Recently we have been harvesting, fermenting, drying and roasting our cacao produce. Once we had then peeled the cacao roasted cacao beans the agricultural students learnt how to add value to the cacao nibs by processing it. This involved setting up an grinding machine used for grinding maize to produce arepas, and then, grinding the […]
The very first thing that was done in the garden, almost 10 years ago now, was to build our two level terrace. We did this by levelling a piece of land and enclosing it with rocks. Since its inception we have grown maize, sweetcorn, beans and casava on the terrace, but we have always been […]
Once posts were in place and checked, Gustavo Ledesma, myself and a couple of BGVs set about the task of putting up our roof, made of PVC! This was completed in one Saturday morning. Placing of the netting took quite a bit more time.
The Colegio Bolivar Sustainability leader, Jessica Gomez, a long-time friend and supporter of the Bolivar Garden approached me at the start of the year asking if the Agricultural Plant Science class and Bolivar Garden would represent the school at the COP 16 international conference on biodiversity held in Cali during the outreach presentations to the […]
In today´s Bolivar Garden activity we made our first pruning of our Catimore Coffee trees. This was led by our friend and mentor, Dr Phillipe Vaast of CIRAD. He taught the volunteers how to select where the trees have to be cut, and led a practial session of how to do this with our volunteers. […]
In order to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of Colegio Bolivar the agricultural plant science students are going to undertake an inventory exercise of the college campus. It is hoped that this will be the first step in determining the carbon footprint of the campus, by determining the amount of carbon that is currently stored and […]
It has been a full academic year and we have still not completely finished the greenhouse project – but we are very very close. The greenhouse almost completed. The netting was pretty much in place and only some small areas needed to be fixed! With the structure up and some beds in the greenhouse, we […]
After a year of laying the terrace fallow, we were welcomed back to a vegetated terrace, with lots of grass binding the ground, a compacted soil structure, and a patch of overgrown citronella. The students were duly assigned to specific jobs: digging the terrace, sifting stones, breaking up the soil structure and removing the citronella […]
Fernando OKA, the owner of Okafe Roasters in the north of the city, is a renowned coffee expert and barista. He roasts our coffee, Don Simón, to a medium roast and gives us advice on how to improve our cup profile. He visited Colegio Bolivar today to teach our students about coffee tasting and what […]
After setting up the seed bed for our new coffee, Don Hugo Guerrero, our school gardiner, showed students how to transplant seedlings into new bags with compost for their future growth.
![[:en]COP 16: an opportunity to spread the word of the Bolivar Garden and Don Simón Coffee[:]](https://www.colegiobolivar.edu.co/garden2025/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/IMG_20241028_182115785_HDR-scaled-1.jpg)
