Seedlings

A huge goal at Casa Llena in San Miguel this semester was to produce more food. Most of our neighbors grow the food they use including plantains, tomatoes, cucumbers, bananas and various other fruits.  We currently have small sweet peppers, mangoes, yucca, and otoi, but our yard is huge and has so much potential.

We just started planting seedlings for our future raised beds, and we are creating raised beds in the hopes that they don’t completely wash away during the winter rains here* It is more difficult to find seeds here, so I bought seeds when I was in the US for just about anything you could imagine.

Morgan and I are heading up the garden effort, and we just planted a ton of seedlings. Taking a seed out of a packet is a weird experience if you have never done it before. A small envelope no larger than an index card houses the seeds. Peering into the envelopes, some seeds are no larger than a small freckle. For me it was difficult to fathom that such a small fragile speck begets life. Everything we as humans depends on comes from seed.

It is easy to forget this simple and obvious fact if you grow up in a urban or suburban environment. There is no consciousness what it means to eat an animal or vegetable and the time and effort it takes from seed to harvest. We are just starting to see our first sprouts, and I was amazed when I saw the first ones emerging from the soil. It seems simple–plant seeds–water seeds– and then they will grow. I don’t know why, but for some reason I was not completely sure I believed they would grow.

Once our seedlings are a little bit bigger we will plant them in our raised beds and hope they grow and thrive.  It will be up to the future interns to care for the garden and make sure it thrives.

*Seasons are reversed here. Summer(dry season) is January through April-ish, and winter(rainy season) is April-ish through December.