Category Archives: permaculture

Garden update from Busoga

In May/ June 2017 25 PDC students produced a garden design for Busoga high school, on the final day of course we planted the garden and entrusted it to the school to look after it.

Thanks to the hard work of teacher Connie Kauna and her pupils the Busoga High School forest garden has survived the dry season and is enjoying some rains. All the key plants and trees that were establshed have surived and we hope to build on this success next time we visit.

Planting the first banana guild at Busoga High School

The Welsh Government has supported permaculture pioneers Sector39 through the HubAfricaCymru programme to support permaculture education in East Africa

Where Welsh,  Ugandan and Kenyan partners are collaborating to develop an exciting programme of activities actively building links between schools in Wales and Africa. The intenion is that by linking environmental, social and climate change work in a  think global, act local inspired project we can create real outcomes and interactions between partners shools.

Project partners are working together  to incorporate the permaculture design pricniples into the core school curriculum and are developng ways to do this.

As part of our recent PDC we ran this practrical at the school with the 25 participants for the course.

Here is a 7 minute video and commentary from our first practical visit to the schol on our two week permaculture course. We designed and planted a banana tree guild at the school, demonstrting water  capture and infiltration, benefical relationships between plants and encouraging the use of cmpost and mulch to maintain high levels of soil carbon. We also demostrated a couple fo eacy techniques fro making biochar for use in such growing systems.

sabina permaculture advert

Advert of the up coming PDC and Convergence at Sabina School, in 2018


Instructions to the students at Busoga!

  • Keep the mulch pit full of organic matter!
  • Keep the soil covered with mulch
  • Try adding different species to the guild if ever any gaps appear and the guild should keep on producing for years!

Making compost from waste materials

Abraham, for the PDCUG17 course published these step by step pictures of making compost on the permaculture project in Kenya. He hopes the students at Busoga will be inspired to copy his excellent example. Feeding compost to the fruit trees improves the soil life, opens us the soil to recieve rain water and helps the soil retain moistute. Compost is the secret to building a healthy and strong soil

compost gif

Photo animation of compost making by Omito Abraham Owuor in Homa Bay Kenya

Notice how they mix layers of carbon (brwon matter) with layers of green (nitrogen) whilst adding lots of water to keep it nice and moist. This will make an excellent compost in 5 to 8 weeks. You will know if it is working well if it builds ap a heat of 60 + degrees inside after a few days. You can check by placing yhour hand inside. At 60 degree C it will be too hot to keep you hand inside for more than a few short moments.

Permaculture message from One School One Planet

Sector39 and partners Permaculture Research Institute of Uganda came together in May this year to form a new association to promote permaculture education in Uganda. Togehter we are also support the One School One Planet initiative to link schools together who want to bring practical permaculture education into their school work and to share idas and learning across a network of schools.

The One School One Planet network has 2 founding members:

  • Llanfyllin High School, in Mid Wales
  • Busoga high school, Kamuli, Uganda

This week we presented to 60 head teachers in the Masaka district inviting mroe schools to join the network and find ays to work with us. We visited St Jude’s Masaka and received a humbling welcome from the 1000 students.

oneschooloneplanet

PDC messages to One School One Planet members at Busoga

Creating a positive change from Uganda to UK to the World!

Head teacher Madam Oliver with Madam Connie and permaculture tutor Mr Steve Jones from Wales UK, meet to plan the launch of permaculture at Busoga High School

#OneSchoolOnePlanet

Part of the ‘Saving the Planet One School at a Time’ project. which started Llanfyllin, Wales UK

Climate change, Oil depletion, top soil loss and deforestation all have the same causes, humankinds failure to really understand the nature of our living planet. The One School One Planet project seeks to link schools around the world discovering common themes and common ways we can support each other to reduce poverty, soil loss and to create new ways to create food security and incomes and job opportunites for students.

We have the support of the permanent secretary to the Vice President. We met in Kampala in May to discuss our project ambitions

Permaculture is design system that was developed by an Australia forester and ecologist called Bill Mollison. He travelled teh world to meet people from all nations who hade developed techniques to restore degrated lands and learned that by understand the principles of how natural systems work we can find ways to restor abundnace to any part of the land. These ideas could not be more importnat than they are today as the world’s populations continues to grow, the forest shrink the soils become exhausted by acriculture and farming practices based around tillage, artificial fertilisers and pesticides.

The problems of the world are becoming increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrasingly simple. Bill Mollison

Permaculture Designers Manual

Chapter 10 of the permaculture designers manual covers the humid tropics and is full of ideas of how to work the land here in Uganda in line with natural pricniples, using what we have available to us already

The Sector39/ PRI-UG came to tehschool during the break an dmeasured up the area behind the Kampala house classroom where the school forest garden will be planted.

busoga base map

permaculture design always starts with a plan

This is the base map drawing the team made to begin our design ideas for the Busoga Food Forest. We hope the students will be caring for it as it develops and adding plants and more to make it something they can be proud of.