Households can grow the staple and still eat poorly, because a diet of maize or cassava alone lacks the vitamins and minerals children need. A kitchen garden is the cheapest correction available.
Why close to the house matters
A vegetable plot in the main field is weeded when there is time and watered almost never. The same plot ten steps from the door is picked at, weeded and watered daily, because it is passed constantly.
It also allows the use of household wastewater from washing and rinsing, which is water already carried and otherwise thrown away. That single factor is what makes a kitchen garden viable through a dry season.
What to grow
Prioritise what is missing from the household's diet rather than what sells:
- Dark green leaves: amaranth, cowpea leaves, pumpkin leaves, spider plant, nakati. Fast, hardy, repeatedly harvestable, and dense in iron and vitamin A.
- Orange-fleshed vegetables: pumpkin, carrot, and orange-fleshed sweet potato, which are a strong source of vitamin A.
- Legumes: beans, cowpeas, groundnuts, for protein and for the soil.
- Tomatoes, onions, garlic for flavour, which matters because food people enjoy is food people eat.
- A fruit tree or two: pawpaw, mango, guava. Slow to start, then years of production for no further effort.
Making the most of a very small space
- Sack gardens. A sack filled with soil and manure with a gravel column through the middle for watering, planted through holes cut in the sides. Grows a surprising quantity of greens in the space of a sack.
- Keyhole beds. A round raised bed with a notch cut in, and a compost basket at the centre that feeds and waters the bed.
- Vertical space. Train climbing beans and passion fruit up the fence or the wall.
- Containers. Old basins, jerrycans cut lengthways, worn tyres, provided they drain.
Soil and feeding
Small gardens are cropped hard, so feed them. Compost from kitchen waste, ash and animal manure. A compost basket sunk into the middle of a bed feeds it continuously as household scraps break down.
Mulch heavily. In a small bed it is easy to do and it halves watering.
Watering with household wastewater
Water from washing dishes and rinsing clothes can safely water vegetables, with sensible limits: keep it off the parts you eat raw, apply it to the soil rather than the leaves, and avoid water containing heavy detergent or bleach. Water used to rinse rather than to wash is the best.
Keeping animals out
The most common cause of failure is a goat. Fence properly at the start, with something that will actually stop livestock and poultry, or accept losing the garden. A fence built after the first loss is built too late.
Planning for continuous supply
Sow a small amount every two or three weeks rather than all at once, so harvest is continuous rather than a glut followed by nothing. Leafy greens that regrow after cutting are particularly good for this.
Seed saving
Save seed from the strongest plants of open-pollinated varieties, dry it thoroughly, and store it airtight with ash to deter insects. It reduces the cash needed each season. Note that seed saved from hybrid varieties will not come true, so buy those fresh.
Who should this be aimed at?
Households with young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women benefit most, because the nutritional gap matters most there. Savings groups and mothers' groups are effective places to start, because members can share seed, cuttings and results.