Our staff in Chad have been teaching people living in refugee camps there how to grow sack gardens. It’s a great way to improve a family’s diet by adding fresh vegetables with less water needed than a typical garden.
Since spring is a time many people are thinking about gardening, we thought we’d share these instructions for growing your own sack garden! If you do, please share it with us! We’ll be sure to share how things are growing in Chad too.
Our agronomists first learned about sack gardens from Manor House Agricultural Centre in Kenya, and we learned more about various container and urban gardening methods at ECHO Global Farm. These instructions have been pulled from Gardens From Health.
- A burlap or plastic sack (we use discarded food aid sacks, which make perfect sack gardens, especially for symbolic reasons)
- Soil mixed with organic compost
- Rocks for irrigation
- A cylindrical bucket or tin, open on both ends (we use seed tins or vegetable oil tins, but a coffee can would work well too)
2. Surround the tin with more soil, and slowly lift it up, so that the rocks remain.
4. Poke holes into the side of the sack an even distance apart.
6. You can try direct seeding beets, carrots or other vegetables or herbs in the top of the sack.
For more information on how World Concern is improving nutrition in impoverished countries, please visit www.worldconcern.org/poverty.