Floating Gardens

ENTRY DATE: 17.04.2015 | LAST UPDATE: 17.04.2015

CATEGORIES:

  • Agriculture
  • Cropping techniques

TECHNOLOGIES MATURITY:

Applicable immediately

Technology Owners:

  • International NGO, Practical Action
  • Local NGO, Gono Unnayan Kendro

Needs Address

Agricultural sustainability in flood prone areas, crop production, food security 

Adaptation effects

  • Increase employment and income rates
  • Provide food and nutrition for families and communities
  • Allow earlier cultivation of seedlings for a better harvest
  • Provide organic compost for dry season cultivation

Overview and Features

Floating vegetable beds grown in water logged and salinity prone areas. Traditional practice strengthened by scientific and technological input to create longer and stronger beds, and enable crop rotation and cultivation of diversified vegetables and. Floating gardens or baira are bases created by planting aquatic crops such as water hyacinths on soilless rafts on water and used for raising seedlings, vegetables and crops, which get nutrition and food either from composted organics or from the water.

Figure: Floating Garden Construction (Source: Practical Action: http://practicalaction.org/floating-gardens)

Cost

  • Relatively inexpensive to make requiring a small investment in fertiliser and seeds as well as the labour needed to construct them. Other materials such as the aquatic weed for the base of the raft can be obtained locally at no cost
  • Equipment costs – though relies on free and locally available materials e.g. hyacinth
  • Training costs for training in new techniques to cope with the conditions in order to grow more and better crops throughout the year
  • Seed and seedlings, water hyacinth, paddy straw, and labour

Energy source

Human labour

Ease of maintenance

  • A new raft needs to be built every year, but the old one can be used as fertiliser during the dry season
  • Maintenance depends on availability of the raw materials
  • Rafts do not last indefinitely but they can be reused, and hauled to a shadier or sunnier spot or on to a more protected canal to optimise the growing conditions

Technology performance

Good results gained in Bangladesh where floating gardens have provided increased income and food security through enhancing food production in times of flood. Increased income has also allowed diversification of livelihood options

Considerations

  • The rafts can be moved from place to place so are also suitable for those that have temporarily or permanently lost their homes and land
  • Floating gardens should not be used in areas of water that are affected by tides or currents where they would be vulnerable to erosion and at risk of disintegrating
  • Flooded land or small ponds can be used and the floating gardens kept in position by tethering them to poles

Co-benefit, suitability for developing countries

  • Composted material from floating gardens are used as organic manure for field crops
  • Provide employment, income, food and nutrition for the farming families and local communities
  • Some of the landless poor do not have access to areas where the gardens could be set up. Even when areas of water are available they can be some distance away from the household
  • Another difficulty that can arise is that the raw materials to make the raft may not be available
  • As this technology employs local materials, neighbours of trained recipients can easily replicate the floating gardens

Information Resources

Rahman, A. n.d. Floating Vegetable Bed Cultivation. In The Climate of Coastal Cooperation. Available from: www.coastalcooperation.net/part-III/III-3-3-8.pdf [10 November 2014]

Practical Action, n.d. Floating Gardens. Available from: http://practicalaction.org/floating-gardens [10 November 2014]

Practical Action. n.d. Floating Gardens in Bangladesh. Available from: http://practicalaction.org/media/preview/10558/lng:en [10 November 2014]

UNFCCC, n.d. Hydroponics in Bangladesh. Available from: http://maindb.unfccc.int/public/adaptation/adaptation_casestudy.pl?id_project=8&id_hazard=&id_impact=&id_strategy=&id_region= [10 November 2014]