Introducing a Home Garden Model at Mondulkiri Field Office

It is raining almost everyday in Mondulkiri province during the wet season, which offers high potential during that time for a family home garden. Still, local people have a low awareness and knowledge on how to prepare for a home garden in this season. The participants who attended every training course of home garden provided by CRDT’s project, only got to know about the theory but never had the opportunity to see the real practice by trainers. Even the project team still has low capacities regarding the home garden preparation and they need to conduct small scale training at household level but it wasn’t possible to do.

Actually, Mondulkiri project team have been developing a model home garden to be shown and experimented for field staff and all participants of home garden training course. This home garden has been set up by all field staffs during their free time. So far, all field team have been able to move from the theory to the practice successfully. Also, this home garden is a good example of environmental management as the cements bags have been reused to grow the vegetables on the gravel land. This model home garden is useful for other people in this location, as their home land have also a lot of gravel where it is difficult to grow vegetables.

After doing this model garden, we conducted a course for Extension Workers about the home garden. They showed a strong interest for these techniques as the situation is the same at their homes. When they returned home, they started preparing the same kind of home garden. As a result, one EW, Mr. Kong Sarun in Sre Khtum village has been developing his skills and did his own home garden, and he is going to continue to do the same every year near his house.

By Meas Viphou, Project Manager in Mondulkiri province