Investigating Viability of Premium Influenced Land use Structure in Production of Quality Indigenous Vegetable

Raised bed gardening is a form of land use structure that is becoming popular among home vegetable growers especially in parts of the world with greater population densities or less tillable land. Raised bed plots coined as Premium Influenced Land Use structures (PILAU) and conventional plots were established on the farms of ten representative farmers selected from Vihiga and Jinja sites of Kenya and Uganda, respectively. Each PILAU was further divided into three micro-plots totalling to 30 micro-plots. Indigenous and exotic vegetables were planted in each of the micro-plot and maintained by the defined agronomic practices, each vegetable being replicated six times. Weekly monitoring of the PILAU plots was done and agronomic performance parameters measured (vigour and robust, plant height, branching, yield and leaf density) and similarly for the conventional plots. PILAU treatment had a significant effect (p<0.001) on the height, leafy density, yield and disease incidences of the vegetables. Vegetables grown in raised beds also showed high morphological characteristics in terms of branching, leafy density and vigor compared to those that were grown conventional plots. They were also ‘leafier’ and yielded more compared to the ones that were grown in conventional plot. An observational survey was conducted to establish plant diversity of smallholder farms and land use practices, with regard to vegetable farming, in Vihiga and Jinja for 76 house holds. Generally, farmers apportioned their land into reference points as near portion, medium portion and far portion, depending on the proximity of the portion to the homestead. The near house portion reported high crop diversity with a frequency of 49 which was equivalent to 50.7%. The mid-farm portion ranked second in crop diversity with a frequency of 288 ( 29.8%). The far-farm portion had the lowest crop diversity with a frequencyof 188 which equated to 19.5%. Farmers should therefore be encouraged to improve the potential of the near house portion