How to Establish a Low-Investment Home Garden

The need for a safe and wholesome diet at a minimum cost to families and societies at large has made it necessary for as many as can, to consider establishing gardens at home a priority.

What Is a Garden?

A garden is an enclosed piece of land devoted to the growing of a variety of crops, usually on a small scale, throughout the year and close to a place of residence.

What Are the Benefits of Establishing a Low-Investment Garden at Home

1. It saves money. So many families use a lot of fresh vegetables, fruits, and spices for their meals every day. This takes a chunk out of the money budgeted for expenses, and sadly, so many families have not come to realize that establishing a garden at home could be a way to reduce costs and save money. All that is required is a meagre amount of money set aside to purchase farm inputs like seeds, manure, and some simple farm tools, and a few hours a week to attend to the garden
2. It enables one to consume wholesome food free from preservatives, pesticides, and other agrochemicals. Most farmers in developing countries like Nigeria use agrochemicals in virtually all aspects of crop production. These chemicals are used to improve crop yield and not necessarily the quality of the produce. When they are not properly applied, they contaminate food and pose health hazards to consumers. As a result, setting up a garden where one grows crops organically will ensure the consumption of wholesome food that will further enhance the health of the family.
3. It can serve as a side hustle to augment the family's income. Although the main reason for establishing a garden at home is to meet the family's domestic needs, it can also be a source of additional income when surplus farm produce is sold to neighbours who may not see the need to set up their gardens. So by providing value in the form of farm produce, you earn extra income.
4. Daily or weekly tending to the garden provides a form of physical activity that can keep the body fit. Due to the nature of their jobs or tight schedules, family members may not have time to engage in elaborate physical exercises at home. However, they will discover that some of the activities involved in establishing a garden can help burn up excess fat in the body and flex tough muscles.
5. It can be beneficial for research and experimentation in crop production. Most scientific trials and experiments in crop production are usually performed on a small scale (as in a garden) before being adopted on a large scale. These will help to prevent the impact of colossal losses from trials going wrong when done on a large scale. It can also lead to individuals discovering new and better innovations in crop husbandry.
6. It ensures all-year-round availability of fresh vegetables and spices for the use of the family. By adopting irrigation practices in the garden, during the dry season, some vegetables and spices are available for the use of the family throughout the year.
7. Gardening offers the opportunity to grow some medicinal plants, which can be used for both preventive and curative measures for different ailments.
8. It can serve as a hobby or a way of whiling away one's time. One can use one's spare time to engage in gardening. Seeing the crops grow to maturity and produce fruits offers some pleasure and the feeling of time well spent.
9. Gardening, if widely adopted and practised by the majority of people in a society, can enhance food security and drastically reduce malnutrition.

Steps to Establishing and Running a Low-Investment Home Garden

1. Planning the layout of the garden:You have to decide what area of the land around your house will be allocated for gardening. This can be determined by considering the following:

• Security of the area against intruders;
• Proximity to the water source;
• Fertility of the soil and
• Orientation to wind and sunlight.

Construction of a fence to demarcate the area should be a priority when planning the layout. The size of the area does not matter; what matters is having a piece of land to grow crops that you can manage adequately in your spare time and at a low cost. For as long as the land is yours, no additional cost is incurred to use it. Even if the property is rented, having access to a piece of land around the house for gardening will add value to your rent. The only downside is that you are limited in terms of the types of crops you can grow as your tenancy could be revoked following expiration.

2. Choosing crops to grow in the garden: The choice of crops to grow in the garden is relative and dependent on factors such as:

• what nutritional and health benefits you seek to derive from the crops;
• availability of seeds and other planting materials;
• the ease of growing and harvesting the crops;
• adaptability of the crops to the climatic and edaphic conditions of the area in which you are resident;
• the ease of storing, processing, and preserving the crops for use during the off-season;
• the market demand for the crops, if you wish to earn extra income from selling surplus produce;
• the adaptability or resistance of the crops to pests and diseases and
• the area of land available for setting up a garden.

Based on the factors above, examples of crops one can cultivate in the garden include:

1. Short-duration fruits such as banana, pawpaw, and pineapple, are most popular in home gardens because their size is restricted and, with proper care, they yield good crops within a short period of time.
2. Small to medium-sized fruit trees such as citrus species, apple, guava, sour sop, mango, plum, peach, Avocado pear, cashew, etc.
3. Annual vegetables and spices such as onion, spinach, Jew's mallow, lettuce, cabbage, eggplant, pepper, waterleaf, tomato, fluted pumpkin, cucumber, watermelon, okra, bitter gourd, roselle, scent plant, cauliflower (Broccoli), seed melon, etc.
4. Medicinal plants such as drumstick tree (Moringa), Neem, lemon grass, bitter leaf, etc.
5. Legumes and cover crops such as common bean, Lima bean, pigeon pea, cowpea, etc.

