Nutrition through food forests & gardens in Kenya

INTRODUCTION

Once again we wish to share our progress report on food forest and gardens in Kenya. Drylands Natural Resources Centre (DNRC) relentlessly focuses on achieving her vision of sustainable and resilient communities in drylands. Water being very important in food production, it’s also very limited resources in the drylands and thus the need to come up with methods and strategies modified to use very minimal water for high food production in such areas. In this regard, Food forests and gardens have remained very ideal since it’s easy to apply some of this strategies to establish them. During this reporting period, DNRC has continued to train both farmers, schools as well as doing follow ups on establishment of food forests and kitchen gardens. DNRC kitchen gardens and the food forest have continued to supply diverse healthy vegetables and fruits to staff, interns and visitors as well as selling the excess for income. Farmers also continue to harvest the same from their gardens. Thank you so much for your continued financial support which has played part in the success we share today. Below are detailed activities during the reporting quarter.

DNRC FOOD FOREST

During the reporting quarter, DNRC staff in charge of the food forest continued to manage the food forest mostly doing chop and drop due to a lot of forage as we had good rains. We also planted sweet potatoes as our cover crops as well as cassavas as our tubers. We were also busy harvesting the following from the food forests: Pawpaw, Mulberry, Pomegranate, cherry tomatoes, carrots, banana passion, vegetables and green maize.

FARMERS FOOD FORESTS

During the reporting quarter, we were also busy doing follows ups with the farmers on their individual food forests as well as gardens. Mainly we advised them to do chop and drop (management) as well as harvesting of the ready production.

DNRC KITCHEN GARDEN

During this reporting quarter, we continued to manage our diverse kitchen gardens which constantly supply vegetables for the staff, interns and visitors. During this reporting period, the following activities were done successfully:  Making of new beds for kitchen garden expansion, harvesting of vegetables for consumption as well as selling the extra for income, Integrated Pest Management, watering and weeding.

CHALLEGES

Diseases like stem rot caused by excess water.

FOCUS FOR NEXT QUARTER

Replant kitchen garden beds and continue managing the gardens

Maintain the food forest as we tend other food crops like: cassava, sweet potatoes