Home gardening

It pays

Published On: March 14, 2017 12:15 AM NPT By: Poonam Maharjan


Poonam Maharjan

Poonam Maharjan

The contributor for Republica.
news@myrepublica.com

I had never thought of home-gardening as sustainable use of land around our homes
When my sister-in-law, Sarita, visited us a few days ago, she brought us some gundruk, ghee, chillies, and other ‘organic’ produce from her home-garden in Tipchowk VDC, Kavre. The other day, she presented us khasiko sukuti (‘dry goat meat’) which came from her mother-in-law’s animal farm mostly comprising goats and poultry. 

Home gardening, until recently, brought to one’s mind images of green spinach, coriander, and spring onions sprouting from polystyrene (Thermocol) boxes, which my mother acquired from a local fish vendor to help her set up a rooftop garden some years ago. She also got a couple of large pots for lemon, guava and other fruit trees, and of course different seasonal and perennial flower plants.

My mother’s rooftop garden hardly met our daily vegetable needs; it once in a while gave us the luxury of eating ‘organic.’ So I had never thought of home-gardening as sustainable use of land surrounding a home to cultivate various crops for consumption and/or sale, including animal husbandry and sometimes fish farming and beekeeping, providing employment and income generation opportunities to households. 

On my recent visit to Kandy, Sri Lanka, I was amazed to see people expanding their home gardens to acres and acres of land. The gardens had plenty (and often excess) of seasonal fruits and vegetables, plus precious herbs, spices and timber—all of which served as source of income for respective families. No wonder home-gardening for those families was a full-time job, and a lucrative one at that.

P B Thenuakoon was one such person I met who, along with his wife Indrani Dissanayaki, was planning to travel to Nepal and India for their vacation from the savings they had made solely by selling their home-garden produce. Their large, spacious cottage-style home situated in the middle of their large garden, was another luxury they could afford, they said, thanks to the farm they tended with so much love and passion.

Nonetheless, there are constant challenges to maintaining home-gardens. A research report on “Vulnerability of Home-garden Systems to Climate Change and its Impacts on Food Security in South Asia” conducted by Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), led by Prof Buddhi Marambe of the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, states that all study sites in Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh have experienced increased variability of seasonal rains over the past five decades (1961-2010). The minimum and maximum temperatures also showed extreme trends. 

My sister-in-law Sarita agrees. She says villagers have had to change planting dates for different crops—due to late or early rainfall, use of new crop varieties and cultivation of diverse crops at the same time to adapt to climate change. She also points out that in addition to climate change, they have had to deal with the ravages of wild animals like deer, birds, wild boars, and porcupines while maintaining their home-garden. 

But it is her next observation that resonates with every other home-gardener I met in Sri Lanka and in Nepal: Young people’s apathy to agriculture in general has put future of home-gardens at great risk. 

With Sarita’s sisters-in-law married off, brother-in-law working in an INGO, and her husband preparing to travel abroad for work, her mother-in-law constantly worries about the fate of the land they own and wonders which newborn kid of her goat will be the last of its lineage. They have often had to employ paid help or exchange labor to cultivate what is just enough for the family’s consumption. Their home-garden has so far provided food and nutrition security to the family—the only intention with which Sarita and her family maintain the garden. 

Sarita says there are many examples of young men and women frustrated that their home-gardening didn’t generate any direct income.

She has success stories to share, too. There are families in her village who have been earning exceedingly well from their smart cultivation of oranges, black cardamom and broom grass (amriso) in addition to vegetables and fruits for family consumption. Deepak KC, another young man from Roshi, Kavre, came up with the idea of planting tea on his family property that consisted mostly of sloped land.

 His idea was initially ridiculed by the villagers. His own family wasn’t convinced either. Later, when his organic, green tea started fetching good price, the villagers followed suit. They now cultivate tea jointly, happily. Many young people have also gone back to the village and successfully cultivated avocado, Buddha-Chitta and Rudrakshya trees in their almost deserted home-gardens and they have been generating good incomes as well. 

My own mother-in-law has told me stories about how the fruits from three Lapsi trees behind our family house in Roshi, Kavre used to fetch Dashain expenses for the family until some 15 years back. The tress gradually got older and they no longer bear fruits enough to generate much income. 

Lesson of this story: Like everything else in life, smart work is more effective than hard work.

Sarita observes that most Nepalis seek instant result and in the process break their back cultivating the same seasonal vegetables that they know won’t ‘fail’ them. They are either skeptic about cultivating new variety of vegetables, or too impatient to plant saplings of fruit trees and wait for them to bear fruits, although these options are far more cost-effective and doesn’t require so much work.

“Even though young people would want to try these out, there are older members in the family who won’t easily get convinced and that adds to their frustration,” she says.

As much as she would want to continue to maintain her home-garden, she knows that it’s too much for her and her ageing in-laws to take up on their own, and too expensive to hire laborers for the same. However, she has convinced everyone in the family that planting orange tree saplings is smart, besides cultivating seasonal vegetables that’s just adequate enough to meet the family needs. “This will not only reduce our work load, but also maintain our home-garden output in the long run. It’s both environmentally and financially friendly, and something all of us young people can do. I know I cannot take this up as a full-time job, but this will definitely generate some good extra income for the family,” she says. 

poomaharjan@gmail.com


Leave A Comment