Wednesday, February 10, 2016

My zero mile food

The step after composting is to grow food.

A  few decades back, the  food   grown in the backyards of most homes  and in the fields by farmers  were with natural plant promoters like animal dung ,  compost, vermi compost, panchagavya, crop rotation etc. All these eventually changed to synthetic  and chemical fertilizers to give more yield. Today,  we are back to this natural way of growing  which has been marketed as  Organic farming* and the yield as  Organic food.

 Organic! organic!! Organic!!!

That is one of the new glamour word  today that media talks especially with respect to food . Today, we add organic  additives to improve the health of the soil. And one of the organic additives which adds soul to the soil is compost.  So after composting, the next natural step for me was to grow organic food and thus started my zero mile food journey.  I have already elaborated  how I started in this post here.

 In a time when even front yard and back yard spaces are shrinking and we live in apartments most of us turn to our balcony to add some green cover. Since my balcony space which receives sunlight is a small area (3 feet X 1 Feet), I upcycled a few small containers and started growing simple greens using seeds from my kitchen spice box. Today, I have graduated to growing potatoes( work in progress) using hilling method and hopefully I should harvest a radish in 2 weeks.

Other than that, apart from the sensory carnivals this patch throws, it gives me safe and healthy food like a sprig of curry leaf or I harvest that tuft of methi, coriander or a few leaves of alternanthera, mint, a tomato  or chilly sometimes.

A very small journey but I am glad I made a beginning……

Here’s presenting my bursts of freshness that adds an extra zing on my plate.

 *Organic farming makes sure that every product it cultivates has full amount of nutrients which will benefit the end user to a large extent. Besides, organic farming or agriculture is the only way through which you can turn waste into complete nutrients and support a sustainable environment too.
day6/7 weekathon


2 comments:

  1. This one you had written about earlier. You are a farmer truly in spirit. To grow so much in an apartment is simply wonderful. Potatoes ?? Wow !

    How do you manage when you travel ? Do you have somebody to tend to your plants ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes Ramesh, have written many times and can still keep writing about this little green patch of mine. yaayy! Thanks for calling me a farmer...i am liking it.

    Potatoes, yes...fingers crossed on this. I transfer the green patch to the porch and my servant will water the plants. But most of plants are seasonal so i mostly harvest them between 2 weeks to 2 months like methi coriander etc...the rest like chilli pots gets transferred to porch when i travel.

    ReplyDelete