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| Chinnam and Sai use paras to dig their plot. |
Prem Nivas is an area with water retentive clay soil suitable for rice growing. (Rice 'paddy' has to spend three months growing standing in water).To convert it to a vegetable growing medium meant a lot of hard digging and weeding by the children. They use a 'para' to dig with - a spade shaped blade at right angles to the short wooden handle - and bent double they hack at the dried up mud to break it up. We added water to help the digging. I can't do this kind of digging any more and have to keep encouraging the older children as they work on their 10ft square plots. Younger boys help dig out the weeds and smooth the surface with a 'panja' ready for seed sewing. Hari told me that the girls do the weeding of the plots later on in the growing season.
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| Hari uses a triangular bladed tool to make the seed drills. |
The children were asked to plant spinach, aubergines and lady's fingers and some wanted to plant tomato seeds too. Two children decided to forsake the straight lines and made patterns with their seed sewing. I showed the plot owners how they could alternate the plants to give each large plant more space. Some remembered!
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| Santosh recruited Bhagwan to clean his plot! |
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| Durga uses an iron pole to break up the hard soil on a new plot for spinach. |
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| Giri is the best of the younger workers, he used to go with his father to work as an agricultural labourer. |
In the previously uncultivated land we made a 30 ft.long bed exclusively for beans, of which we had three kinds. All grow upwards but are of differing colours and shapes. The boys made a little ditch on each side of the bean bed that could be filled with water from the nearby new hand pump bore well. This ditch was also used to water the four banana trees that were growing nearby. There are several newly planted fruit trees in this walled garden area.
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| Govind is also a good worker and helps his brother Ramesh. |
The garden area nearest the kitchen was selected to grow coriander and tomatoes, plus some beetroot.
Everything should be up by now so I hope the children are remembering the watering!
