PROBIOMA drove us to their training center, which I believe is on the tip of Santa Cruz's valley region, within view of Amboró National Park. It was beautiful and comfortable with double rooms each with their own private bathrooms, delicious organic food, and enough fresh squeezed passion fruit juice to make you fat. We began the day with several presentations about their work. I will save those for the next post and instead begin with a photo tour of their organic garden, grown using PROBIOMA's products and methods.

PROBIOMA's garden

PROBIOMA's garden

PROBIOMA's garden
I could not resist walking through the garden to see what they were growing and how. I began with a few citrus trees that were directly ahead of me, and then continued on to see the vegetables.

Citrus trees, planted in neat rows

An orange, or maybe a mandarin

A trap for bugs hanging in one of the trees. I didn't ask but it likely contains a mix of water and molasses to attract and then trap bugs.
The garden was irrigated, immediately giving PROBIOMA more options in their gardening than most farmers in Bolivia.

Irrigation
They also maintain a large compost pile or two:

Compost near a banana tree

Compost
And they use several organic methods for trapping pests, like this sticky yellow trap below.

The yellow flag is a sticky bug trap
They obviously save their own seeds, for many crops if not all:

A broccoli plant that has gone to seed.
And they sometimes start plants in containers before transplanting them:

Lettuce seedlings

More seedlings to be transplanted

Baby Trees
Here are some of the things they grow:

Brussel sprouts

Cabbage

Cabbage

Carrots

Cauliflower

Celery

Chard

Chard

Cilantro

Eggplant

Lettuce

Lettuce

Onions

Papayas

Passionfruit

Passionfruit

Passionfruit

Radishes

Spinach

Squash

Sugarcane

Tomatoes
And here's who does the work:

Out in front of the training center were large, leguminous trees. They don't eat them but said that the parrots love them if I remember right. They promised us we'd be surrounded by parrots right here at 5am the next day. I'm not a morning person, but I made damn sure to get up for that!

Leguminous Tree
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