9 2 16 Gako farm and microbial science tutorial

We had two new people arriving for breakfast, Carlos an expert in soil microbial science,from Madrid, and our friend Paul Manweiler head of Life works global, a charity he had set up. Lifeworks global
They were here to head up a two week training course at Gako farm an ecological training farm set up by send-a-cow  another charity which we support in our church. send a cow.
Gako was founded by a wonderwul Rwandan gentleman called  Richard Munyerango he is inspirational as is his farm. Rwanda has a policy of developing organic farming Overview of organic farming
I had the privilege of joining Paul and Carlos together with Peter and his lovely new wife, who I was introduced to for the first time.
Richard started the farm in 2001 since then he has totally changed the soil structure, colour and function. He has turned it into a fertile loam which is very productive all the plants look healthy there is little evidence of any disease on the leaves. He uses raised beds which stops compaction of the soil and there are plenty of cattle and pigs to help produce the compost.
We then went back to the class room where there were the usual introductions and speeches before we launched into a very interesting presentation by Carlos.
His talk was about the basic needs of plants and how they could be improved by the use of natural manures provided by composting and  the addition of beneficial bacteria. Beneficial can have many different effects which are good for the plant, they help fix nitrogen such as the in the root nodules of legumes and they help break down compost. benefits of soil bacteria One of the major problems in African soils is the lack of available phosphates. Although there is plenty of phosphate in the soil it is fixed to other minerals and is in a form unavailable to plants.Adding expensive phosphate fertilizer does little to help as the majority of this is fixed in an unavailable form again, and can in fact poison the soil.sustainability of phosphorus fertiliser 
We saw trials which were going on at Gako comparing control bed s with added compost and compost plus microbes, the later plot looked very good.

Tower rabbit hutch to save space on small piece of land

Sack garden full of compost again saving space

One of the trial plots microbes plus compost

  

Grass cutting, the animals are zero grazed that is the cows are inside and grass brought to them. All the manure can be collected and also they are protected from diseases and theft.