The Africa Centre—A Participant’s Perspective Permaculture Gardens All of us village-based trainers got some training in permaculture, which the Africa Centre arranged. Our own garden is 2 hectares (5 acres) in size and was originally a project of 10 of us in the community. Four have died so only six of us are left—four women and two men. Portions of the garden are also allocated to elders looking after orphans and to our children who do all the work on their plots themselves. I taught them all what I knew about permaculture. They are doing a good job. The
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main garden is producing well and we have enough of a surplus to sell some vegetables to a distributor in town. The Africa Centre helped arrange this market for us. The distributor comes to us each week and collects our vegetables, paying us Z$75,000 (US$15) to Z$80,000 (US$16) per week, which is a good profit for us. This year I’m also growing merenga beans—high in protein and oil—and Jatropher cucus [jojoba] so I can have oil to make soap, since no one can afford soap anymore. This year we used chemicals for the first
time. We had a terrible infestation of begrada bugs and aphids and feared losing everything. In terms of our holistic goal we didn’t want to use poison, but we also knew we had to eat and that we needed vegetables to sell to others, so we decided to do some tests on small plots. We used carbaryl, which is very expensive, on one test plot. It did kill the begrada bugs but didn’t affect the aphids at all. We tried Lantana camara, a natural pesticide, but it did nothing to the aphids either. Based on these test plots we finally decided to remove all the rape [similar to collard greens] from the crop mix and put it on its own, since that was the plant attracting all the aphids. It worked.
Brussels Ranch— After the Fire by Dick and Judy Richardson Editor’s Note: Dick & Judy Richardson own and manage Brussels Ranch near Vryburg, South Africa. Dick is a Certified Educator and has trained many agricultural producers and Certified Educators internationally. They can be reached at judyrich@cybertrade.co.za.
Transect II October 2003. The same view three years later after an extended dry season that put us into our drought reserve. Harvester termites invaded and consumed every plant. But the cattle have broken the capping.
April 2000. View of the veld (range) 10 months after we took over management. April 2004. The same view six months later following the rains.
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IN PRACTICE
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