Starting your home food garden

Observe and Interact 

Covid-19 lockdown.  How much longer? What the world will be like when this is over? When will we be able to zip around again, without hand sanitiser and mask?

This Coronavirus has brought uncertainty, chaos, despair and loss. But even as businesses fold under the economic pressure, we must remain resilient and do what we can where we are, while staying safe. Let us rebuild where we are, with what we have... in new ways, kinder to Gaia.  We invite you to focus your energies on starting your home garden so you and your family can reap some of the many benefits:

• Engage the entire family - let each member decide what they want to plant, research the optimal growing conditions and work together to devise an integrated plan for a garden that will yield something for everyone.
• Help to ease stress - by shifting your focus from the present circumstances to the future as you plan, plant and care for seedlings.
• Restore a sense of purpose - in these uncertain times, growing food is a strategy that will ensure your family's survival, even as you learn new skills and techniques...and patience - some plants take their grand time to grow.
• Save you money, feed your family, provide stuff for bartering
• Keep you safe by saving trips to the market 
• Enhance the appearance of your home 
• Enhance your property value 
• Provide physical exercise 
  

We Organic TT will be right here to help you grow your garden without synthetic chemicals and the first step is to observe and interact with the designated space.  It may be easy to visualise your site with lush, fully grown plants and you can bring that vision to reality by considering the many factors that affect the growth, flowering and fruiting of your favourite plants.  Observe and interact is the first or 12 Permaculture Principles and this step can save you a lot of time, effort and money.

Whatever the size of your site it will help to create a plan taking into account the lay of the land, the permanent fixtures such as buildings, and how energy moves through the land. So grab a notebook, put on your boots and take a walk through your site.

The purpose is simply to observe without deciding what should change.  Here are some questions to help guide your observations : 

• How is the land used and traversed by humans? 

• What path does the sun take across the site - what areas get full/partial sun? are any areas in shade all the time?
• What animals inhabit or pass through the space?

• How does wind flow through it? Are there trees/structures that will act as a windbreak? 
• What trees, plants and weeds are currently growing there are how are they faring?

• How does water flow across the site? Does it run off quickly or pool in some areas?  
• How does the soil feel? Is it soft and loose or hard and compacted?
• What other factors do you think will affect your decisions about what to plant on the site.

  
  

  Learn more about this first Permaculture Design Principle here and visit WaSamaki for Permaculture in the Caribbean. 

#gardendesign #permacultureprinciples #observeandinteract #howenergyflows #covid19things #wasamaki #permaculture #WeOrganicTT #KindertoGaia 

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  clear area with gradient, bordered by bamboo and a stream

  
  

  

  Fenced backyard with large trees

  
  

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