Project Update: Dental Bamtaare Tooro Demo Garden

I am in the process of starting a demonstration garden at the office space of my counterpart Kadiata Ba. She is the president of an organization called Dental Bamtaare Tooro which if Pulaar for Group for the Development of the Tooro (a region of northern Senegal where Taredji is located). Dental’s activities focus on the development of the Toroor region by focusing on women. They primarily operate a milk processing business (see more types of milk) but also host trainings in their 29 partner villages on Pulaar alphabetization, democracy and citizenship, animal husbandry, and now agriculture. With the help of Peace Corps/Senegal, we are building a garden to train women in the 29 villages Dental works with to do small-scale gardening.

So far, I have written a grant to get tools and fencing for the space, designed the garden space, and am now waiting on the money to arrive. In the mean time, I have started a tree nursery at my family’s compound. My host dad Ousman Ba also works at Dental and has a small section of fencing around a TV satellite for a TV that is broken in a house that has electricity that can only support one small light bulb. Because the trees have a very limited time frame for being seeded before the rainy season starts, it was important that we did not wait for the fencing to arrive before getting the trees going.

A majority of the trees will be used for a live fence: a fence made out of trees that is more reliable than “dead” fencing and cheaper if more labor-intensive. With the help of Peace Corps and Dental, I have chosen three different thorny species that can be pruned into a thorny hedge to keep out animals and children (both of which are my worst enemies when it comes to gardening).

In addition to the live fence, I am also including some small fruit trees and nitrogen-fixing trees for alley cropping, a practice of integrating trees between rows of planting in order to act as windbreaks, diversify your space, provide additional income, and/or improve the soil. For fruit trees, we are using papaya, guava, and pomegranate because they don’t take up very much space and start producing fruit quickly.

In total, we have about 300 trees that will be used for a 59x26 meter space. I have just seeded the nursery and will keep you updated on the progress of the garden.