Mumbai: Showing the green finger

Everyone has green fingers”, assured Purvita Kapadia,”All they need to do is feel the soil.” Kapadia (36) should know. She has feeding her soil in her terrace garden in her sea-facing, Chowpatty apartment for the last four years. “It is a common misconception that you need land to carry out farming. A determined effort can bear beautiful fruits even if you grow them in containers, because most vegetables need depth of only up to 1 foot to grow. More than anything it is the satisfaction and peace this activity gives you that is incomparable and very hard to find in this city”, she reveals.

In midst of the congestion present in Mumbai, there are a few urban gardeners who have taken up the mission to add a bit of green in their lives, their homes and their window sills. These gardeners are also fighting rising vegetable prices by ensuring they have a steady supply from their gardens at home.

Most people have stuck to the traditional tulsi, neem, aloe, and flowering plants that you get at any nursery. They grow plants in their windows and tiny balconies, a replacement of sorts for the lack of greenery outside their houses which is gradually vanishing. What most don’t know is that it is equally easy to grow simple healthy vegetables at home, without the chemicals that market vegetables contain and at practically no cost.

Organic is the way to go where indoor farming is concerned. Even though it takes longer than chemically synthesised plants, the yield will always be much healthier. Organic farming does not allow use of any chemicals and uses fertilizers like vermi compost, kitchen waste, leaves, cow dung/urine, mulch, peat etc.

Two years back Vipul Sanghavi, 48, attended a workshop on urban organic farming, and since then he hasn’t been able to pull his fingers out of the soil. He was so fascinated by the idea that he decided to take up the tedious six-month process of making amrit mitti (a rich soil mixture made using cow urine and cow dung) and converting his building terrace into a proper farm. Sanghavi has made soil beds in rows using bricks to line them, and has over 25 varieties of vegetables and fruits in his garden. “The initial inclination to do this was pure pleasure but the garden helped in keeping the home and surroundings cool and the oxygen that it released would be of some help,” he said.

Sanghavi’s garden provides food for his kitchen and the waste goes directly back to the garden as compost. “With time I got more connected to the soil, its texture and aroma and the 30 minutes I spend in it are the most peaceful moments of my day”, he said.

The concept of container farming arose from the need to utilise limited spaces for gardening, and is most beneficial for populated cities where people are ignorant about nature because they haven’t been exposed to it. Vegetables like tomatoes, tendli, spinach, methi, ginger, garlic, chillies and herbs like coriander, basil, pudina, jeera, mustard etc are easy to grow in small balconies or windows. Most of the other plants you can grow with a larger space, the gourds, bhindi, sprouts, ginger, cucumber etc are good to grow in the monsoon.

Both Purvita and Vipul are members of the Urban Leaves community, which is run by farming enthusiasts who meet every Sunday.

Check http://www.urbanleaves.org/

Why practise farming in the confines of your home?
You will grow organic produce, thus cutting down on consumption of chemical insecticides and pesticides.

Vegetable and fruit plants grow on soil beds which are only 8 - 10 inches deep.
If practised judiciously and dedicatedly, city farming can be profitable as costs of transportation and marketing, which are normally 60% of the market price, are eliminated.

You invest not more than Rs500 in acquiring pots, drums and multiple seed packets. Vegetables that give rolling supply for as long as four months can save you up to Rs2,000 on vegetables which you would otherwise have bought from market.

On an average 1kg of organic garbage is generated per family of five members every day.

BMC disposes of more than 5,000 tons of garbage per day. Instead of dumping garbage, organic and wet waste can be utilised effectively as fertilisers and manure.