Herb fertilisers are a cheap, efficient and easy way to recycle waste and give your plants some of the vital nutrients they need for root, fruit and seed production.
Rasta Farmer Boi
Companion Planting for Natural Pest Control
As soon as you spray any chemical pesticide or herbicide in your garden you also kill of the beneficial insects that can help keep you garden in balance. They will keep the harmful pests at bay for you but if you kill them off you just have to keep using these harmful chemicals.
Coconuts are Dying
In the sixties coconuts still thrived in Jamaica and next to water were the staple of life. The people of Long Bay Portland Jamaica thrived on the industry they provided and the natural medicine that kept them very healthy.
Rasta Yam Harvest
It requires a lot of skill and patience, not to mention hard work and you are rewarded with a harvest of yam to eat. The top where the shoot was is the part you plant again and the rest is what you eat.
Local Foods Seed Bank for slow food
Local foods and seed banks are more important than ever. Community Gardens in cities, towns and villages are making a valiant attempt to set up Community Seed banks for locally adapted varieties of food plants.
Rasta Local planting guide to assist Growers
It makes perfect sense to support your local food production. Sending food thousands of miles is not logical. It means that the food loses its nutritional value and with all the pollutants our bodies are having to deal with we need all the nutrition we can get these days.
Grow Beans in your Rasta Garden
There is nothing better than growing your own beans. They are simple to grow, easy to harvest and delicious to eat.
Cinderella Pumpkin – Grow your own
Follow these basic rules. Only grow one Cucubita maxima species in your garden. This way it is isolated from other pumpkins. If you are in a suburban area check that your neighbours aren’t growing other varieties of pumpkin nearby to avoid cross-pollination.
Solar Power – Plug into the Sun
It is time to think of ways to cut the electricity bill. If you don’t have a large amount of money to set up a full solar power system, solar power for lights and cooking are two easy ways to make a significant difference to the power bill.
Get Rid of GMO in our Food
GMO is hiding away in so many plants now it is very frightening. Science is not a strong point for a lot of people so the complexities of these processes often go unnoticed and companies like Syngenta and Bayer (formerly Monsanto} want it that way. The less we know and understand the better.
Dill Seed once worth more than Gold
Dill was once known as the beauty herb. Before the days of crash diets, health spas and diet pills, when a woman was expected to retain her youthful figure after bearing eight or more children, dill seed was used to maintain a lithe svelte figure.
Dudus the scapegoat in a hidden agenda for Jamaica
Dudus or Christopher Michael Coke was arrested in 2010. A violent criminal and drug lord, he rose from extreme poverty to great wealth and was educated by the elite.
Organic Farming Ban by Stealth
Organic farming ban on food! Who would have ever thought it possible. With so many people in the world reliant on growing their own food and saving their own seed to do it, it is alarming to say the least to realise that a bill is being put forward in the United States in the next ten days to ban organic farming.
Faith as a Grain of Mustard Seed
Mustard has a tiny seed and grows into a delicious Green to eat Mustard is a very under rated vegetable in these times of escalating food prices and food shortages. It is a hardy little plant and easy to grow as well as conditioning your soil while it is growing. The...
Pigeon Pea or Gungu Bean a staple food for humble Rasta Garden
As a food crop Gungu Bean is usually grown as an annual plant, but it is a perennial and will grow for several years into small trees.It is an excellent for planting with cereals and other crops.
Marigolds Tagetes species very useful plants for your Rasta Garden
Marigolds are also said to act as a decoy for lots of other garden pests and planting a variety of plants creates natural balance in the garden of beneficial insects and non-beneficial insects.
Rasta Subtropical Vegetable Planting Guide
Spring is a very special time for gardeners.It is not called the growing season for nothing and is time to get into your Rasta garden and start planting your home grown ital organic vegetables.
Usain Bolt striking a Lightning Bolt for Jamaicans Worldwide
Usain Bolt a model for Jamaicans Usain Bolt is a lightning bolt and his run in the 100m and 200m sprints at Beijing put Jamaica in the world spotlight. This twenty two year old superstar has the spirit of a lion and speed enough to shatter two world records and put...
