Gardening in Jamaica

I have to take advantage of the year-round growing season here. I am starting to grow our own vegetables and Rohan White, our landlord, is a farmer and has planted the bananas, noni (look it up online), and other plants around our yard. I trade farming stories with him and he laughingly takes them in stride -- especially when I come home with plants that are already producing. He tells me I should just throw the seeds in the ground and they will grow. The pictures here are of the tomatoes, strawberry and green pepper plants purchased and then we planted in the pots beans and cucumber. Rohan makes fun of how I say "cucumber"; its ckumba. Notice the pineapple by the strawberry plant. Rohan took the top off a pineapple I had purchased and just put it in the ground. It's still alive and beginning to grow.The Whites are taking us to the farmers market in Christiana on Saturday. They have told us not to go alone to these markets because they will raise the price too high. The markets in big cities look for people like us who come in and while one person is selling to us the others are picking our pockets. We have traveled through some of these markets on weekdays and it is congestion to the max.

Every is supposed to have a garden. The Ministry of Agriculture wants the children to know how to farm and raise chickens. The graduation exam includes questions on how to raise and pluck and prepare chickens. We have visited one school and seen their chicken coop. The purpose of all of this is to not only teach the children, but it provides food for the lunch program. For some children, this is the only meal they will get. One project we are working on is to produce seedling fruit trees. When they are ready, the schools will get fruit trees and the children will then take care of them and harvest the fruit. Not a bad idea. I hope NSL takes advantage of the community garden.

These pictures are of the other plants around the yard - potatoes, corn, banana, noni, and sugar cane. Also, look at the size of this mango -- that's mongo in Jamaican.