Former ECHO Staffer Learns About Life ‘On the Other Side’

Dr. Grace Ju Miller, Seed Bank Director at ECHO from 2002 to 2006, is finding out what it’s like to be on the receiving end of ECHO’s agricultural ministry.

She and her husband, Garth, are mid-way through their two year teaching assignment at an orphanage in Morocco. Set in the mid-Atlas mountains, at the same elevation as Denver, the American-run school offers a curriculum in French, Arabic and English.

Grace teaches high-school biology, introducing her students to many of the ideas used at ECHO. She especially emphasizes sustainable agriculture and the appropriate use of resources, plus the importance of composting and recycling.

Asked whether she uses ECHO as a resource, she laughs. ‘After all those years of writing plant information sheets and technical articles, now I see what it’s like to be on the other side.’ Grace regularly receives ECHO’s technical bulletin, ECHO Development Notes, plus seeds from the seed bank. She also requested a Chapin drip irrigation system, which she uses in the orphanage garden plots to grow tomatoes, hot peppers, bok choi and moringa as an annual.

Follow the Miller family on their blog www.4morocco.blogspot.com.

Gregariously Flowering Bamboo a Rarity at ECHO

In the bamboo world, gregarious flowering is a rare phenomenon. Over a period of time, sometimes as little as two years, the bamboo plant flowers and produces large volumes of viable seeds. In the process, the bamboo plant becomes exhausted, and most die from the strain, leaving only the seed to carry on the genetic lineage.

What is especially fascinating about this phenomenon is that during a gregarious flowering cycle, a single variation or cultivar of a species will flower all over the world at the same time. In 1994, thousands of acres of a Thai cultivar of Dendrocalamus asper – pai tong keo – flowered in Southeast Asia. Plants of the same cultivar planted in Australia flowered simultaneously. This is a good reminder of the dangers of monocropping any type of plant.

At ECHO, we recently had the chance to witness our own gregarious flowering of the Bambusa tulda, or Punting Pole Bamboo. Most gregarious bamboos have a flowering cycle of between 30 and 120 years, so it was a rare and exciting spectacle to see. Interestingly, none of the seed was viable.

What are those pots for?

People were curious about rows of pots on the surface of raised beds. They were placed that way as part of a seed planting technique used quite frequently at ECHO. A seed is planted in the ground, and a pot (top photo) is placed over that spot. Once all the seeds and pots are in place, the beds are covered with mulch. The pots keep the mulch from covering the seeds. In this case, the pots were removed after moringa seed had germinated (bottom photo).

Pumpkin in a Tree

This interesting sight was photographed in the rainforest area of ECHO's Global Village (demonstration farm). It is a volunteer pumpkin plant, the vines of which had climbed an oak tree. The result was a pumpkin in a rather unlikely spot. There are probably a number of tree/vegetable combinations like this that could
be applied on purpose as opposed to by accident.

Au Sable Students Complete Course

The Au Sable Institute coordinates more than 35 field courses each summer for students from about 80 Christian colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada. One of these courses, 'Tropical Agriculture and Missions', is offered for three weeks in May/June each year at ECHO.

This year, 10 students from nine schools took the class. Besides the professor of record, Dave Unander from the Department of Biology at Eastern University in Philadelphia, ECHO technical staff, including Danny Blank, Angela Boss, Stan and Beth Doerr, Bob Hargrave, Tim Motis, Martin Price and Larry Yarger taught units in their expertise. For example, Angela introduced fruit tree grafting and Larry had the students work through a typical slope stabilization problem.

Assignments included the choice of a term paper or formal lecture. About half the class chose the lecture format, including Larissa Malik, a senior at Cedarville University in Ohio, who presented her seminar on edible insects.

Edible insects are a nutritious food source that 80% of the world's population sometimes eats. She looked to the Bible for inspiration, quoting from Leviticus 11:22, Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.

Larissa herself has experienced dining on the many-legged critters: she once ate a June bug at band camp for $5. She said it tasted like 'gooey grass' and wasn't all that bad. She reminded the assembled students, many who plan a career in the missions field, to remember bugs when thinking about available food sources.

-- Article by David Unander & Artis Henderson
-- Photos by David Unander

Yardlong Bean Pods a Yard Long!

Yardlong Bean (Vigna unguiculata ssp. sesquipedalis), also known as Asparagus Bean, is thought to originate in southern China and is an annual, climbing legume known for its extra long pods. It is a popular vegetable in Southeast Asia and has been introduced to many tropical countries as a garden vegetable.

Recently, we've been trialing a number of varieties on our demonstration farm. Mainly, we were interested in finding out which varieties produce the most pods. However, we've also been observing pod length, the reason being that few if any of us at ECHO had ever seen a Yardlong bean pod that was actually a yard long. Usually, they reach about 20 inches. A newly acquired variety, 'Taiwan Black', surpassed our expectations and has produced several pods at or over 36 inches (see photo of 40-inch pod- left). Another variety, 'Guilin' (photo on right), seems to be the most prolific in terms of pod number.

US gardeners can purchase Yardlong beans from our bookstore. They can grow in more northern climates as long as they are planted early enough in the spring/summer. Members of our overseas network of development workers may request seeds by email (echo@echonet.org) or letter.

Update from Former Student Olivier Paris-Leclerc

In less than two weeks, Olivier Paris-Leclerc will head to the Islamic nation of Mauritania in West Africa as an environmental educator for the Peace Corps. Olivier spent three months at ECHO in the fall of 2006, learning about tropical agriculture and studying different growing techniques. He plans to put his agricultural knowledge to good use, teaching villagers how to set-up a school garden and bringing seeds like moringa and chaya to his African home for the next two years.

In between his studies at ECHO and the beginning of his Peace Corps assignment, Olivier embarked on a three month trek across Peru. He saw the ruins of Machu Picchu, traveled along the Amazon, and hiked the Inca trail.

He was impressed by the warmth of the people he met along his journey and hopes to visit again when his Peace Corps assignment is complete. For the time being, Olivier’s South American adventure has whetted his appetite for overseas travel, and he is excited to begin his time in Mauritania.