Door-Yard Gardens

Haphazard plantings around the houselot constituted the second subsistence sector, the door-yard garden (ba-eng ). Some gardens produced large quantities of vegetables, fruits, and even cash crops, but most were small affairs. Yet the garden did hold two advantages over the uma: manure-enriched soils and easy access.

Tobacco and potatoes, considered too demanding for dry-field cultivation, often grew alongside the nutrient-rich pigpens. Hog manure was also periodically distributed through the rest of the garden.^[1] It could be used to fertilize sweet potatoes only if thoroughly composted (Purseglove 1968, v. 1:85), a difficulty that, combined with the burden of hauling, precluded manure use in the dry fields. But even fresh dung benefited most door-yard crops. Several varieties of taro grown for the piggery were especially favored in the garden because of their shade tolerance and vigorous response to casual manure application.

Condiments (Capsicum peppers, onions, ginger, garlic, and sugar cane), and vegetables (lima and other beans, squash), were grown in the door-yard garden mainly for convenience. As new vegetables, such as bitter-gourd, eggplant, and sayote (chayote), appeared during the American period, gardens became more diverse. Sayote quickly emerged as the standby vegetable of all social classes; this perennial produces ample quantities of edible leaves, stems, and fruits, and its large tubers can serve as a famine reserve. Only the larger gardens were dominated by fruit trees (such as mangoes and avocados), since frequent household relocation constrained arboriculture. Poorer households thus rarely grew more than a few banana stalks.

The most valuable door-yard crop was coffee. Introduced in the late Spanish period, coffee cultivation spread rapidly among the elite, who found the beans a valuable trade item as well as a beverage source. Having planted sizable orchards of arabica trees, wealthy individuals soon lost their inclination to relocate their homes periodically. As coffee drinking and trading spread, poorer

couples too planted smaller orchards. But in the final years of the Spanish period, blight struck, damaging especially those orchards located on clay soils. Coffee production henceforth would be concentrated in the gardens of a few wealthy households situated on rich loam.