Dear Editor,

GUYANESE immigrants have transplanted kitchen garden culture in America. Regardless of where they are settled – in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Southwest, near the Great Lake states like Minnesota, Illinois, and Michigan, Indo-Guyanese are into kitchen gardening, growing vegetables and flowers. It is winter now and so home gardening is over. But produce from gardening have been stocked up. Home gardening is no stranger to Guyanese; almost every Indo-Guyanese home owner grows some kind of vegetables or flower plants. They transplant that enterprising and productive gardening culture of Guyana to America and even north in Canada. Most Guyanese immigrants tend to a little garden – from which they take joy in planting, watching their crops grow, and in harvesting produce. Unlike in Guyana where gardening supplement or is the main source of income, in America, gardening gives families something to do rather [than] watching the four walls of their apartments or TV. Reaping makes one feel good. Cooking and consuming the fresh, organic produce is even more rewarding. Guyanese Americans boast of how much they produce, a lot more in a little garden in America or Canada than in Guyana. And the taste of the organic produce is very different from the vegetables bought in the stores.

It is winter now and the plants have long dried up with the onset of the cold weather at the end of October. During the warm or summer months, in May and June, many Guyanese and other immigrant groups made effective use of their small gardens to produce common daily used vegetables. The soil is rich and gets a year to regenerate its nutrients for a healthy harvest; no fertiliser needed. It would surprise readers to know that the produce of small kitchen gardens in America surpasses those in the former homeland. Kitchen farmers get a lot of produce that could meet much of their needs for vegetables in the summer and even stored for winter.
When Guyanese first came to New York during the 1960s and 1970s, few had private homes. Thus, they could not plant summer gardens. But during the 1980s, more and more Guyanese, especially in Queens, began owning homes and turning unused land into kitchen gardens.  Indo-Guyanese have a culture of home ownership as opposed to being renters. Today, over 70 per cent of Indo-Guyanese families have a home and some kind of kitchen garden with quick short-term produce.

On small plot of land around the house are grown vegetables that Guyanese and other immigrants are culturally familiar with – like tomatoes, loukhi or squash, baigan, cucumbers, karela, seime, pumpkin, bora, hot peppers of all kinds, ochro, various kinds of bhajji (poi, chowrai, pack choi, mustard), and seasonings like shallot and parsley, among others. Those homeowners, without much land, used buckets to supplement their production. Buckets are good for baigan, peppers, and bora. In Richmond Hill, Cypress Hill, Ozone, Jamaica, Queens Village, and other areas where Guyanese predominate, almost every home had a kitchen garden. Some have matchaan for seime, loukhi, and karela and bramble or twine for bora. This writer also grew various vegetables in a small garden with massive produce annually that can supply a supermarket with fresh produce. My wife donates what she can’t use, and lots of it, especially seime, loukhi and hot peppers. Some Guyanese even ventured into growing alou and onions. Almost every Guyanese shares their produce with neighbors, friends, and relatives. They also freeze vegetables for use in the winter. They save a lot of money when one considers that wiri wiri pepper sells for $6 a pound, loukhi $3 a pound, seime $4 a pound and other products at relatively higher prices in the winter months.

Yours truly,
Vishnu Bisram