Home garden and polyhouse
Simple, low-cost greenhouses and home gardens help combat food and nutrition insecurity in the mountains.
Summarised
- Low temperatures limit the type of vegetables that can be grown in mountainous areas.
- Constructing simple greenhouses – so called polyhouses – allow for growing a wider variety of vegetables and extending the growing season.
- Successful home gardens combine fertilizer, water harvesting, polyhouses and crop rotation.
- Home gardens require access to land and some investment – this can exclude the poorest and most vulnerable families.
What is the issue?
In mountain regions such as the Hindu Kush Himalaya, the growing season is much shorter than in more temperate regions, which means that vegetables cannot always successfully mature. This can threaten food and nutrition security.
What is the solution?
Polyhouses are made of relatively cheap and common materials, plastic sheets over a metal or bamboo frame. They work like greenhouses, with the plastic cover trapping heat and increasing the temperature inside. Warmer temperatures extend the growing season, making it possible to grow more and a larger variety of vegetables. This increases food security and can improve peoples´ livelihoods. The plastic sheets are often reused as drying mats for herbs.
What is important to include in the solution?
A successful home garden requires a variety of input such as water, fertilizer, and seeds. Cheap and local products are needed. Farmers can collect rainwater in ponds or tanks close to their garden. This is relatively cheap and will ensure availability of water in the dry season. A local fertilizer called jholmal is made of fermented cow dung and buffalo urine mixed with composted vegetables. Applying this fertilizer can increase the yield by 25%.
Does it work?
Daw Ma Aung is from Thu Kha Loi Di in Myanmar. She and her family have a home garden with a water storage tank. The garden has improved her livelihood.
Sometimes, we grow from the seeds in the polyhouse and plant in the soil during the summer season, that helps protecting the sprouts from insects and bad weather
Sonam Zam, farmer from Haa village, Bhutan. Photo by Kinley WangchukSonam Zam says that another positive thing is that they do not depend so much on the neighboring countries production as before especially for nutrient rich organic products.
Are there any challenges?
Home gardens are an important solution to food insecurity in the Hindu Kush Himalaya. However, the poorest and most vulnerable might not have access to land or do not have money to invest in building polyhouses, rainwater collection systems or to buy fertilizer and seeds. The home garden solution might therefore be inaccessible to them. It is important to find other solutions that can improve food security and livelihoods for this group.
