If you follow me or have come across my posts of late, you would know that I lost my old man a month ago. I am among the blessed souls to have/ ever had an awesome relationship with their grandfather. I am yet to digest his demise in a way I can write about him properly but a gift he left under my care is why we are here ❤
I had requested him to let me farm mushrooms on his vegetable garden and I was to start in October last year before a series of unfortunate events sweep everything away in a two weeks and I watched myself sink into mental and financial chaos.
Though I am yet to raise the full amount I require to start mushroom farming plus goat farming, I have started filling my vegetable patches with what I believe will be marketable in the next three to four months and create a source for my own groceries.
Won't you come with me and see the progress?
So. From this mess... hard work and couple of hundred dollar bills have brought us here 💫
Logging and a through clean of the organic debris and household trash, we treated the soil with ash and cattle manure. Healthy organic mulches were left scattered all over the garden to protect the nutrition sitting on the top layer of the now naked soil.
The patch laying before this fully visible one is filled with the African nightshade. We proudly call it 'managu' in Swahili even in five star hotels or 'mboga za kienyenji' which loosely translates to 'traditional greens'.
A patch of two weeks old white carrots or chinese carrots as they are locally known. When they are grown they are white in colour and they take atheist 75 days to be considered mature.
A closer shot just because... it is the sunset rays dancing on these young leaves for me 💚
Chinese cabbage. That is my right man hand watering them using what is currently available until I make his work easier by getting a small water pump among other gardening tools.
Sugarcane stems are what can be seen in the background with some young bananas.
The young bananas... four months old overshadowing the recently planted ones.
Rows of freshly planted arrow roots. They are an essential traditional food that oftentimes had at breakfast with our Kenyan milk tea.
First patch of thriving spinach and baby kales.
The second patch.
The readily available water that never dries up year round. I intend on fixing this as we advance. I have another well too in the same space.
Flowering mango trees. My old man planted these and we've enjoyed a few seasons of some juicy green coated yellow meat in healthy sized fruits. The piled eucalyptus shredded firm barks will be used to build the wooden strong shelves that hold mushroom farming bags.
We can't end this tour without a shot of the beasty queen of the homestead. She's almost six months pregnant and getting all the attention she needs. It's her first pregnancy.
I come from a place where every home has at least one of these. We don't believe in buying milk and because we love our milk tea,we prefer to have one of these mooing creatures.
And also because we love tea and the weather favours us to farm it,this is the outer sides of my small garden. Tea is grown in large scales all around us and it's majestic manicured beds add tranquility to the already quiet environment.
wambuku w.
