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How important is the kitchen garden for nutritional security?

Why is there a need for Nutritional garden?

Nutritional garden is the best way to build up your immunity power and meet your body’s nutrient requirement. This ensures availability of fresh, tasty and chemical free vegetables at all times. The wasted water and garbage of the house gets put to good use. In this way, there is also a good saving.

Fruits and vegetables have an important place in our diet. Apart from vitamins and minerals, we also get proteins and fats from them. Deficiency of any of these can lead to various diseases. By using fruits and vegetables in a balanced way, we can avoid the diseases caused by the lack of nutrients.

It is very important to have a nutritious garden in every family so that all the members of the family can get the required quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables, so that the required quantity of fruits and vegetables can be obtained throughout the year.

Read more: Role of NPK for the plants.

What is Nutrition Garden and how should it be built?

Along with greens and vegetables, fruit trees are also planted in the Nutritional garden. While selecting the fruit trees, special attention is paid to their quick fruiting and size, in a family having 5-6 members, 200 square meters of space is sufficient.

Special care should be taken in the nutrition garden that fruit trees should be planted on the north and west side only. Plant medium sized trees on the north side and small sized trees on the west side. The garden should be surrounded by barbed wire from all sides.

Creeping vegetables can be planted on top of the circle. Make way and irrigation channel in such a way that the work of the whole garden can be done easily. Do not waste much land in the way and meds. Root vegetables like radish, carrot, beetroot, turnip etc. or spices like garlic, green coriander etc. should be applied on the ridges. In this way, it is very important to set up an ideal nutrition garden in every house.

Read more: Role of Micro Nutrients For The Plants.

What is the importance of crop rotation in the home garden for nutritional security?

It is necessary to adopt crop rotation in the home garden for nutritional security. By adopting the crop cycle, we can have vegetables and fruits throughout the year. Crop rotation also reduces the possibility of many types of insects and diseases in our garden.

Crops and varieties are selected according to climate and personal preference. We should plant cabbage, radish, carrot, cauliflower, turnip, beetroot and lettuce on the ridges of the beds. Bitter gourd, cucumber, nanua all around the garden. Can plant kumhda, torai, beans or kundru. Make compost pits on the west side of the garden, make a scaffolding on the top of the pit and plant pumpkin, kundru, beans etc. on it.

It should be noted that the vegetables with vines should be planted only after making scaffolding. Therefore, in the vegetable crop cycle, only shallow rooted vegetables should be planted after deep rooted vegetables. Similarly, pulses should be grown after radish, which will collect nitrogen in the soil.

For example, plant peas after carrots. In this way, crop rotation is not only necessary to increase the fertility of the land, but it also controls pests. Horseradish, curry leaves and basil plant must also be included in the ideal nutrition garden.

Read more: Soil testing importance and Usefulness.

Where and how to prepare seeds and plants?

The seeds or saplings should be planted in the nutrition garden or the home garden at a certain time according to the crop cycle. It would be better to prepare the plant yourself as per your requirement, if the plant is soilless, then the plant will be strong and healthy.

While preparing seedlings of early vegetables, they suffer special damage due to rain. Therefore, arrangements should also be made to cover the nursery while raising the saplings. After three to four weeks of sowing the seeds, the plants are ready to be planted in the home garden. In this way, seeds can be sown as per their requirement.

Read more: Soil Nutrient Management with Sensor.

How to classify vegetables in the home garden?

Vegetables can be divided into different groups, and can be interchanged within this group for the purpose of crop rotation. Leafy vegetables:- Amaranth, Lettuce, Fenugreek, Mint, Spinach, Parsley Vilayati, Spinach, Tuber vegetables:- Arabic Onion, Garlic, Ginger, Turmeric, Potato, Sweet Potato. Pumpkin vegetables:- Cucumber, gourd, gourd, bitter gourd, Nanua, Torai, Chappan Pumpkin, leguminous vegetables:- Leguminous vegetables, cowpea, gram, peas.

Root vegetables:- Beetroot, carrot, radish, turnip. Stem vegetables: Asparagus, lettuce.

Which vegetables are sown when and in which month?

Summer vegetables are sown in February-March and rainy season vegetables are usually sown in June-July and autumn vegetables in October-November.

