In January this year Goducate Laguna rented an area of 1 hectare to expand its vermiculture and fertilizer project to meet growing demand (see blog, Aug 5).
This expansion gave 6 Goducate scholars the opportunity to work for 2 months (May and June) to earn some money for the academic year that started in August. And at weekends other teenagers drop by for some part-time work. They are often taught how to plant vegetable seedlings, which they can take home to plant there, or to sell off.
We grow eggplant, bitter gourd, ladies’ fingers, corn, cucumber, peppers, papaya and string beans. We have also started to culture mushrooms. We started with 1000 fruiting bags in May, and for the past 2 months we have been harvesting an average of 2-3kg / day. We are hoping to add 2000 more fruiting bags.
We hope to conduct educational tours at our farm, showing schoolchildren how to produce organic fertilizers and to grow organic vegetables. We also plan to teach them how to make use of every space available at home, whether by adopting horizontal or vertical farming as well as container farming.
