Nutrition through food forests & gardens in Kenya

Introduction

Warm greetings from DNRC family. Once again we are happy to share with you our progress report of our food forest and gardens project. We sincerely appreciated your continued financial support which has enabled us to go this far. Receive our much appreciation once again.

During this quarter, we continued to work on trainings and follow ups to individual farms where all the 600 farmers were visited and trained on their food forests. We also worked with the six schools we work with on their food forests. We also continued Propagating more fruits trees for food forests and working on the DNRC food forest demo. During the quarter we also did tree gapping both to DNRC food forest demonstration farm and individual farmer’s farms. With the approach of the food forest, interests is growing amongst the schools around and during this quarter we had one more school joining us and being trained and helped establish their school food forest.

The approach of food forest is proving to be the alternative way of holistic nutrition provision for our families. The diversity of plants in seven layers in the food forests ensure that all the year round, there is some produce to harvest unlike mono cropping. As the trees, fruits and crops are planted together, they give each other support in different ways such as Fixing nitrogen, providing shade, covering the ground thus keeping evaporation low, moisture retention and improved soil fertility as leaves shade and decompose . This natural and beneficial relationships keeps the system highly productive and ever green.

The following are detailed activities which took place during the quarter:

Training and outreach

During the quarter, all the six schools were visited for training and follow ups of the food forests progress. The newly recruited school, (iviani secondary school) was introduced to food forest establishment and how it relates to the school nutrition for the students. This is important because the students who are future generation will grow up knowing how to meet their nutritional requirement while taking care of the environment.

Propagation of fruits and agroforest trees.

During the quarter, we were busy propagating over 25 species of both fruit trees and others for fodder, fuel and timber. We also continued to manage the seedlings in the nursery .These seedlings will be planted during the October – December rain season. Other activities in the nursery were potting, sowing and transplanting.

Management of DNRC food forest demo.

The last quarter covered our short rain season. During this time, since rains are short, the major activity was gapping and planting seasonal crops such as beans, pigeon peas e.t.c. Management of the food forest was done which included chop and drop. During the quarter, we also harvested the following yields: 24 passion fruits, 50kgs of bananas and 300 gms of cow peas.

DNRC greenhouse and farm.

During the quarter, the major activities in in our farms and greenhouses was mainly planting and tending tomatoes and kales. The main farm was also planted with beans, maize, millet, sorghum and pigeon peas.

Focus for the next quarter

• Training and preparation to plant and expand the food forests in October- December rains
• Management of the already propagated seedlings and propagating the remaining part of the target.
• Tending and managing the DNRC demonstration food forest