Tip-taps & plant tea

You can add all sorts of things to your school's African garden to bring even more learning, colour and interest.

Tip-Tap (Tippy Tap) handwashers

These ingenious African hand-washers help keep hygiene levels high in Africa, where diseases can spread easily. Often situated outside a loo or by a cowshed, they are an essential part of Send a Cow training. The simple structure allows you to wash your hands where there is no running water, just by pressing a lever with your foot. There are various designs depending on what resources are available and soap is often suspended on string or placed in a plastic container, nailed to the post.

'80 per cent of all sickness in the world is due to unsafe water and poor hygiene.'

World Health Organisation

Tip-Taps are also an easy thing for children to make and use here in the UK. Kids can get really creative and come up with different designs, making it lots of fun.

When you order any of our kits, you'll find a Tip-Tap sheet included, showing how to build one - or simply use the video on the right. You can also find lots of related resources on our Cowfiles.com site too, including pictures of Tip-Taps in action! Why not have a class competition to see who can make the best one - take photos or a video and send them in to us. If you get it in by July 9th, you'll be judged as part of our competition and hasve a chance to win an African Gardens trophy!

Plant tea

A low cost and easy way to get more crops from your plants is to create your own 'Plant tea'. The ingredients for it can usually be found locally to your school and can include comfrey leaves, nettles and compost. When added to roots, the 'tea' gives your plants a nutritious kick that helps your veggies grow well. It will also create a strong reaction in your kids as, when ripe, it is very stinky!

In Africa, where many people rely on the food they grow, simple, low-cost additions to crops like Plant tea can help families grow twice as many vegetables on their land.Find out how to make you own Plant tea and organic pesticide in your African Garden by using our Organic Tips sheets. You can put the tea in a large container or vegetable oil drum and spray the pesticide on your crops using a plastic bottle with holes pierced near the top of the bottle (see the picture on the right).

*Please note that we can only send our African Gardens kits to UK addresses.

If you don’t have access to Vimeo.com to watch videos at school, register for an account on their website at home and then you can download all our videos using the link on the bottom right of each video page.