Vegetable Forest at Peyad

In the video done four months back, I requested you to plant Miyawaki-style vegetable or fruit gardens in your plots in the hope that the maximum possible number of households in Kerala will have such small forests before April 22, that is, World Environment Day. That video received 32,000 views, and I got a lot of responses too. I assume at least a hundred individuals are ready to put up a Miyawaki-style fruit garden in their plots.

But doubts still remain in people’s minds. The questions are: Is this method effective at all? How can 160 saplings in one cent of land get enough sunlight to grow?  I have tried my best to give replies to them. I’ve been studying the Miyawaki Method of Afforestation for the last six years, and practising it seriously for three years now. According to what I observe, I change my opinions and share them with you with the intention of suggesting the best method that can be adopted. That is because we are experimenting constantly.

In October last year, I shared a video with you about a Miyawaki fruit garden set up by my colleague Anitha and her husband Jayakumar at a place named Peyad, nearly five km from their house. A healthy two-year-old Miyawaki forest stands behind it. This is a marshy place which gets water-logged during the rains and becomes extremely dry during summer. Climbers had grown here and choked some of the plants. They have now been removed. Despite all this, the growth of the garden is impressive. We generally recommend planting four saplings in one sq. m. But people are skeptical about this method. This video is an attempt to remove their doubts. One of the four saplings we plant is usually tomato or lady’s finger or brinjal. The advantage is that as the tomato plant spreads itself, the rest are forced to shoot up quickly in search of sunlight. After a while, when the tomato plant withers and dies, we plant another sapling in its place. That is the technique we have adopted here.

Let us see how far this has worked. A point to remember is that the owners, Anitha and Jayakumar, faced maintenance problems also when their caretaker met with an accident and was unable to look after it. Yet the growth rate is remarkable. The gooseberry, soursop, mulberry and guava trees have risen above my shoulder level. That is the Malaysian mombin.  We had planted 160 plants in the beginning, and said that many may die in course of time. Let’s check for ourselves. We had intermixed tomato and chilly plants and they have started fruiting. The tomato plants are thriving. So also the coffee plant and the cherry plant. But this purple guava plant has not. This mootapalam shows wonderful health. Behind it is a lime tree. It may be the Citrus medica variety, going by the dark green colour of its leaves. That one too is a lime tree and that is a chilly plant. This is the white-coloured African bird’s eye chilly that has grown tall. This is sweet lemon which is under attack by the tomato plant. Close by is the hibiscus. It looks healthy. The curry leaf tree near it has not grown well. That’s a healthy guava. Plenty of lady’s fingers had appeared here but since they were not picked, they have dried and some have fallen. Here we see a mango tree and a jack tree. This gooseberry tree is nearly five feet tall. There’s another soursop of the same height. This is a fruit bearing tree. The wild watery rose apple tree has grown well. That’s a mulberry which is about eight feet tall. If it is not pruned, it may trouble the others. That is a healthy rambutan, a star apple, and a Bengal quince in between. Another wild watery rose apple tree. That’s a chickoo. It has grown tall. That’s a custard apple, a Turkey berry, a coffee and a chilly, a rose apple, a soursop, and a rambutan. That small wild plant standing close to the ground is Strobilanthus dupenii. Beyond it is the jack. It bears a small fruit but that will fall soon. Then we have guava, wild watery rose apple, star fruit, mulberry, custard apple, cherry, star fruit, another gooseberry, pomegranate, native rose apple. What all this shows is that even without much maintenance, the trees are growing well. So also the elephant apple. This is the Malay gooseberry whose leaves show minor problems. Many plants are thriving here. There is no point in showing each individual specimen. All this is to give you a general picture. Even with this level of growth, you can make a good fruit forest that is manageable. The peculiarity of this plot is that it has many negative features. There is heavy shade on three sides, one side of which is caused by our own Miyawaki forest, and the other two by rubber plantations. Plenty of teak leaves fall on this ground. Yet the growth of the Miyawaki fruit forest is commendable.

With regular watering, through an automatic drip irrigation system, and a little more care, this will grow much better. The other disadvantage that this plot suffers is that it becomes water-logged during the rains and bone-dry during summer. Despite all these problems, it has grown to this extent in four months. So you can be sure that if you put up a vegetable or fruit forest close to your house and attend to it regularly, it will be a huge success. Please give it a try. I have great hopes that you will.