3. Soil Preparation. This includes activities such as soil improvement and tillage.

Soil Improvement: Before and after planting, it is very important to maintain the fertility of the garden soil. And since our emphasis is on setting up a low-investment home garden, we shall be considering the use of organic rather than chemical fertilizers to improve soil fertility. Organic fertilizer or manure is a type of fertilizer obtained from the waste and remains of plants and animals. It can be prepared in three different ways:

• Compost manure
• Farmyard manure
• Green manure

Compost manure is an organic fertilizer that can be made at home at a low cost. It is mainly decomposed organic matter, such as crop residues and animal faeces. It can be prepared using two methods:

1. Pit Method: For this method, crop residues and organic household wastes can be thrown into pits and left to decompose for three to four months, after which the compost is ready for use. This method is suitable in dry areas with low water table level.
2. Heap or Stack Method: The waste materials can be heaped under a shade and left to decompose. This method is preferable in wet areas.

Farmyard manure is an organic fertilizer prepared from animal wastes and bedding materials (like straws, wood shavings, crushed corn cobs, etc.). These are piled up under a shade and allowed to decompose thoroughly before being applied to the soil.

Green manure is an organic fertilizer prepared from non-edible legumes that are planted and before they flower, are ploughed into the soil to decay and enrich it.

Other ways of improving soil fertility in the garden include planting cover crops, practising crop rotation and mulching.

Manures are the best forms of fertilizers for the production of crops in the garden, particularly when you have a variety of them.

Soil Tillage: This involves breaking the topsoil (and subsoil) to loosen it for planting. This process helps to improve the aeration and porosity of the soil, which are required for good plant growth. It also helps to mix organic manure thoroughly, with the soil. As a result of the limited size of the garden, tillage can be done with simple farm tools like hoes and hand-operated cultivators. Crops like vegetables (leafy) and spices can be grown on beds, while legumes, tubers, and rhizomes are grown on ridges or heaps. Fruits are planted on well-tilled, flat ground.

4. Plant Propagation: This can be done either by use of seeds (sexual propagation) or parts of a parent plant (asexual or vegetative propagation).

Planting with seeds: Seeds can be sown through broadcasting (leafy vegetables with tiny seeds), drilling or furrowing, and direct sowing.

Planting with vegetative parts: This is used for crops such as bananas (suckers), pineapples (crown), ginger (rhizome), garlic (rhizome), and potatoes (stolons). Parts of the parent plants are buried in the soil to produce roots which grow into new plants.

Seeds and vegetative parts for planting can be obtained from fruits and parent plants harvested. They can also be purchased from agro service centres.The best planting materials should be selected and preserved for planting.

5. Crop Protection: Loss of plants and spoilage of home garden produce to pests and diseases may occur occasionally. However, there are ways to effectively prevent or control pests and diseases in the garden. Although the use of pesticides and other agrochemicals are very effective in controlling pest and disease infections, they are costly to purchase and cause health hazards and pollution to man and the environment. As a result of these, we shall be looking at some non-chemical control measures.

Non-chemical control Measure: Research has shown that the first step to controlling pests or disease organisms is by understanding the biology of the organisms and then creating conditions that will be unfavorable to their growth and survival. Examples of non-chemical control measures include:

1. Planting of crops that ward off insects and disease- -organisms. For example, the Neem tree, African marigold, pepper, garlic, coriander, spider plant, etc. produce odours that ward off crop pests in the garden.
2. Spraying of solutions prepared from certain plants to repel pests and prevent disease infection. For example, solutions prepared from a mixture of soap, water and plants like pepper, wood ash, leaves of Neem, tobacco leaves, flowers of pyrethrum, Mexican Marigold, etc., repel some crop pests and disease-organisms.
3. Practising mixed cropping. This reduces the spread of disease organisms and pests, naturally.
4. Practising crop rotation.
5. Pruning of leaves and branches closer to the soil.
6. Trellising or staking of creeping crops to reduce contact with soil-borne disease organisms.
7. Physical methods such as fencing, setting of traps, handpicking and destroying of pests, use of wire mesh, etc.
8. Regular weeding
9. Use of healthy planting materials
10. Maintaining farm hygiene

What Are the Challenges to Establishing a Low-Investment Home Garden?

Challenges that can hinder the establishment of gardens at home include:

1. A lack of cultivable area around the home: The use of tiles for flooring spaces around most houses forestalls the setting up of home gardens. However, this setback has presented the option of using plastic drums and containers, polythene or nylon bags, worn-out car tyres stacked together and sacks filled with soil for growing vegetables and spices.
2. The lack of experience in growing crops:This may be a challenge, however, the good news is that with the tons of resources available online, one can acquire enough skills and knowledge to produce any crop.
3. Shortage of water during the dry season:This challenge necessitates the adoption of irrigation practices using sprinklers, hose pipes, watering cans and self-watering containers. In addition, mulching of garden soil to reduce evaporation of soil moisture can be practised.

In conclusion, because the benefits of owning a flourishing garden at home, outweigh the challenges of establishing one, should be a veritable reason for every family to strongly consider setting up one immediately.