Science Garden

 By Sara:

When the lockdown started in Uganda, I began thinking of creative things I could do to learn and gain helpful skills for my work.  One activity I decided on was setting up a small experimental garden in which I could compare different methods of growing the same crops to see which one was best.

A friend who runs a business school just outside of Soroti offered to let me use some of his land for a garden, so I went and planted what I call my "science garden" there.  If I keep up the crops there, when schools open up again, I'll have opportunities to share with the business school students what is going on in my garden. 

I looked at two crops in particular: cowpeas (black-eyed peas) and millet.  For the cowpeas, I was comparing different spacing between the rows and between the plants and then seeing what effect harvesting leaves as greens would have on the yield of the cowpeas themselves.

 

For the millet, I had four sections, each planted using a different method.  The first was the control, the second had mulch between the rows, the third had cowpeas intercropped between the rows of millet, and the last one used a method of intensification where I planted the millet in a seed bed and then transplanted it a few weeks later at a very specific spacing between plants.  As the millet was growing, it was apparent that the plants in that fourth section looked the biggest and healthiest.  When I harvested, the yield from that very section weighed more than 3 times as much as any of the others!  In the picture below, it is the pile in the bottom right of the picture.  After the initial harvest, more grain matured later on the plants and I got similar results.

 

Next year, I am going to have to set up a comparison garden at home with millet, half simply planted in rows and the other half using the method of intensification.  More people stop by our house, so I would like to 1) do a second trial to see how productive the intensification method is and 2) have it be nearby and easy to show people who visit.

The cowpeas did not give quite as obvious results since it seemed like there were differences in parts of the garden in terms of soil quality and water holding capacity.  When I calculated the average yield per plant, though, the section with more space between rows and from which I weekly harvested leaves from every row for two months, produced by far the most grain and greens.  But I will have to try that one again to be more sure.