It’s been two years since I have been trying to grow all manners of greens on my terrace and in the limited green patches in my garden and the land just outside my house. While, I have been pretty successful with green, leafy vegetables and herbs, my experiments with solid vegetable produce has been largely a failure. For instance, I spent five months zealously guarding a patch, 4 feet by 6 feet in which I had my gardener plant potatoes. I would gaze at the lush green roots lovingly for hours on end. Finally, the potato crop was ready for harvesting. We began digging out the potatoes and had several bags ready to hold our produce. But all we got was barely two kg of potato – and that was after five months of labour. Definitely, not worth it.
However, my experiment with growing brinjal in the patch of land just outside my house is a huge success. We have a lush crop. So lush that marauders unseen to us swoop on the produce unseen and plunder the crop, leaving just a few brinjals for us! But brinjals flower frequently and within a few days another crop blooms and we pounce on it before others get to it.
And take heart, it is fairly easy to grow coriander, spinach, mustard, and fenugreek in ordinary garden soil, to which nothing really has been added, except some regular cow manure. That’s all that the gardener believes in.
I have become distinctly wiser since after feeding myself on a steady diet of Youtube videos, garden workshops and presentations on zoom, I have discovered gardening groups on the internet and figured that most of them recommend the following as ideal material to fill your pots: a mix of garden soil, cocopeat, vermi-compost, river sand, and neem khalli. Some suggest that the first layer in your pot should be of dried leaves collected from your terrace or garden, while others suggest covering the soil with a layer of dried leaves.
It is also not such a great idea to pick up expensive and large plastic pots as these can push up costs. A large plastic pot, 3 ft X 1 ft can be priced at Rs 400 per pot. It is much better, instead to use plastic grow bags, now available at most nurseries and also on amazon. In Rs 400, you will get as many as 12 to 40 of them, depending on the size. These are good quality grow bags that will see you through for about two years, are light enough to carry around and come with holes punched in them to allow better drainage.
For many vegetables, you don’t need to buy dried seeds from the market. For instance, this last winter, we sliced two to three tomatoes horizontally and planted them in various pots, some six to eight inches apart. Almost all of them sprouted – with one or two plants springing from each tomato slice. It’s now April, and we are still harvesting our tomatoes.
A group of us even got together and invited Pravin Mishra, a gardening expert in Delhi, who conducts workshops in Delhi-NCR for home kitchen garden enthusiasts. The fees is reasonable – Rs 1,000 per head, and the tips he gives out, are invaluable. The potting mix outlined above is his formula, so it has been tried and tested. He also has a host of very useful videos up on Youtube, most of them in Hindi, but full of priceless tips. For instance, did you know that adding miniscule amounts of pepper and turmeric powder to your garden soil mix is a deterrent to both pests and insects?
Gardening is a hobby that grows on you. Eating your own home-grown vegetables is the other big incentive. As you walk on your terrace every morning, you are also getting fresh breeze and the sun, your early morning dose of Vitamin D as well. What could be better?
Becoming a gardener and growing your own vegetables on your terrace and whatever green patch you own in your garden and can claim outside your house, is one big step on your path to healthy living.
