SIMPLY BUSINESS

SIMPLE WAYS TO A HEALTHY HOME GARDEN

by LARRY LOCARA

One can have sustained productivity from his own home garden with basic knowledge and practice of sustainable gardening or farming. Mr. Leonardo Geraldino, Vegetable Coordinator at the Iloilo Provincial Agriculture Office has these advice:

Whenever possible, prepare the soil well first and rebuild it with addition of ample amounts of organic matter coming from decomposed plant and animal sources or whenever possible, use large amounts of earthworm castings/manure or what is popularly called the vermi-cast. He recommends that even at a small scale the gardener should start his own earthworm farm or raise earthworms in sacks, plastic bags and other containers that would secure the earthworms as they produce vermi-casts from kitchen wastes and other organic materials. African night crawlers are the most ideal earthworms to raise as they are prolific and are not migratory. They can digest organic wastes almost twice as fast as ordinary earthworms found locally.

Depending on the size and location of one's garden, the vegetables planted should be planned so that the gardener can establish a small ecosystem where the plants can grow together helping in each other's growth. Camote and green leafy vegetables are often heavy consumers of soil nutrients so it is practical to plant it together with legumes which produce their own nitrogen through the symbiosis with Nitrogen-fixing bacteria, rhizobium spp. When planting vine vegetables, one can first establish the live poles like malunggay (oringa oleifera) so that both the pole and the vines crawling on them are productive.

As much as possible, plan your garden to take the most advantage of sunlight. It is recommended that the rows be laid out on the East to West direction so that shading is minimized. When planting on dikes of rice farms, plant low lying vegetables so as not to compete with rice plants for sunlight. Also plant vegetables that would not become hosts of rice pests so that when the rice crop is harvested, the insects will not transfer to the vegetables and feed while there is yet no new rice plants established.

Practice the natural farming system advocated by the late Dr. Teruo Higa, the Japanese who developed the system of using bacteria and other microorganisms to help in farming and in human health in general. The system is easy to adopt and the technologies therein are taught by the technicians of the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist. Some of these are the Indigenous Microorganisms (IMO), Fermented Plant Juice (FPJ) and Fermented Fruit Juice (FFJ). By enlisting the help of microorganisms, the gardener lightens his work because these microorganisms will do a lot of work like decomposing, repelling and even killing some pests through microbial action. Also known as probiotics, these concoction are not only easy and cheap to make but can also be made right at one's kitchen or backyard.

Practice crop rotation and succession cropping. Crop rotation is the method of changing crop or vegetable types after the maturity of the current crop. For example, after six to eight months of growing camote for leaves, the gardener should shift to a different type like kulitis (amaranthus) or alugbati (Basella rubra). This way the pests infesting the camote such as worms cannot attack the alugbati since a different type of insect feed on the latter. Also after a while, soil nematodes or the parasites infesting the roots of some vegetables take a while to adjust to feeding on the roots of a different species. Alslo change from a heavy nutrient consumer to a nutrient producer and vice versa so that the soil is naturally rehabilitated. Whenever possible, add more organic matter each time the gardener establishes a new vegetable plot.

Use indigenous vegetables instead of exotic ones. Exotic vegetables like crucifers (pechay, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli) are easily infested with pests and need insecticides to grow and produce. Even if declared safe these chemicals poison our system so it is prudent to eat local vegetables especially those rich in flavonoids and anthocyanins. Malunggay contains twice the nutrients of broccoli and the nutrients found in alugbati is higher than those found in cabbage and similar vegetables. These local vegetables need minimal care and often can be established where the exotic species cannot thrive.

Establish fence lines using leguminous trees and shrubs like ipil-ipil, madre de cacao, indigofera, rhinzonii and nitrogen rich plants like madre de agua, mulberry, etc. they are multi-purpose, serving as organic matter provider and feed for the livestock and poultry.

For more information please log on to: http://www.vegetable-gardening-and-greenhouses.com/organic-vegetable-gardening.html and http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/build-a-garden.html. The author may also be contacted at 0939-320-3542 and 0923-667-0619. The author's blogsites: http://larry-simplybusiness.blogspot.com/, http://farmerlarry.wordpress.com/, http://approtech.multiply.com/video/item/1.