[TECH] Home garden technology leaflet 2

Home garden technology leaflet 2: Planning improvements to the home garden

Every home garden can be improved to fulfill your family's needs better. A well-planned and well-tended home garden can provide nutritious food, income, medicines, seeds and seedlings for the family's other land areas. At the same time, it will be a beautiful place to live in. To improve your home garden, you need to know four things:

- what your home garden produces now;
- what you would like your home garden to produce in future;
- how you can improve your home garden;
- what inputs are needed.

STEP 1: KNOW YOUR HOME GARDEN

Make sure you have a good idea of the structure and main functions of your home garden. A map of your home garden will help you and others assisting you to visualize exactly what your home garden is and what it can do (making a home garden map is described in Home Garden Technology Leaflet 1).

STEP 2: SET OBJECTIVES

Make a list of the main things you want your home garden to produce. You should also identify the major constraints you need to overcome, such as wild pigs, poor soil or sloping land. Some examples of objectives are listed in Table I. Keep your list simple at first; you can add to it later.

TABLE 1

Examples of home garden objectives

Provide daily nutritional needs for the family

Provide more income

Increase food production

Diversity food production

Make the garden easy to care for

Provide a place for farm animals

Keep out pests

Reduce weeding

Provide a nursery for estate crop's

Make use of all area available

Planning improvements and changes to your home garden requires some thinking. Deciding what you want to do depends on your situation, such as soil type, sloping land, and how much time and money you have available. Your wife or husband and maybe a friend should participate in the planning. Also ask your agricultural extension agent for technical advice to help you make the right decisions.

STEP 3: SELECT TECHNOLOGY OPTIONS

Choose those technology options in Table 2 that meet your needs and situation. Note that you can choose either a single technology option or a combination of several options, depending on the type of land and resources that you have.

Using the home garden map, identify where the technology options should be located. The technology options sometimes overlap, for example Living fences (Home Garden Technology Leaflet 10) are useful around an Intensive Vegetable Square (Home Garden Technology Leaflet 12). Walk around the home garden with the map and try to imagine how the technology options you have selected will fit together into a system.

TABLE 2

Technology options in the Home Garden Technology Leaflets

Leaflet number	Technology option	Leaflet number	Technology option
3	Growing plants for daily nutrition	10	Living fences
4	Planting crops for a continuous food supply	11	Multiple cropping
5	Soil improvement	12	Intensive vegetable square
6	Use of sloping land	13	Multilayer cropping
7	Cover cropping	14	Growing fruit- and nut- trees
8	Using wetland	15	Home garden nursery
9	Safe and effective crop protection

Each of these technology options are briefly described in the respective leaflets, and you can probably recognize many of them in the home gardens and farmed land of your village. For more detailed information and advice, ask your agricultural extension agent or a neighbour who has a well-developed home garden.

Use the map as a vision of the garden you want to create. Everyone who works in the garden, including advisers, should refer to the map. In this way it is easier to ensure that each step in the completion of the garden is thought about, discussed and understood.

Figure 1 Example of home garden map with different technology options

[TECH] Home garden technology leaflets (Part 1)

Improve family nutrition by developing your home garden

What is the purpose of these leaflets?

The purpose of the leaflets is to help farmers improve family food supplies and nutrition year round through home gardening.

This package contains 15 technology leaflets with ideas and technical recommendations on how to improve family food supplies and nutrition through home gardening.

Each leaflet provides information on a technology option or on the type of improvements farmers can make in their home garden to increase food production, to provide a greater diversity of plant foods and to add nutritional value to the family's daily diet.

Who are the leaflets for?

The leaflets are intended for use by agricultural extension workers and farmers who are able to read. The leaflets should be used in situations where a farm family wishes to:

- set up a new home garden for family food production and income;
- develop or expand an existing home garden to improve food production and diversify crops;
- improve family food supplies and nutrition.

How should the leaflets be used?

