be healing ones!