Tag: African Keyhole Garden

Keyhole Garden Rebuilding at Clanfield

Many of our Ugandan readers will be unaware that in February the UK experienced violent storms (Storm Eunice) that resulted in all schools in Hampshire. Unfortunately, a result of this was that the Clanfield keyhole garden was destroyed. However, Miss Brown has sent a photo of the rebuilt garden frame and a short report from the Clanfield eco – council.

The CJS Eco Council have been busy adding more to their key hole garden. Our focus this time was adding some wooden panels to the inside of the structure do that the compost doesn’t fall out. We had to measure the size accurately and then use screws to hold them in place. We’re making excellent progress and should be ready to plant very soon!

The rebuilt keyhole garden at Clanfield

Crops growing well at Kafuro

Mr Thembo has been in touch again recently to share more photos of the growing crops at Kafuro. They have been adding muich, spraying with chemicals to avoid diseases and making sure that the plants are well watered every day.

The water melon crop is being looked after in Kafuro

Amazing work with the African Keyhole Garden at Rihamu

Rihamu Junior School always take on any new challenge wholeheartedly and creating an African Keyhole garden as part of the Connecting Classrooms work we began last year has taken their commitment to a whole new level.

The first thing Madame Shakilah mentioned was how the pupils found the project so interesting. The children were very excited to do the farming and the garden is looking beautiful already! They decided to plant only vegetables! The teachers and the children grouped and named these vegetables according to their species. And these include:-
Cabbage kingdom
Tomato camp
Egg plant yard
Green pepper zone and
Onion ridges..
It was a beautiful moment for the children to plant these vegetables and are they are promising to take care, always water them in the morning and evening.

Building and planting the keyhole garden
Laying bricks
Planting vegetables

Since then, growth has been steady and Madame Shakilah sent the following photos of the different zones.

The vegetables are all growing well.
A quick tour of the vegetable zones

We look forward to seeing how the zones develop over the coming weeks.

Kafuro’s return to school

It’s been some time since we were able to update you on Kafuro Primary School, but Mr Stanley has spoken to Mr Thembo over the past week and we now have plenty of news.

Firstly, pupils returned to school on January 10th after nearly two years without any school attendance. The only pupils who have attended were last year’s P7 who returned for a brief time before their PLE (Primary Leaving Examinations). One of the questions that the children at Liss have asked regularly has been about the learning that children have had at home. It has been explained to them that the pupils have had no access to remote learning – no one has laptops, and although there is internet in the area it is 3G and very slow. The school has been unable to send workpacks either as they do not have a photocopier – some secondary schools have access to them but primary do not. Consequently, the pupils have had almost two years of lost learning. This places what has happened to education in the UK into a bit more context.

Another frustration for the staff and pupils in Kafuro is that Covid cases have been virtually non – existent. The remoteness of the community has obviously been a positive factor in this, but the school has been unable to open because of government rules.

The teaching staff underwent training similar to that in the UK about how to reintegrate the pupils back into school and to recover lost learning. Initially, attendance was very poor, but has picked up quickly and Mr Thembo said it was currently at about 98%.

Regular readers of the blog will be aware that one of the projects based around our last round of Connecting Classrooms funding was building an African Keyhole Garden. As you can see from the photos below, ground has been prepared in two areas around the school but nothing has been planted yet as the weather is so hot at the moment that straw has been spread out over the surface in order to stop moisture from evaporating. Mr Thembo said that they have planted banana suckers (these will grow into teees) in different parts of the school campus as banan trees are highly drought resistant.

March 18th update: Mr Thembo has been in touch to say that the children at Kafuro have been planting water melons – not something we could realistically grow at Liss. Mr Thembo said that the seedlings have to be heavily watered at the beginning and the end of the day because it is so hot in Uganda at the moment that if they were to water in the middle of the day the water would just evaporate. They are also planting some cabbage seeds which is more like the crops we would grow in the UK.

  • Banana Suckers
  • The area marked out for the keyhole garden
  • Staff Training
  • Children preparing the ground
  • Planting seedlings
  • The seedlings need lots of water

Clanfield’s Keyhole Garden gets underway

Ignoring the cold January weather, the eco – council at Clanfield Junior School has begun the construction of their own keyhole garden this week. One of the most interesting things about the keyhole gardens is how each school interprets the design and comes up with their own ideas. Clanfield have used pallets to form the frame of their garden.

What is also clear is that there has been a lot of time spent planning and measuring out their garden. The eco – council will be continuing their work at the beginning of February and we look forward to seeing the final completed garden.

We are also now looking forward to seeing the Ugandan keyhole gardens as after nearly two years without school, the Ugandan pupils returned on Monday.

Completing our African Keyhole Garden

This morning, Year 3 pupils with the assistance of Mr Stanley and Mr Haycock completed the building of our African keyhole garden. The first task was to complete the second course of bricks so we moved them down to the garden site so Mr Haycok could lay them in the correct place. After that, we had the task of adding compost to the garden. Mr Haycock has been piling up leaf litter for the past couple of years and much of it has broken down into excellent compost. Half the pupils went with Mr Stanley armed with forks, trowels and wheelbarrows to collect the compost, while the others remained with Mr Haycock to spread and stamp down the compost when it arrived.

By the end of the morning, we had moved most of one of the big piles of compost into the garden. We now need to leave it to rot down further before adding more in the spring. Mr Haycock and Mr Stanley just need to put a bit of render around some of the bricks to keep them secure.

In the Spring we will also create a willow basket that we will place in the keyhole garden. Food waste will be placed in the basket which will then rot and provide nutrients for the soil.

We aim to plant vegetables in late May/beginning of June and then Year 2 will be responsible for growing and maintaining the crops. We are very excited to see what the Kafuro pupils decide to grow when they build their keyhole garden hopefully in the New Year.

  • The garden is now going to be left until the spring before we add more compost

Building of African Keyhole Garden begins

After many delays, we finally began construction of our African Keyhole garden today. The Liss design is not quite the same as the circular gardens that you see on the internet, but has been configured to match the available space in our school grounds.

Year 3 children from Ash and Oak classes came and worked with Mr Stanley and Mr Haycock to dig out a trench to lay our bricks. This involved moving lots of earth around with trowels and spades. When this was done, The children worked with Mr Stanley to fetch bricks and bring them to the site of the garden where Mr Haycock arranged them into courses at a 45o angle.

By the end of the morning, 60% of the work had been completed. Next week we hope to lay the remaining courses, fit a willow cylinder to house compost which will spread nutrients in the soil and add more earth to the garden so it is ready to be planted in the spring months.