The leaflets provide basic information, ideas and suggestions on different technology options or home garden improvements. They can be used either singly or in combination with one another, depending on the type of improvements farmers wish to make. Agricultural extension workers should assist farmers in selecting the technology they want to adopt in accordance with the kind, variety and quantity of home garden crops they want to grow.

Farm families should always contact their agricultural extension worker if they need help or advice with technical farming issues such as crop management, pesticide use, water management and many other topics.

Home garden technology leaflet 1: The home garden

WHAT IS A HOME GARDEN?

This leaflet aims to help you understand the many different things that make up a typical home garden. When you know how the home garden is made up (its structure) and what it does and produces (its functions or outputs) you will be able to improve the home garden's output to suit your own family's needs.

The home garden is an integrated system which comprises different things in its small area: the family house, a living/playing area, a kitchen garden, a mixed garden, a fish pond, stores, an animal house and, of course, people. It produces a variety of foods and agricultural products, including staple crops, vegetables, fruits, medicinal plants, livestock and fish both for home consumption or use and for income.

WHAT ARE THE BASIC STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS OF THE HOME GARDEN?

The home garden compound has different areas and functions. There are three main areas within the typical home garden. Each of these provides different things for the family that lives there. The areas are shown in Figure 1, divided only by dotted lines because, in reality, the functions of the areas overlap the imaginary dotted boundaries.

Figure 1 Basic home garden map

The social area

Location: in front of the house, incorporating the clean-swept courtyard.

Use: mostly a place for social activities - meeting and talking, children's play, display gardens and also for drying grain.

The utility area

Location: around the house.

Use: mostly a place for physical objects or activities - living, washing, storage, animal house and latrine but also kitchen garden.

The production area Location: the rear part of the garden.

Use: mostly a place for growing food and cash crops and raising animals (e.g. fish, chickens, pigs).

WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HOME GARDEN AMONG THE FAMILY'S FARMLANDS?

Most families have more than one area of land for farming. Usually a family has a home garden area and a food cropping area near to the village. Together, these areas of land make up the family's farmlands. The family divides its working time and resources between these two areas. Each area of land is used in a different way but, together, the two areas must provide all the family's needs.

The home garden has a special significance because among a family's most important basic needs are food and shelter. If developed well, the home garden can provide:

- Enough nutritious non-staple foods for all the family year round, including extra food stocks for processing and sale to obtain income and a reserve for special occasions or emergencies (e.g. sometimes a staple food crop is lost in a flood, eaten by pests or reduced because the farmer falls sick and cannot work for some time).
- Income from the sale of home garden produce. Sales of home garden produce can contribute considerably to a family's income (to buy daily essentials and farming inputs that cannot be produced on the family's farmlands as well as other goods and services).
- Farm development. The home garden has a plant nursery for growing plantation seedlings, for trying out new farming ideas and crops and for processing and storing seeds for the next planting season.

HOW TO APPRAISE YOUR HOME GARDEN

Before trying to improve your home garden, you have to find out more about it; particularly why it is not producing more food or income or providing inputs for farm development. There are many things to find out because the home garden has different functions, i.e. social, utility and economic functions. You should allow at least one hour for the appraisal.

Step 1: Get the right people to participate

Different people know different things about home gardens. The farmer and the housekeeper are the most important because they know the home garden's history and what the home garden provides for their family. The local agricultural extension agent will be able to help identify plants and to assess the soil and other technical aspects. You may want to ask other people to participate, for example your neighbours, relatives or women's farmer group members.

Step 2: Make a map of the home garden

Make a map of your home garden with the help of the others. One way of doing this is by drawing a "mud map" on the ground with a stick and using stones, leaves and other materials to represent the locations of major features such as trees and areas for food crops, vegetables, herbs, buildings and activities. Mark areas where the land is sloping or swampy. You can use Figure I, Basic home garden map, as a guide.

Step 3: Make a copy and keep it

Copy the map as clearly as possible on to paper with your notes. The map will make it much easier to think about the chances and improvements you want to make.

Figure 2 Discussing and drawing the home garden map