90% of nutrients in human waste are found in urine and diverting urine to the compost heap will really help make better compost adding valuable nitrogen that reacts with decaying carbon plant matter. Pee directly onto your compost heap or dilute with 10 parts water and apply directly to the garden. Urine from healthy people is sterile and safe to use although undiluted it will burn plants. … Read more
5 Steps to Fast Composting Garden Ready Compost in About 30 Days
Making compost is probably the single most important thing you can do for your organic garden. The success of your garden depends on the soil, and the health of your soil depends on the compost you give it. And making compost isn’t difficult. With very little effort on your part, you can turn throw-away materials into this sweet-smelling, nutrient-rich, no-cost soil conditioner. So how do you start this easy composting? Follow the link to discover the five key steps in making great compost in … Read more
Benefits of a Vegetarian / Vegan diet A life style choice with big benefits
Many animals are raised in cruel and inhumane conditions and live brutally short lives to meet the human demand for meat. However, people can live healthier and with a significantly lower environmental impact by reducing meat consumption. It has been estimated by the UN that 18% of Climate Change can be attributed to animals raised for meat and some research has even suggested figures as high as 51%. Excessive numbers of farm animals also require too much land and contribute to deforestation, … Read more
Comfrey The Permaculture Plant
Comfrey has long been recognized by both organic gardeners and herbalists for its great usefulness and versatility; of particular interest is the 'Bocking 14' cultivar of Russian Comfrey, a strain developed in the 1950s by Lawrence D Hills, the founder of the Henry Doubleday Research Association (the organic gardening organisation) Comfrey is a particularly valuable source of fertility to the organic gardener. It is very deep rooted and acts as a dynamic accumulator,[7] mining a host of … Read more
Earth Oven Building an oven of local soil
Earth Ovens have been used for thousands of years by cultures all over the world and they are still built today by people all over. Earth ovens are made up of just that, EARTH! Sand, clay and straw are used in building these versatile ovens. It takes only 10 to 12 hours to build in total, with some intermediate periods for drying layers, and the oven will last for many years without loosing its capacity or quality. An earthen oven can be used to cook the same things cooked in a normal … Read more
Vermicomposting bin Make your own efficient composting bin
This is a low-cost design for making your own composting bin. It is designed in such a way that it composts efficiently, letting air through, water out, and worms in. Apart from efficiency, one of the benefits is cleanliness in small spaced areas, as well as enabling to have the composting process happening inside. … Read more
Harvesting the wind with scrap metal An amazingly inspiring piece of African ingenuity
William Kamkwamba was a son of poor farmers in Malawi. During the severe drought of 2001, the whole country was starving as soils lay bare. Kamkwamba refused to accept the horrible fate that was upon him and his family. By studying the images in a handful of English books on natural science, he learned to build a windmill from scrap metal and was thus able to pump up water for crowing crops. 'I tried and I made it. Never give up.' … Read more
Seed sovereignty in agriculture Seed sovereignty for food sovereignty
Indigenous seed are endangered and are getting lost due to emergence of industrialized seeds i.e. Hybridization, GMOs and the Terminator seeds. It is evident that a majority of our farmers in Kenya have no access to affordable seeds. The presence of multinational companies in Kenya have led to disappearance of indigenous seeds because they have been forced to believe that hybrids and GMOs are the best and that they are able to produce more food and save them from hunger. Our seeds is our … Read more
Sustainable food Wild fruits
Wild Fruits like baobab are used to make natural juices. Women are mostly involved in making these juices and they get substantial incomes from their sales. It is said that they are a good source of vitamin C and they are very tasty. HONEY honey is not a fruit, but bees make it from the flowers of trees, and mostly wild flowers which eventually become fruits. Some of these fruits are not directly consumed by human beings, but are indirectly consumed when we take honey. Perhaps that is why honey … Read more
Seed Bank Saving Seed
Seed Banks are cooperative constructs where local seeds are stored, saved and borrowed out. Our seeds is our heritage. They are used to local climates and they are thus adapted to locally harsh conditions. We need to empower our communities to go back to their roots and restore the culture of the use of indigenous seeds. Farmers can be empowered to come together and share seeds in different forums, but the most sustainable one is where farmer groups establish operational seed security systems … Read more
