Sack gardens

There’s a lively discussion on “sack gardens” going on at FSN Forum. ((That’s the Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition Policies and Strategies.)) People have written in with their experiences in refugee camps in Kenya, HIV/AIDS households in South Africa, and Gaza province in Mozambique. I guess sack gardens could be considered a variant of the keyhole gardens we have posted about a couple of times already. In fact, there’s a whole typology of container urban gardening. As coincidence would have it, allAfrica had a piece a couple of weeks ago on the use of sacks to grow vegetables in the Kibera slum of Nairobi after the recent election violence. Interestingly, only kale and spinach are mentioned. I bet local vegetables would grow even better under these conditions.

Nibbles: Desert garden, Funding, Vegetables, Communication, Ecosystem services, Bees, Native grasses, Soil, Raspberries, Ancient ag trade, Soybeans, Ag origins

Nibbles: Funding, Grains, Wildflowers, AVRDC, Cloning, Salinity, Education, Sheep dogs, Swans, Writing, Fisheries, Big ag

Nibbles: Mongolia, Fruit & veg, Lima bean, Biofuels, Peyote, Permaculture, Extension

No veggies. But why not?

Blogging comes more or less full circle with Jessica’s letters from Niger. Jessica Bliss is a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger. She has even less internet access than the other front-line people we occasionally link to. But she writes letters home. Using pen and paper and postage stamps; imagine that! And her parents blog them. ((I love the disclaimer: The contents of this blog do not reflect the opinions of the US government or Peace Corps. Because of that it should be kind of fun to read.“)) Beats handing a tattered envelope around.

Anyway, in her latest, Jessica puts the food crisis in perspective; the perspective of “her” villagers. She says that “with the exception of onions and the occasional powdered tomato and okra that they put in sauces, people don’t eat many veggies. (This might change here: working on it!)”

Two questions:

  1. Why not? Is it because there really isn’t enough water? Or is it that there just isn’t a cultural tradition of growing and eating plants?
  2. What can she be working on? I hope we’ll find out soon enough.