(Post 4 of our Permagarden Photo Essay from Legado Fellow Grant Bemis)

With the garden now complete, and the workshop coming to a close, it was time to wrap things up. Any remaining questions were answered, and materials were given out to help people remember the specifics of the workshop and their importance. We also went into detail explaining how these processes and techniques could be applied on a larger scale. Each participant earned a certification, proving their presence and mastery of the material.  

Our training wrapped up in June, but the learning was just beginning.  Today the Legado Field team is seeing the new techniques in permagardens planted by Namuli community members at their homesteads and their Thriving Agriculture Program will grow to more communities once planting season starts in 2017.

The Legado Thriving Agriculture Program is made possible, in part, but the support of Lush Charity Pot and the Clif Bar Family Foundation.

Tom, teaching the value of planting lemongrass on the borders of the permagarden to ward off pests.

Nunes Adamage, carefully reviewing his notes in search of any remaining questions.

We would like to send a big thank you to all of our participants and are excited to report that, a few months after the training, we are seeing these new techniques in permagardens planted by Namuli community members at their homesteads!

Thank you for following along, if you have any questions about the permagardens or want to learn more about Legado and our approach to achieving biodiversity conservation through agriculture and other socioeconomic development programming check out the links below.
www.legadoinitiative.org

Here, we constructed three different scale models of mashambas (fields). The first, Plot 1, replicated the current slash and burn agricultural practices taking place on Namuli. Plot 2  represented the practices learned from the permagarden workshop. Plot 3 took aspects from both. After our rain simulation, the amounts of soil and water conservation became very clear, with large amounts of erosion occurring in Plots 1 and 3, and little to no erosion occurring in Plot 2. This experiment really opened people’s eyes to the benefits of permacultural systems and clearly displayed how these techniques could easily be applied with to their current agricultural practices.

After constructing the garden beds, they were then measured to achieve optimal plant density.