At first we thought only flowers can be grown in our project. Jackson, our Scout teacher brought some seeds during our April program and announced to us the good news that we were going to make HHFL’s first ever vegetable shamba (garden)! We learned that this would be a good way of growing our own healthy food and helping with the cost of providing food for our children.

We began by sawing the seeds of different type of vegetables. We began with three types namely; Sukuma wiki (kales), spinach, and Managu (traditional vegetables). The first step was making seed beds because we learned that the vegetables needed special care in a nursery before they are transplanted to the garden. We made three big
ones and then fenced around them to make sure nobody stepped on the growing seedlings. We had to water the seedlings every day for them to grow and not to dry up.

After two weeks, it was time to transplant the seedlings to the garden. Our teacher told us that we were going to use materials which do not cost us money. We collected soil in the forest near our project and also manure. These are useless materials in the forest, but now we were making them useful!

We also went to Jackson’s home whose grandmother gave us permission to collect manure from her farm. While some collected the manure, others were busy collecting red soil at the forest. Others got into the forest to gather some sticks for fencing and grass for putting around the seedlings after transplanting.

Because we do not have a very large space for our garden, we improvised some sacks. We filled the sacks with soil and planted the seedlings on them! This was a new thing for us and we were happy because we were able to plant as many vegetables as possible. This project is teaching us a lot of things which we did not know because many of us have no shambas at home.

Since we planted the seedlings we have been taking good care of them and very soon we will be harvesting healthy vegetables to be cooked in our kitchen. If the harvest is plenty, we can also think of selling to other people!! For sure there are many more things to learn in scouting and we love it!!