HOUSTON—Volunteers and members of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) came together once again to plant a fall/winter crop at AAPDEP 5th Ward Community Garden in Houston, Texas, during the last two weekends in September and the first weekend in October, 2015..
This fall/winter planting marks the sixth consecutive year that the garden has been planted.
Last year was our best fall/winter crop with most of the garden’s rows consisting of mustard, collard, and turnip greens.
Although a number of other vegetables were planted, the greens were awesome. The community ate greens the whole winter long.
This year we are therefore going with 15 rows of mustards, five rows of turnip-mustard, ten rows of kale, ten rows collards, and two raised beds of cabbage, two raised beds of peppers, and two raised beds of egg-plant which survived the year long.
All of these rows and raised beds have already been planted. We want to get the YES school kids over to plant the remaining ones.
Work is primary
Those three weekends of garden work means that we had to initially clear the garden of all weeds and leftovers from the spring/summer planting.
This took lawnmowers, hoes, shovels and an assortment of other garden tools. The most important force, however, was the human labor power it took to work these tools.
The following weekends consisted of tilling the land and turning over the dirt. It seems that our dirt is really enriching itself with our organic planting. After tilling and building the rows, the following weekend was used to plant the different seeds.
We used the three thousand gallon rain water-harvesting tank to water the garden, after planting the seeds.
Working together to feed ourselves
We will still have to work in the garden consistently to keep it weeded, watered and monitored.
In addition to community people, comrades from the Black Panther Party Alumni-Houston and the National Black United Front also came out and enjoyed the outing.
There were great political discussions which definitely brought the different organizations closer together to do joint work in our great freedom struggle.
So with the pit smoking and a good meal and refreshments waiting, it was actually a fun outing in addition to a guarantee of community food in a couple of months.
This was real practice in teaching the people that we can feed ourselves!
This year we will set up the One Africa! One Nation! Marketplace where we will sell the garden produce and bring in other African vendors to market their goods.
Economic and food self-reliance is the end goal of the AAPDEP 5th Ward Community Garden and we are determined to reach that goal!
Go to houston@developmentforafrica.org for more information on how you can help and to make much needed donations.
Visit our Houston AAPDEP Facebook page or you can come by the 5th Ward community Garden at 3707 Brill Street, Houston, Texas or call 214-707-7309.