(a) Legume vegetables like guar, cowpea and beans (b) Cucurbit vegetables like cucumber, bottle gourd, bottle gourd and pumpkin, muskmelon, watermelon (c) Leafy vegetables like chilai and spinach.

(d) Okra, spicy chili, maize, sweet potato etc. Rainy season vegetables include all summer vegetables including Arvi and Radish. French beans, broad beans and peas in autumn vegetables, leafy vegetables such as spinach, fenugreek, mint, parsley, exotic spinach, cabbage vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower and bok choy, root vegetables such as coriander fennel, vegetables others such as lettuce, capsicum , contains tomatoes and asparagus. Therefore, all the vegetables should be included in the home garden.

Read more: How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Can Help Farmers.

How to prepare land for good crop? 

Good ploughing of land and preparation of land is essential for Nutritional garden. In the beginning, do deep ploughing of the whole land for nutrition garden. Remove pebbles and weeds from the soil properly. Use compost or well decomposed cow dung in the beds.

How to prepare for planting fruit trees and vegetables?

For planting fruit trees, make pits according to the size of the plants, 90 cm for large size plants. Diameter and make an equally deep pit. 50 cm for medium and small sized trees. Make a pit of the same diameter and as deep. In each pit, two to three baskets of compost or cow dung manure and one kg.

Fill with mixed fertilizer. When the soil of the pit settles, plant the plants. Because the plants planted after making and filling the pits grow more, they remain healthy and they start bearing fruits quickly.

For planting vegetables, seeds or saplings are planted in different beds. Plant the plant or seed in the designated bed at the right time so that the crop to be planted later in that bed can also be planted on time.

Read more: Sustainable Agriculture & Food Problems.

How to irrigate the nutrition garden?

Irrigation of the beds in the nutrition garden should be done from time to time as per the requirement because fast growing vegetable crops require regular irrigation. In fruit trees, especially citrus plants, at the time of fruiting or fruiting, deep irrigation can cause flowers and small fruits to fall off. Irrigate only when the size of fruits becomes bigger than peas. One or two irrigations are beneficial at the time of fruit growth.

Why weeding is necessary for proper growth of fruits and vegetables?

For the proper growth of fruit and vegetable plants, weeding of beds and beds will be destroyed from time to time and more nutrients will be available to the plants. Weeding after irrigation helps to maintain the moisture in the beds. The air circulation in the roots is good, the plants remain healthy and the need for irrigation is less.

Read more: How to do Agriculture waste management?

When and at what stage should fruits and vegetables be harvested?

Fruits and vegetables should be harvested in the kitchen garden in the morning or in the evening because then juice is more and pulp is hard. If it is not harvested in time, fibers are formed in it. Which are not edible. There is also a lack of sweetness and quality in mature vegetables. If fruits and vegetables are more than required, they can be preserved and used later.

How should fruits and vegetables be protected from pests in the nutrition garden?

There is an outbreak of many types of insects and diseases on fruits and vegetables. Necessary insecticides and curative chemicals should be used carefully to save the crop from them. The instructions given with each medicine should be followed. Instead of chemical medicines, as far as possible, home insecticide measures such as decoction of tobacco solution, insecticide made from neem leaves and fruits should be used because using it is beneficial from the point of view of health.

Read more: Chemical Fertilizer & its impact on Agriculture.

Planting to prevent diseases or treating them with fungicidal chemicals before planting reduces the outbreak of disease on the crop. Diseases and pests can be controlled by planting disease-resistant vegetables, keeping the beds clean and destroying the plants affected by the disease as soon as possible. Therefore, the principle of prevention is better than cure should be adopted.

In this way by planting a nutritional garden in your home garden, you can ensure the nutritional security of the whole family. Fruits and vegetables can be used in large quantities. The effect of malnutrition or undernutrition is maximum in people of low income group. Malnutrition results in low birth weight of the new-born and high mortality rate.

Every person needs energy in food. Women should also fulfil their requirement of more energy, protein, fat and vitamins in order to meet their daily requirement during pregnancy or during lactation. So that by becoming a healthy citizen, we can fulfil our responsibility towards the family, society and the country. In which the home garden can play an important role by providing the required quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables. In this way, home garden or nutrition garden can prove to be very useful for nutritional security.