Gardening in Gabon

When we initially came to Gabon, we were licking our lips, thinking of all the fresh produce that we were going to be able to grow here. I mean, with Gabon being in the rainforest, constantly warm and humid, you would think that it would be like living in a huge greenhouse! And many times, with sweat dripping off our brows, that's exactly what it feels like.

Some things really grow well here. Weeds grow great! Those dads that enjoy mowing the grass would think they were in heaven, being able to mow multiple times a week. And the pocketbooks of bamboo sellers would be overflowing.

But normal garden vegetables (such as lettuce, carrots, green beans, etc), just don't do that well. Either they get flooded with the many rains, or they get eaten by the many bugs. Here we see a section of earth where we planted zucchini, snap peas, and radishes. They've all been cleared out because they just didn't want to grow. All that's left are a couple flowering plants that we put there so it wasn't completely empty - and a few tomato plants, which we'll get to in a moment. We did manage to grow a couple zucchinis, but even those were half-eaten by maggots.

But we did find one garden item that thrives in this environment - tomatoes!!! These plants were started from seed, and they're bigger than any tomato plants I've ever seen! If we put tall enough stakes up, I bet they could grow to be even taller than me!! Here's Wendy working on staking up some of those great big tomatoes!

And we can't complain. There are a few other things that have grown for us or others on the mission station.

There's corn....

There's peanuts - imagine that - I never dreamed that I could grow my own peanuts!!

And there's trees bearing many coconuts and avocados. Look at those red tomatoes - yum!!

There's also bananas, mangos, oranges, pineapples, and a few others that grow during certain times of the year. Ok, ok - so maybe things do grow well here - just not the things we planted!!! But we sure are thankful for those tomatoes - Wendy's already dreaming of the different salads she'll be able to make, not to mention guacamole with fresh avocadoes and tomatoes!!