Growing up in a farming community did not adequately prepare
me for farming in Uganda. Farming in
Texas and farming in Uganda are worlds apart.
Also a garden in Uganda is not at all what you might picture based on
the gardens you are used to. Here in
Uganda, a garden is all the land someone has under cultivation for that year. We would call that your fields or your
land. Also, we plow our fields with
tractors, while they plow their gardens with oxen. More than likely the crops that are grown in a
Ugandan garden are a combination of
cassava, maize (corn), millet, sorghum, sesame, peanuts, maybe greens of some
sort, and sweet potatoes. Usually a garden is 1 to 5 acres in size and one to
three crops are grown. What is produced
from that acreage is eaten by the family throughout the year and/or sold at
market to pay for school fees, doctors’ visits, debts, food items like meat,
clothes, etc. A garden here is not just
a little area in your backyard where you plant a few vegetables to round out
your diet. Here, a garden is an acre of
sweet potatoes, and that one acre will be your diet for a good part of the
year. Can you imagine eating sweet potatoes
every morning all year? Or what about
eating roasted ears of maize? Now roasted
corn at the carnival is not the same as roasted maize here. I’m not talking about sweet corn, but more
like cow corn - the kind of maize that we would include in feedstuffs for
livestock. It’s a little tough and not
super tasty, but if that is what the garden is producing, then that is what
your family eats for as long as it is producing. I’ve eaten a ton of it recently and while I
prefer sweet corn, I’m not turning any of this down.
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| Those mounds are Irish potatoes just waiting to germinate and grow. |
Occasionally you’ll run across someone who has planted what
we might think of as more traditional garden plants such a tomatoes, eggplant,
bell peppers, onions, pumpkin, or beans. These vegetables are generally planted in a
much smaller quantity, but still in much greater quantity than we would plant
in the U.S. I was thinking me and Ronnie would grow a
killer garden the likes of which I’ve never seen. Well… this year has been a learning year. Termites have hammered the maize, blight is
working over my watermelon and tomatoes, the squash hasn’t done anything,
onions never did come up, something ate all the green beans, cucumbers have yet
to really start producing, the jalapeños were doing awesome until a tree fell
on them, and even my orange trees are looking sad. There are a few items in the garden that are
doing well though. The bell peppers are
growing like gang busters, zucchini seems to thrive here, the improved
varieties of mango trees are looking good, pineapples are still alive and will
produce fruit in about 3 years (fingers crossed), guava trees are coming on,
all of our herbs are growing like crazy, and we’re hopeful the Irish potatoes
will do something if we can get adequate rainfall.
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| Ronnie standing in front of the maize, pre-termite invasion |
I real adjustment for me was growing crops completely by
hand with no mechanization. Farming even
one acre of anything in a tropical environment during the rainy season is not
easy work. The weeds grow fast; really,
really fast. If you are not chopping
weeds almost daily, the weeds will take over and bury your garden under so much
undesirable growth. There are small
sections of the garden that I let get away from me early on and I’ve never been
able to retake those areas. Insects are
also very prevalent. Not only am I
battling the weeds, but the insects are cunning and well-trained. At first I tried farming without the use of
any chemicals. That worked only until
the crops germinated. Once the plants
were above ground, the insects declared war and I’ve been spraying ever since. I also got introduced to blight. Blight is an invisible enemy which attacks
only portions of my garden. One day
things are looking real good and so I relax and don’t visit the garden for a
day or two. Big mistake! Somehow the blight knows when I’m slacking
off and it destroys a good portion of the tomatoes or watermelons seemingly
overnight.
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| peanuts and some maize growing together |
Another challenge is insects. A
couple of weeks ago I noticed a couple of maize stalks were chewed off at the
base. I immediately declared war on the
termites and went to town and bought some poison for their mounds. I was instructed to dig into the top of their
mounds, dump a mixture of the chemical and water down the hole, then re-cover
the hole with leaves and soil. I poisoned
6 mounds that day and other than the 87 or so insect bites I received, I left
the garden feeling proud and victorious.
Little did I know that when you destroy the home of a termite, you leave
him with no place to return home to. After
their homes were destroyed, the termites then decided that since they were
already spending their days in my maize patch, they might as well take up
residence there. When I returned to the
garden the termites has increased the number of downed maize stalks from about
1% of the plants to somewhere around 20% or 30%. It looks like they have either moved out or
are just napping after their feast. At
least for now it looks like they have stopped.
Maybe I’ve won …?
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| On the left is a couple rows of green beans, and our bell peppers are coming up on the right. |
Farming here has been a humbling experience. This year in the garden is definitely going
to be my “learning year.” I am learning
what plants do well here, what plants are a bust or do not perform well in this
environment, and I am learning to change my diet according to what we can get
to grow. I may be eating a whole lot of
bell peppers and zucchini from now on if I can’t figure out how to grow other
things. But I am hopeful my war on
diseases, blight, insects, and termite mounds will pay off. Hopefully by this time next year I will be
wiser and better prepared. We welcome any fruit or vegetable seeds folks
want to send!
