Container Vegetable Gardening: The Taijbally’s response to COVID-19 and Better Health

Since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus a pandemic in early March, Guyanese of all ages have been asked to stay home as much as possible and to socially distance themselves from others. One of the recommendations is to avoid being in groups of more than 20 people. The purpose of the “self-quarantine,” even for healthy people, is to slow the spread of the virus, which threatens to overwhelm the hospital system.

It was not very difficult for the Taijbally family to adapt to this new norm as the family hails from the farming community of Johanna Cecelia on the Essequibo Coast of Region 2. Mr. Ramsingh Taijbally motivated his wife Shivanie, his two daughters Arvinie and Divya, his mother Bhagmattie and a very ambitious young nephew Ricky to embark on a container vegetable gardening initiative. Farming isn’t something new to the Taijballys since they have been involved in this for generations. However, to reduce the amount of times they would have had to leave their yard, they set out to plant basic vegetables at home, utilizing various types of containers.

This entire initiative was of course spearheaded by Ramsingh who is currently a Field Officer at the Partners of the Americas’ Farmer-to-Farmer Program. Having graduated from the University Ciego de Avilla in Cuba in 2012 as an Agronomist, he worked with the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI) as a Plant Quarantine Officer while simultaneously lecturing part-time at the Guyana School of Agriculture. Ramsingh is an innovative and production-driven professional with a passion for rural development and food security.

In these troubled times when one cannot travel and socialize as usual, Ramsingh’s family has kept even closer to the soil in moments of upheaval to manage anxieties. His family has indicated that the pandemic has resulted in stronger family ties. They relish the ongoing contact with nature and the opportunity to produce healthy food for themselves. This family has always had the tendency to utilize organic compost derived from the waste generated from their chickens and cows along with paddy husk (rice hulls).

Ramsingh’s daughters, Arvinie who is 6 years old and Divya who is 4, help to locate the old unused containers and leftover construction materials and assist in filling them with substrate, planting and watering. The family has been planting crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce, as well as some ornamentals. Because of Ramsingh’s ambition of going organic he prepares natural organic pesticides to combat insects even before they present themselves. This is done according to the guidelines of the F2F Guyana Container Gardening manual.

The Taijbally family gets more than enough produce for home use and as a result, excess produce is shared with neighbors or sold to earn extra income. Ramsingh’s wife, Shivanie said that “what drives me to my garden is not the fear of hunger but the fear of physical contact with others, along with my love for gardening”.