LifeTeen began an outreach project for the parish community in March this year, called the LifeTeen Vegetable Garden Project. It is based on the Food Gardens Foundation organic vegetable garden plan and we aim to help our community as well as give back to the environment by creating our own compost and growing our own plants to sustain a specific outreach of our choice. LifeTeen has also encouraged the teens to create their own compost heaps at home in order to re-use their organic waste material.

The teens have been involved in the project from day one; preparing the small 1mx2m garden patch (which will soon be extended), planting spinach, carrot and cauliflower seeds in small seedling trays and monitoring, watering and weeding the plants as they grow. The Junior Youth are also involved in the monitoring process and help to water the vegetable plants. There are no vegetables sprouting just yet, but watch this space and you will be informed on the progress!

There are plans to support the Emolweni Community (that Br David has been helping) with our vegetable produce, but no final plan has been made, so watch this space too!

There are some updated photos of how the seedlings are doing - photos have been taken when the seedlings were transferred from the trays to the small garden patch (and we have to barricade the area as Fr Justin's dogs can be adventurous!), as well as how the plants have grown over 6 weeks, 8 weeks and 12 weeks respectively.

Even though the garden patch is rather small, the aim was to get the project started and we can only grow from here!
Many thanks to the kind parishioners who have donated the necessary equipment to get our project up and running...its great community sharing! Lets hope that Lifeteen's garden project can really help make a difference in the lives of those who most need our help.

6 weeks into the project

After 6 weeks the carrots are looking good

8 weeks into the project

The spinach at 8 weeks