Bowdoin Organic Garden

Story posted April 14, 2009

I have just returned from 3 months in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Tanzania, where it is hot hot hot and dry dry dry.  I'm still adjusting to the comparatively cold and damp early Maine spring.  While in southern and eastern Africa, I travelled around the Namib desert, Okavango Delta, Victoria Falls, Mt Kilimanjaro, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Serengeti National Park, Lake Victoria and Zanzibar.  I WWOOFed at a market farm in Windhoek, Namibia and learned that Namibians term any green leafy vegetable "spinach". I visited many farmers in Tanzania (practically everyone grows their own food and is therefore a farmer), and learned how to carry water on my head and propagate papaya trees and cassava, among other things.  I also decided that some day I want to have a greenhouse that can grow vanilla orchids!  

The BOG is starting up it's 6th season (my 5th) with furious seeding in the Druckenmiller greenhouse.  So far we have planted tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cabbage, lettuce heads, spring broccoli, kohlrabi, annual herbs and flowers, onions and leeks.  I am most excited about the beautiful Pirat lettuce heads (they look like a marbled green and pink ball) and Sweet Thai basil that was a suggestion from Thai student Champ.