Welcome to All Goa Organic Gardeners group

[Sunita Rao]

ALL GOA ORGANIC GARDENERS (AGOG)
An informal collective of organic gardeners in Goa sharing and learning about small scale food production at home, and urban/rural  gardening

Dear gardening comrades,

Looks like we have finally been able to take root as an e-group and are all set to flourish and grow! We are an informal collective of about 60 gardeners currently on the group, all experienced and aspiring organic gardeners in Goa. And hope that more of you will join in to make this into a nice big family of enthusiastic, proactive growers.

We decided to have this group to facilitate a greater interest and participation in home gardening in Goa, since many of you have land or a terrace or verandah where you can grow. Our first workshop on June 6th was organised by Earthworm Ecostore in Porvorim. I myself live in Sirsi and am a forest gardener, and work with a small seed collective called Vanastree (www.vanastree.org). Many of our organic, open pollinated seeds have now found their way into your gardens!

Please do use this e-group for all your organic gardening activities. Some guidelines in place may help us function better as an e-group, and more importantly as gardeners and small scale food producers.

1. Please use the group only for organic gardening news, activities and postings. So that means that we oppose the use of urea as fertilizer, or DDT as a pesticide, and such like. Also please focus on sustainable practices like using grey water for the garden etc.

2. Please do share news on various aspects of gardening, send in queries for people to answer, introduce your family and friends to the network and have them join, announce workshops, send in book reviews, etc.

3. The themes that we could include here could be planning a garden, soil and fertility, composting and mulching, water and irrigation, organic open pollinated seeds, sowing, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, seed saving, storing, cooking, hand tools for gardening, and interesting books and films on gardening you come across. We could also have inputs on the overall issue of food security, nutrition, and small scale home garden food systems in general.

4. At all times, please take care that the e-group is not used for commercial purposes or for things other than the original intent. Also please avoid irrelevant postings. For e.g if there is a call to respond to the nuclear treaty, important though it is, AGOG is not the platform for you to circulate it. We do have a moderator who has put in some filter systems for the group to work smoothly, but it will also be good for everyone to use this group in the appropriate way.

Welcome, and here is to a great gardening experience! As a collective, we can do much to see how we commune with the spaces around us, and work with nature to get vacant land, verandahs and terraces to produce bountifully. We can also play the vital role of being seed stewards whether we do it in a single pot on our balcony sill, or from an acre of land.

Regards,
Sunita

--
Sunita Rao
Adjunct  Fellow, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, India (www.atree.org)

Member, Kalpavriksh, Pune, India (www.kalpavriksh.org)

Founder Trustee, VANASTREE, Sirsi, India (www.vanastree.org)

[Claude Alvares]

Norma and I maintain a vegetable garden, fully organic. Last year we supplied several friends with the produce. This year we began mid-May, so that the plants would be a little strong when the heavy rains come down. We now have lady finger, spinach, chillies, weervil. Brinjal is to be planted only after the rains. We tried some tomato seeds from the market. They all failed. Radish too has done badly in the rain.

After her court work, Norma is invariably found in the garden, looking after the plants, since her three sons are all grown up and no longer in need of daily care.

I've been persuading her to get an old cow destined for slaughter and looking after it till it dies, so that we can have the benefit of cowdung in exchange of looking after her in her old age. But Norma is wary: she already is looking after three dogs, one cat, four guys with the appetite of horses. Now a cow?

Last year we planted quantity and found we were mostly distributing, we had so much to eat. This year we are reducing the quantity and going in for more diversity. Just 8-10 ladyfinger (okra) plants are adequate for a family and 4 brinjal plants and half a dozen tomato plants. Six chili plants will keep producing the year around. Mapusa market on Friday is the best place to get planting material. Friday I got two lime trees, two custard apple plants and one pomegranate. The guy brings them from Pune. They cost Rs.10 each! But you can also get lots of planting material besides that. I got myself some turmeric fingers (nicely sprouted) as well.

For spinach, we follow the simple way of buying a spinach (valchi baji) bunch from the market (Rs.10). We take off the leaves and curry them and we plant the stems, ensuring that at least one node is in the ground fully covered.

Now is also the time to plant pineapples. Keep the crown and simply plant it. It will grow and produce another in a year's time.

Grow your own food. You don't know what the market is offering nowadays. Too much poison in the food. The food you grown yourself in the garden is without parallel, priceless, since it is grown without chemicals and without pesticides. 100 % safe for everyone, young and old.

Out everyone, into the garden. Better than a workout in the gym. And free.

With Sunita, Victor, Miguel and Eula at the helm, we should have gardeners galore.

Claude

[alice Dcruz]

Hi Claude and Norma, My spirits have been raised after reading your success story!! Can I drop in sometime for a quick field trip? Alice. --- On Sat, 3/7/10, Claude Alvares <goafou...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Claude Alvares]

For a lovely woman like you, come any time. Norma is invariably in the garden aound 5.30 for an hour.

Claude