Exploring Local initiatives to spread the Organic Kitchen Garden movement-Part 2

A boy looks astonished at the diversity in ragi

After a journey of three long hours the children were given some rest and then taken around the campus. The children went through the cattle shed with some native breeds, seed bank, and vermin-composting and Organic pesticide preparation shelters. They were also taken to the seed production plots that literally captivated them all. In spite of the scorching sun they kept up with the guided tour. Over fifty varieties of ragi and associated millets, several varieties of ladies finger, eggplant and various gourds were all in full fruiting condition. Some varieties of ragi were already harvested as they were varieties of short duration.

A guided tour through Anisha campus
 for the little delegates of Vanam

In the post lunch session they were taken for a field visit to two schools and a few home gardens that the students had established. We first took the children to St. Charles Rural School. This school was our favorite in this project as the headmaster and the staffs were always welcoming. They had allowed their children to thoroughly involve in the project which had kept the hard work of the students in a presentable condition. Being right on the main road it was convenient for us to bump in any time. The school had several aspects of gardening to showcase; the most attractive was the curtain garden put up along the corridor of the school. Children had pooled in polythene sack which were filled with a nice mixture of soil and manure and used for sowing vegetables and creepers in them. The constant care and protection they got had started to show upon the coir mesh that had been meticulously laid between the pillars along the corridor. The administrator of the school and the Headmaster were personally present and proudly showed them to the little delegates.

Understanding the bare necessities of an
Organic Kitchen Garden  (OKG)

Then the convoy proceeded to the school garden at Godest Nagara and Kadabur. The school garden at Godest nagar was the largest of all the school kitchen gardens in the cluster. The school was a bit isolated from the settlement and the teachers were from far off places. As we were settling in the school garden little custodians of the garden arrived in astonishment to see what was happening in their school. The innovative children had managed to set up a simple yet functional drip irrigation system that watered the plants even in their absence. They had managed to procure a dozen used intravenous injection sets from a local nurse and had placed them in strategic locations to keep the garden well watered.

Children of Vanam admiring Jeswin's hard work  

Before it got dark the vegetable gardens of Princy-Priyanka sisters and that of Jeswin were also visited. Of the hundreds of students who were gardening in the vicinity these three were the most sincere, innovative and hard working ones. In fact they had no water connection to their house hold and had to carry water from a long distance for every day use. Once they took up gardening, each of the families had a demand of an extra fifteen to twenty pots of water. When asked about their experience they were thankful to the public tap and their parents who allowed them to take up gardening! The visiting students from Bandipura were speechless to see the efforts put in by students of their own age while the gardening families felt proud of their children’s remarkable fete.

Children at Work

On returning back to the base, the children were shown a few documentaries before dinner. A film about the Impact of Chemical Pesticides on humans and Environment were shown.  It gave a sad account of how Indian consumers are bombarded with a daily dose of pesticides unknowingly.  To reveal the harsh realities of pesticides the film used two case studies namely the use of endosulfon in Cashew plantations in Kerala in the eighties and the over use of pesticides by the Cotton growers of Punjab.

Preparing a bed for sowing

In southern state of Kerala where endosulfon was sprayed using choppers the deadly chemicals enters the food chain through numerous streams in the water shed. Even the ground water gets contaminated and the livestock as well as humans gets affected. The worst toll will be among the children and infants. The visuals of many children of one single school in the area who suffered a wide range of physical and mental mutilations were sad and appealing to the young minds.

The following day some time was spared for some hands on activities. The participants were divided into three teams and were assigned to prepare a plot for vegetable garden in Permaculture method. Using raised bed technique, dry and wet biomass were sandwiched and seeded with micro organisms in the slurry of cow dung. This was a sort of work experience class for them. They had to imitate some of the plots they were taken through in the morning where there was practically no soil.

Sowing seeds a new way

When the work started the students became busy like a colony of ants. They started sourcing materials; soil, stones, green leaves, dry twigs, hay and cow dung. They moved in small fistfuls to head loads. In about two hours all the three teams under the guidance of teachers had created vegetable beds of different kinds.  The beds differed not in their content but in the method adapted to hold the substratum together to support the plant growth. While one of the teams used solid rocks to hold the soil the others used dry twigs. One of the teams also used empty water cans to fill in a biomass mixture for planting. All the beds were planted with saplings of eggplant and tomato with required spacing. Seeds of cluster beans, ladies finger and a couple of cucurbits were also sown in-between.

The visiting team at a GHP School at Godest Nagar

There was a small experience sharing session after the lunch. And it was time for these little ambassadors of the far western corner of the district to embark upon a journey back home- a journey very important to them as well as us. We wished a happy and safe journey to them as their school bus rolled out of Anisha.

-Manu K 

-Photographs by Chaitanya Sharma