Backyard vegetable farming earns her income everyday
Mutabarura tending to her vegetable gardens. Photo by Otushabire TibyAngye
Monica Mutabarura, a mother of five, had always gone to the market to buy vegetables for her family. She loves greens but she was finding it expensive.“We were using about Shs4,000 per day on vegetables,” she recalls.
One day, she was watching a TV programme, On the Farm, on NTV. It was about backyard farming, which she says opened up her eyes. She also reads Seeds of Gold in Daily Monitor, which has helped her to access more information about the subject.
“They were showing a farmer growing vegetables in her compound, yet I had flowers,” Mutabarura says.
Setting up
So, she replaced the flowers with vegetables. She made a nursery bed; when the seedlings were ready, she potted them. The vegetables include spinach, cabbage, tomatoes, spring onions, sukuma wiki and eggplants, among others.
She looked for discarded or broken milk crates from one of the factories, and put in soil, which she mixed with organic manure. This was made from droppings of goats and cows in their farm. When the mixture was ready, Mutabarura transplanted the vegetables from a nursery bed to the crates and other containers, which had been transformed to hold the plants.
Going commercial
Her initial intention was not to grow vegetables for sale but rather they were for home consumption. But they could not consume all vegetables from the garden. So, she eventually started selling to her friends who visit her.
Mutabarura has since expanded the space she uses for vegetables to the veranda of the house.
This time, she planted the vegetables directly in the soil. As to why she has changed from the pots, she says vegetables planted directly in the soil last longer and give better yields.
Advantages of growing the vegetables in pots is that they are easier to manage and free of weeds. If an particular plant is diseased, it is easy to remove, destroy it and reuse the pot.
It eases the work and the vegetables can be arranged in an orderly manner to make the compound look neat.
Harvesting
Mutabarura harvests vegetables once every two weeks for the bigger clients such as hotels and schools, which buy in bulk. This earns her Shs300,000.
She also sells to individual customers at Shs5,000 per kilogramme and Shs1,000 a bundle. “In total, I earn Shs1m a month from my garden,” she says.
Since she has little room left. She has been urging her husband to cut the live fence and put up a perimeter wall so she can use the land around the wall.
She has also turned her garden into a kind of demonstration for schools and individuals, who pay a small fee for study visits.
“I would want to share my story with other housewives. They should stop lamenting that they do not have land for farming, especially those who live in urban areas. They should give their husbands a break from demanding money for vegetables and use their backyards. It will give them economic emancipation,” Mutabarura says.
