By Markus Faigle | Volunteer Project Director
Note: Please watch “Reforestation with seed balls in rural Madagascar” our latest video documenting this historic occasion for context.
The start of the long-awaited rainy season came late this year in Madagascar. By the end of January and early February there was lot of rain, unfortunately far too much in many parts of the country, especially the capital. And we fear that there are more cyclones to come, as we write this.
In our villages there is no better time than the rainy season to put our seed ball reforestation efforts to the test in the landscape. You might remember that our students made thousands of seed balls in September and October of 2021 during our schools winter break.
In January our students started the fun project to throw the first 1462 seed balls into the landscape, as you can see in the first part of the video. They also took quite a hike up the mountain to our water tank (2.5 km or almost 1.5 miles) that feeds our community built water system since 2006. On the slopes of the mountain our next generation of tree planters used more of their seed balls, this time more rolling than throwing it. Our founder said: “Covering the mountain with a forest again has been a dream of our gardener Bary for many years. Carrying seed balls up the hill instead of baby trees is certainly much easier, especially if he has many little helpers to do it. It is also more fun for the students, than carrying shovels and digging holes for baby trees all day long. And planted baby trees need to be watered by hand to make sure to take root. In the next few months we will see if this technique works as well as we hope. The fertilizer (cow manure) added to the seed balls mix should provide enough nutrients for the seedlings to grow if they get watered almost every day by mother nature. We have asked each student to remember the place where they throw their seed balls, so they come come back and check on the progress every week”
Please stay tuned for more seed ball reforestation updates soon.
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