Learning from Africa

Often, it’s not what you own that counts – it’s what you know! With training from us, thousands of African farmers are discovering that they can make a decent living from their scarce resources, so long as they use them wisely. And that’s a vital lesson for us in the developed world to learn too.

Send a Cow has recently embarked on a number of initiatives to bring our natural resource management techniques to a UK audience. Our Grow it Global and African Gardens projects show schoolchildren how to grow food African style. And our show gardens at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show to and BBC Gardeners’ World Live have got thousands of visitors thinking about how they can go greener in their gardens too.

Here are some of the top tips from our African projects that you can try for yourself! For step-by-step instructions for these and other techniques, download our Natural Gardening leaflet.

Soil savers

Recycle your garden waste into compost to give your garden a healthy boost! If you keep horses or farmyard animals, put their manure into the mix – it will work wonders. Of course, green-minded gardeners across the UK are already digging compost into their veg beds. But it can go so much further if used cleverly – so read on…

Keyhole Gardens are revolutionising vegetable growing in our projects – and they work just as well in the UK too. These are circular raised beds in cones of soil mixed with compost based around a central compost basket. You plant seeds or seedlings in the soil, and add kitchen waste (vegetable peelings as well as water) to the compost basket, which gradually feeds the garden as it grows. They’re enabling families across Africa to grow vegetables all year round.

Bag Gardens are ideal for people with tiny gardens, or as a great supplement to your veg patch. They are sacks – any old feed sack will do – filled with a mix of soil and compost around a central column of stones. You cut holes in the sides, then plant seedlings in the holes and the top of the bag. Water directly onto the column of stones – it filters out to the seedlings. A great way of saving water and soil.

Other soil saving techniques used in our projects include: double dug trenches, contouring, and agro-forestry.

Water Savers

Compost not only boosts the soil’s nutrients, it also increases its water-holding capacity. But there are other clever ways to save water too:

• Use rainwater by creating a vegetable bed directly underneath an overhanging roof (if you don’t have a gutter), or by collecting it in a water butt.
• Mulch your plants with a layer of dried grasses or leaves to stop water evaporating.
• Use grey water, such as washing-up water, on your plants.
• Make a mandala garden – double dug vegetable beds in a ring around a central pit, with a trench to channel in rainwater.
• Shade your seedlings by intercropping them with taller plants. Make sure they still get enough light though!

Tree savers

Forests in Africa are under threat. Yet rural families rely on firewood for cooking and heating.

We show families how to make fuel-saving stoves use which about one-third the amount of firewood as traditional open cooking fires, and emit much less smoke. They are easy to make from locally available materials (such as clay, soil and sand), and methods are taught to all families in Send a Cow training.

Why not try making a fuel-saving stove yourself?