Slowly...we grow!

I can’t imagine how fast the time was. It’s been a year now since we started the Sharing Garden project. To be honest, during those many months we've only accomplished very few things and we haven’t seen the results we've expected. But anyway it’s not the end, perhaps three more months and we will be able to plant more vegetables again with all those organic compost that we've prepared. 

Doing our own solution to the problem of soil is a wonderful thing especially when you do it with organic method. As for now, banana peel and cow dung are the main materials that we are using. Of course it doesn't guarantee plentiful harvest but I’m sure this will help a lot. I’m sure most of the people who tried it knew that gardening is not easy, especially when you don’t have enough people to help. I remember how motivated we were back then, not worrying about how will the hard works affect our health. We did many things; from removing large portions of weeds to digging out plastics/garbage from the soil. I know it sucks but that's the kind of stupidity some of the people has, not only here in our area but in many places as well. 

Some other works we do related to this project are: collecting banana peels from the market, collecting cow dung from the fields, giving small discussions about health, ecology, alternative community and organic gardening, organizing film screenings and cultural presentation, writing to other groups/networking, doing information campaigns and street leafleting, gardening video distribution and of course, fund raising. 

Mixing banana peel and cow dung for another pile of compost

Photo exhibit on the street about organic gardening and alternative community building 

Musical performance by EMPATHY at KU community center  

Sometimes children come visit to play and help with the small works and we are glad to do gardening with them. Our  hope is that in the future they will realize the importance of this project and will continue to spread the sharing garden idea! 

Before we end this post, we are happy to share more of these good photos that we took during those past few weeks of volunteer actions. Some of you people know that as of this moment, Mindanao is still suffering the impact of the typhoon "pablo" and many groups/individuals are giving most of their time and energy just to help their fellows survive and continue living. We here at the Sharing Garden are doing our best to help them; trying to organize fund raising events and collecting stuff for relief while also continue working for the projects and activities related to our campaigns. As of now, there is endless rain in Davao and many families are currently staying in the evacuation centers because of flood. As concerned volunteers, we are now thinking of possible ways to help them. So please follow our blog or contact us (organic_city@yahoo.com) for updates and possible collaboration. Thanks! 

That's all for now. Please wait for more photos and updates of our latest gardening activities together with the volunteers from Luzon/Manila. Thank you very much!