Thank you so much to the students at Bendale B.T.I. and their teacher Mr. Darren Beer for saving the seeds when they prepared food for their school cafeteria.
We sent the seeds from this huge sunflower I got in Campbellford, Ontario in the fall, and our volunteer Crystal helped us take the seeds out of 5 pumpkins after Halloween.
As always Eilish helped me pack up the seeds and we sent off approximately 26,422.00 vegetable seeds, 13.5lbs (6.12kg) and a few small gifts for some of the volunteers in Mongu & Kalabo.
We sent stickers donated by our neighbour Anne and a pencil case and winter & summer hats for Mubita who has been such a wonderful help with SEEDS in Mongu. Thanks so much Mubita!
We have two Mubita’s in Mongu and we sent the female Mubita some flash cards so she can help the younger children learn the alphabet and all the animal names in English. Way to go Mubita!
We sent a kite for all the kids to share and some pictures from our last visit in August 2015.
The seeds we sent on Dec.17th will be planted now and hopefully the rainy season, which has been late this year, will produce a great harvest. We sent Cubanelle and sweet peppers, Acorn, Butternut, Spaghetti and Kabocha squash, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds ( which Mwualuka in Kalabo loves to feed his chickens, see blog “Interpreter Turned Chicken Farmer” from October 2015). We already have been successful at growing Pomegranate trees from the fruit I bought in Canada and we sent Peach, Plum and Papaya seeds with this batch, so cross your fingers that they will grow as well.
We sent 14,109.00 seeds to our manager, Mwualuka, at our Kalabo project a long with a soil test kit. The soil in Kalabo has more clay in it than Mongu, so now Mwualuka will be able to determine how acidic or alkaline his soil is so he can add more humus according to what he is growing. ( see soil acid or alkaline under Growing Vegetables on our home page).
Here are a few pictures of our trial gardens in Mongu from our last trip in August 2015.
We will be sending another batch of seeds in March 2016 so if you would like to donate your time, seeds or a monetary donation to help send that batch, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to all who donated so we were able to send this last batch. Those who donated from our web site and from Canada Helps. It is much appreciated! All the best from Joanne, Fredrick, Matindo, Mwualuka, Sorcha, Ellena, Crystal, and the whole SEEDS volunteer team.
