Thursday, December 25, 2014

How to set up a kitchen garden

If you are a resident of Bangalore here's how you can set up a kitchen garden in your backyard, terrace or balcony.
Step 1. Recycling your wet waste: While you could buy manure from outside, I'd advise setting up your own composting unit. Daily Dump is a good place to start. You can get one of these units to convert your kitchen waste to manure.
Step 2. Set up your garden: Chances are, you don't have a garden area. That shouldn't stop you. You should get yourself one of these beds. If you are from around Koramangala you can pick these up from Agara Lake or near the Shantinagar cemetery. To get started, you may want to buy a bag of red soil and manure as well.
Step 3: Sow the seeds: I buy my seeds from Agro Seeds at Anand Rao Circle but it should be fairly easy to find an outlet near wherever you are. I have experimented with Tomato, Palak, Mint and Brinjal with varying results. If you can find some earthworms drop them into the pots as well.

Step 4: Water the plants regularly: I collect the runoff from my Reverse-Osmosis water purifier so that I can use that water for the kitchen garden.

Step 5: Reap the fruits: Fresh vegetables with no chemical fertilizers or pesticides.