ECHO Sends Fruit Trees to Ethiopia

ECHO has joined forces with Project Mercy, an interdenominational Christian organization in Ethiopia, to establish a fruit tree nursery for the 70,000-member community of Yetebon.

Funded by the Sanibel Community Church, ECHO is sending over 330 fruit trees - 26 species – including mangoes, avocadoes, blackberries, raspberries, and sapotes.

“The trees are all high quality commercial fruit trees,” says Tim Watkins, ECHO’s Tropical Fruit Nursery manager. Each variety was specially chosen for its quality, marketability, and ability to extend the growing season.

Tim will be accompanying the shipment to Ethiopia on September 9 and staying for two weeks to help launch the project. Sarah Hendershot, an intern at ECHO in 2004, will be joining the team on September 14. She will work with Project Mercy in Yetebon for the next six months to ensure the nursery is a success.

On September 8, ECHO staff and members from Sanibel Community Church joined forces to prepare the trees for shipment. All soil, insects, and contaminants were removed from the plants and the roots were soaked in a packing gel that will preserve them for the long trip to Africa.

It’s jackfruit and avocado season at ECHO!

As the last mangoes fall from the trees and the hot, humid summer fades into a drier fall, a new season of tropical fruit is upon us. Jackfruit and avocado are two of the most notable fall varieties at ECHO.

Jackfruit, the largest tree fruit in the world, can weigh up to 60 pounds. Green and thorny on the outside, the inside is yellow and moist, with a taste like over-ripe bananas.

“It tastes like the first bite into a piece of Juicy Fruit gum,” says Angela Boss, ECHO’s Assistant Nursery Manager. “A burst of flavor.”

An intern at ECHO in 2002, Angela and her husband, Darren, spent two years in the Central African Republic, where jackfruit was the favored fruit of the indigenous pygmies. The couple helped give gave away 20,000 trees during their agricultural missions project, including jackfruit.

Avocadoes, a favorite Florida treat, are also starting to ripen. ECHO grows more than 26 varieties, but not the famous black-skinned California Hass avocado.

“It’s too humid here,” Angela tells us. But, the farm does grow Brogdans, a similarly rich avocado that turns black when ripe.

Avocado trees are relatively low-maintenance, as they don’t require a lot of fertilizer or pruning, and insects and other pests usually stay away. One caution: the trees are very susceptible to root rot, so they need to be planted in an area not prone to flooding.

In terms of ECHO’s mission, jackfruit and avocado are both important sources of nutrition for people faced with malnutrition. Jackfruit is high in vitamin C and avocadoes, that delicious base for guacamole, are high in necessary fats and oils.

Composting at ECHO

Heavy use of mulch and compost has always been a feature of ECHO's demonstration farm. In recent months, however, our farm manager (Danny Blank) has been focusing on making higher-quality compost using knowledge he gained from a study on soil biology. The goal is not necessarily to make enough compost to amend entire beds or blocks of land. We've been having success in our gardens using targeted applications of compost or worm castings. Targeted applications involve placing measured amounts of these amendments directly in the planting holes.

The pictured compost heap is turned whenever the temperature approaches 160 degrees F. Temperatures higher than this indicate conditions favorable to anaerobic (able to live without oxygen) instead of the more beneficial aerobic (need oxygen) bacteria. Interestingly, the bamboo poles running through the pile provide a way to estimate the temperature by hand. At 160 degrees F, one should not be able to touch the bamboo pole for more than a few seconds. The pile is watered to keep it at about 50% saturation; firmly squeezing a handful of soil/compost should produce a few drops of water.

ECHO Staffers Join Agriculture Conference in Nicaragua

Last month, four ECHO interns and four staff members traveled to Nicaragua to take part in a Latin American agricultural conference hosted by Rancho Ebenezer.

Patterned after ECHO’s annual conference, held each year at our headquarters in North Fort Myers, the Latin American conference lasted three days and featured lectures each morning and workshops in the afternoon.

‘At Rancho Ebenezer,’ intern Emily Andree tells us, ‘they are very concerned with earth stewardship.’ Citing Genesis 2:15, The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it, the ranch’s philosophy emphasizes zero-graze animal pens, sustainable forage crops integrated with SALT (Sloping Agricultural Land Technology), and water catchment systems for rain run-off.

Rancho Ebenezer focuses on three main principles that resonate with ECHO’s own mission and was an ideal location for interns to experience agricultural development in an international setting. Like ECHO, Rancho Ebenezer wants to help the poor learn to grow food for themselves, care for the environment, and provide people with practical experience.

¡Qué un viaje bueno!

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).