A Caribbean Garden

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Here is the state of the kitchen garden 10 weeks after seed sowing:

Tomato plants at 4 weeks-on the day of transplant

Costuluto flowers

Yes we have baby tomatoes (Italian Pompeii from Renee's Garden)

Salad leaves

Radish

Cooking greens

Basil, dill, cilantro



While I normally refrain from unpleasant observations in my blog-as I have enough of that in my work-I thought this might be a useful platform to urge people in tropical countries and especially the Caribbean to start a kitchen garden.

While the northern gardeners must be a little envious of the quick growth rate and year round gardening, the reality is that most middle class people in tropical post-colonial countries, including the Caribbean, do not at all have kitchen gardens. That’s because many people have been brainwashed by slavery and colonialism to believe-get this-that kitchen gardening, and agriculture in general, is a low-class thing to do. There is literally a stigma attached to vegetable gardening!

No wonder many islands of the Caribbean, including those blessed with perfect sunshine, rainfall and rich soils-the ones you just have to throw a seed in the ground and it grows-import a huge percentage of their food.

Years ago, in my Convent high school in Trinidad, when I carried fresh produce from my grandparents for classmates, the majority of them reacted with scornful disdain and refusal. Some literally fled, as if proximity with fresh produce will contaminate them.

If you can’t believe this, perhaps another anecdote will convince you:
At a charity modeling show in high school someone told me afterwards several of the nasty comments made by the girls in my class. As I walked on stage in a floral dress, they were sniggering: “look, that’s the dress Nicole wears in her garden hahaha”. That was actually meant as a put down. Sad to say, in some islands many people's attitudes havent evolved much from those days.

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