Sack farms: a new option for urban households

Harriet Nakabaale, 45, a resident of Kawaala, a Kampala suburb, lives in a small one-bedroom house set on a plot of land measuring 30 feet wide and 50 feet long. This is typical for many peri-urban poor households that cannot afford the luxury of spacious lawns and tree-lined driveways. 

Despite the small size, Nakabaale has turned her small compound into a neat green garden that has become the envy of many and a demonstration garden of sorts. 

When you walk through the small gate into her homestead, it is the green that welcomes you. Sacks sit side by side along a small corridor that leads to her door. There are also one-litre plastic soda bottles hanging at the balcony of the chicken coop and black disused paint cans in between the sacks. All are teaming with crops. The sacks are not ordinary, at least in regards to size. They have a radius of just over one metre. She has only four of them: exactly what her compound can hold. 

Setting up the garden
"I started by collecting huge sacks that had been dumped around my neighbourhood. Given that I have always had a poultry house, I was able to compost chicken manure that had accumulated in the coop. This I mixed with black soil to enrich the soil. But I did not just fill the sacks with the soil, I had to place small pebble stones at the middle of the sack, right from bottom to top, then fill the sack with soil, leaving the stones in the middle," the mother of three says. 

The stones ensure sufficient water distribution throughout the sacks during watering.
In one of the sacks she grows spinach, dodo and carrots. In another is a young guava tree surrounded by green vegetables. In yet another there are spring onions, celery, tomatoes and spinach. True to her philosophy, size does not matter, which is why even in egg shells there are thriving plants.

In order to ensure maximum usage of the sack, she grows some crops along the sides of t-he sack. "Usually the crops with big roots like carrots go on top and the sides are reserved for those with small roots like ordinary vegetables. I water my sack garden almost on a daily basis. My garden is evergreen, even during the dry season," she says.

Reaping big

Nakabaale's approach can be replicated by many poor urban households with limited land; it not only ensures that there is something for the family to eat but also brings in aextra money to meet other household needs.

As a model sack gardener, Nakabaale trains others from far and near at a fee of Shs 20,000 (about $6). Monthly, she earns about Shs 1 million (about $300), most of which comes from her services as a sack farming teacher, and also from the sale of seedlings for various crops she grows in her sacks. She also earns from the sale of her crops, mostly vegetables, onions and tomatoes. 

"This business has been very instrumental in my life. With sack farming I have kept my three children in school. We don't buy food from the market because, even though I sell most of the food crops I produce, there is always enough left for home consumption," Nakabaale shares.

She has been doing sack farming for 21 years now and is proud to be making a decent living from a venture she did not even invest much money in. "The sacks I always use are those that have been dumped as waste. And the black soil and gravel stones are also readily available around the neighbourhood," she says.