Tropical home gardens or household gardens can be defined as ‘mixed-cropping of fruits, vegetables, trees and condiments and medicinal herbs that serve as a supplementary source of food and/or income’. Home-gardens provide an age-old nutritional security and survival strategy during times of adversity. These represent an important remedy for reducing vulnerability of the poor and contribute to their food security and survival. Time-tested, complex home-garden systems are often characterized by a spectrum of diverse plant species they contain, and the high degree of recycling of nutrients within a home-garden forms a continuum. Tradition, rather than science, underpins the recycling strategy; it has been said that virtues of a traditional home garden are recognized more by intuition than by measurable quantities.
Multi-storey homestead gardens are environmentally safest and ecologically viable farming systems for rural and peri-urban people of India. These are characterized by complete internal recycling of nutrients and organic matter by exploiting ecological balance of plant species in association with livestock production, to meet domestic needs of a family farm. Homestead gardens comprise a diversity of crop, animal and off-farm enterprises which contribute to income of the farming system. The area around the house or farmyard is normally planted with a wide assortment of crops that require no purchased inputs, and entail only low management. In advanced farms, the number of economic plant species may be 50 to 60, such as 5 to 6 tal- growing species, 5 to 6 medium-height tree species, 5 to 6 bush or shrub species, 4 to 5 roots crops, and up to 30shade-tolerant, short or vine-type annuals. Basic external inputs to the system such as labour, manure, and household wastes, are provided by the farm household. Soil productivity is maintained and enhanced by recycling plant residues and manure, and by biological nitrogen fixation by annual and woody legumes. Soil erosion is minimized by maintaining a continuous ground cover and good water infiltration.
This system of tropical home gardens has all the ecological, social and economic characters that qualify it for a sustainable soil-management module.
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