In my bouts of waking, I would listen to the pups mewl (they can't really bark or howl yet, thank God) in response to the lashing rain. That sounds really hard, leaving the four of them out in the elements, but I will be giving them away to people who have even less sympathies for canines. The dogs will, as they say here, get used.
The rain, though too early for planting, was opportunely timed for me. In July, I dug 20-some lines of planting basins in my largish backyard in an attempt to show empathy with the beneficiary farmers to whom I'm responsible. Unfortunately, as our soil has a sand (large grain) composition of 90-95%, meaning it's like digging hole in a beach ... they tend to not retain any shape for long due to wind, the looseness of the soil, the packs of dogs that transit through my backyard, etc. So, all my holes had somehow slumped, and I haven't had time to put anything in them (in terms of organic inputs).
The hard rain was opportune because it hardened up the soil enough for me to dig out the basins early Sunday morning and backfill half of them with the charcoal (bio-char) I've been making in a piecemeal fashion since June. I say half, as I want to do some side-to-side comparisons of the growth of two or three purchased maize varieties:
- A hybrid [Pannar 53]
- An open-pollinated variety OPV [ZamSeed 521]\
- A mixed bag of traditional varieties [mbonyi a sizo])
I'm not sure if my charcoal will last, but I may extend the experiment to the other half of my plot, where I intend to grow four or five varieties of beans:
- Haricot beans
- Sugar beans (Pan 148)
- Pinto beans
- Velvet beans
- Jack beans
And groundnuts:
- Natal common (more common in Southern Zambia)
- Chishango (what we promote with our farmers)
- An unnamed white variety
- MGV4 (a red variety)
Though it's not a scientific experiment, it will be something to look at down the line.
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