San Lucas Toliman Journal: Garden Project

Angel and I had talked casually during our runs early this year about doing a little gardening around the house. There were some "flower beds" lining the kitchen that had grown over with weeds and mint and I thought it would be nice to try to get them back to looking nice and maybe even plant some herbs we could use for cooking. Finally, one Saturday, he got busy working on clearing out garbage, rocks, and tree trunks from a plot of land just behind the kitchen. I hadn't even realized it existed. It was huge and I got really excited at the idea of planting the thing. When I walked back there, though, it quickly became clear that there would be a lot of work in store getting rid of garbage that littered the area. I didn't realize that was only the surface of the problem, literally. As I picked up shards of glass and old batteries, I realized every time I turned over soil there were handfuls of additional debris.

So, while Angel gathered the stones together to form a wall, I dug a couple of feet deep along the whole of the plot and pulled out old liquor bottles, shoes, shirts, dolls, batteries, dishes, nails, bones, plastic bags, and more. This must have been the household dump used by the last few generations.

Pulling out debris took about four weekends, each time producing 4-or-so large boxes of trash.

During one of our health promoter trainings, I got to talking to Genaro about his work (health promoting is volunteer, on-the-side work). He told me about working for IMAP, the Central American Institute of Permaculture. He works at helping families with little or no land make the most of the space they have for growing food, medicine, and spices. I asked him if he'd be willing to give us a "consult". Angel was worried that his plot was too small and that the soil was too sandy and I didn't have the first idea of how to garden here in Guatemala (when to plant what, etc).

This is us on Genaro's second visit to the house. The first day he checked out our plot and our soil. He was really encouraging. He loved the mix of sun and shade we had and talked about micro-climates within our little space. He said the soil was of good quality, too, and we could just mix some manure with it to enrich it a bit. He was also willing to help us with the physical labor as lifting the heavy rocks was often two-person job (and I was more inclined towards pulling out garbage).

Once we got the plot pretty well debrided, we took a trip to IHATZ, another permaculture site where Genero works, to get "tierra mejorada" or compost. We mixed it in and Genaro helped us make the design of a raised bed with the soil. He taught us about the benefit of the circular design for ease of harvesting. And he taught us how to make extra space in the garden area by making a raised "caricol", or spiral, garden bed around a nearby avocado tree. We planned to make that bed our medicinal garden (something that is sure to be used routinely here).

Angel had some old bamboo logs lying around so we cut them into stakes to support the borders of our beds and the kids helped us hammer them in (this is about week 6). We used some plastic that was sitting around in the back to fill in the gaps.

When my mom visited, we took a trip to IMAP to see Genero. This is him showing us their seed storage. We were both very inspired.

Genaro brought us $4 worth of little plants and seeds and we planted them all on one day. I didn't have a lot of faith that they would grow because, unlike the way plants come back home in a nice portion of dirt with a good root network, these were literally just the stem, one wimpy little root and no dirt. It was as if someone had pulled them from another garden like you pull a weed. It was hard to even get them to stand up in the soil.

But just 4 weeks or so later, we had some great growth and about 8 weeks later it was amazing. We planted another round of things: strawberry, radish, tomato, zuchini, beans (and lots of things that I still don't know what are; this project was quite a test of my Spanish vocabulary). The second round of plants was just about $5 more.

This last weekend, Genaro brought the plants for our medicinal garden. They came in the form I'm used to: soil and roots and all! This is alcachofa (artichoke), used for liver diseases.

This is amargon, good for stomach ache and intestinal infections

Pericon is used for fever, nasal congestion, and muscle aches

Ruda is good for colic and to ward off spirits who come to bother babies before they leave the earth for heaven (or some other destination)

This is our medicine cabinet planted in the caricol around the avocado tree

In full bloom last month

Genaro re-orienting us this weekend. We were so new to all this, we couldn't tell what was weed and what was crop. Also, there was so much food, we couldn't harvest it quickly enough. We were pretty good with the radishes but not so great with the lettuce. Most of it went to seed.

Lettuce (not popular at the Julajuj house) but good for use with tostadas

Flowering zuchini (they don't know what this is so I'm wondering what will become of the 20 or 30 zuchini's it looks like it will produce over the next few months)

Romaine, endive, arugula, citantro, parsley, and celery

Radish. I never thought these were more than decorations on Thai dishes but I have a new appreciation for the radish. And the kids get so excited when you let them pull one out.