Sunday, February 10, 2013

Garden Class in Santo Domingo

If you just want to look at pictures click HERE
The highlight of the week was teaching a gardening class to about 50 members of the Santo Domingo Stake.  We have been preparing for this for quite a while by collecting the materials recommended by the Dominican Ministry of Agriculture.  We invited them to come teach and they had agreed to come teach, but it never materialized so we did our best.
Wallace felt very inadequate teaching the class given he still hasn’t personally experienced much success in growing a garden here.  Everything is different.  The natural ground here in Santo Domingo is either coral rock or VERY heavy clay that is difficult to deal with.  We ended trying to put together a grow box using the instructions we learned from the Ministry of Agriculture, but still haven’t had much success.
It is very difficult finding seeds here!  We are going to have to order from the states.
We showed a short video we got from the Ministry of Agriculture and a short video we had made showing a wide variety of types of gardens a person can install.  We gave out seeds and everyone had personal hands-on experience preparing artificial soil and planting a few seeds.  We had a great time.  Here are a few pictures from the class.




 Wallace can't talk without his hands

 
 
Edith at one of our project closings.

Edith hard at work at home.
 
We ended the week visiting with the San Juan 1 Branch Council about the food project.
 
 

4 comments:

  1. We love your work! Yes, gardens are tough. How many bushel of tomatoes have you gotten off my plants in the back?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe seeds is a big part of the trouble. In Mexico a lot of farmers grow corn that is specialized for their particular hillside, so that they don't need insecticides or fertilizers. I wonder if there are cultivatable crops that are adapted to the local conditions. Are there traditional crops? I guess Hispaniola was pretty much destroyed at the time of the arrival of the Europeans. Maybe no traditional agriculture survives.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wallace, I knew Haws Haven would be useful to you. I'd like to hear an updated on the water pumps for the military outposts. We sure love and appreciate all the great work you're doing out there. Thanks for the example. You're both in our prayers.

    ReplyDelete