Reggae Music Catching a Fire all over the World
Reggae music is hot. Whether you are a lover or a resistor, this genre has something for everyone. It is the rhythm of life, people working, people moving.
Fruit Tree Planting Guide for the Subtropics
Fruit tree planting guide including nut trees for anyone who is thinking of setting up their own family garden plot so they can grow their own fruit and vegetables.
Jah Blue Pepper Hot Jamaican Chilli
This really is an extraordinary chilli and although dangerously hot is delicious. Take out the seeds and make sure you wash your hands after handling it.
How to Sow Seed for your Rasta Garden
Open pollinated seeds are seeds that you can grow again from seed. If you select from the best plant the genetic traits that make it a good plant will have a good chance of occurring in the next generation.
Svalbard Seed Bank is not Protecting Diversity of Food Crops
Svalbard Seed Bank is about putting diversity away, in case of some hypothetic emergency. That’s ok as a backup but the real urgency, however, is to let diversity live — in farms, in the hand of farmers, and across people-controlled and community-oriented markets — today
Ethiopian Food Security Revolution Organic Production of Soil
Ethiopian Food Security is benefitting from the production of compost for fertility instead of chemical fertilsers. Food tastes better and is higher in nutrition. Soil erosion reduces and water holding capacity increases.
Jamaican Calaloo Amaranth Plant
What is Amaranth? Leaf amaranth grows all over the world but is prominent among Jamaican plants and is cooked like spinach or silverbeet.
Fidel Castro leaves a Cuba Organic Farming Model for the rest of the world to follow
Large quantities of vegetables, root crops, grains, and fruits are produced, as well as milk, meat, fish eggs and herbs. In addition, suburban farms are intensively cultivated with emphasis on efficient water use and maximum reduction of agricultural toxins; these are very important in Havana, Santa Clara, Sancti Spiritus, Camaguey, and Santiago de Cuba.
Jamaican Rum Punch made with Sorrel Hibiscus sabdariffa
Rosella or ‘ Sorrel’, as it is commonly known in the West Indies, is an annual plant, that is a plant that germinates from seed, flowers and fruits in one year, then dies off.It grows to a height of about two metres in good conditions, but is very hardy.
Rasta Ground Provisions for a Healthy Nutritious Ital Diet
Ground Provisions provide a staple food and ensure nutrition in times of scarcity as all are grown underground and store food in their swollen modified roots and stems.
Saving Indigenous Mother Corn Seed
Perhaps the most symbol-laden plant on the planet, native corn has become the mine canary for globalisation plans in the countryside. If it dies, it means a life-and-death battle has been lost.
Sunflowers attract the precious bees to your Rasta Garden
Sunflowers have been cultivated for over 3000 years and are natives of Utah and Arizona.
Moon Gardening for Success
Just as the gravitational forces of the moon pull the tides of the ocean, it also pulls upon the more subtle bodies of water, causing the moisture in the soil to rise and fall.
How to make compost
Produced through the decay of organic matter, compost or humus, is the most efficient and practical fertilizer known to man.
Growing Luffa sponge
The smooth Luffa is also known as the vegetable sponge or dishcloth gourd. A rapidly growing annual climber with a large fruit containing small black seeds.
Wangari in Kenya and Reforestation project
Thirty years ago, in the country of Kenya, 90% of the forest had been chopped down. Without trees to hold the topsoil in place, the land became like a desert.
Ethiopian Cabbage for your Rasta Garden
Ethiopian Cabbage is a beautiful large open leafed cabbage that grows to a height of about 1.5m and a width of about 1m with small yellow flowers.
Rastas Grow Okra from Ethiopia
Okra is a delicious vegetable that originated in Eritrea in Ethiopia and parts of the Sudan, Mali and Burkina Faso. It spread further north in Africa, and across to India very early.