With Mumbai’s space constraints, cultivating a garden for pesticide-free vegetables and fruit may seem like a far-fetched idea. But growing and owning an organic kitchen garden is actually utterly achievable.
Preeti Patil of Urban Leaves India — an NGO that promotes city farming — says it can be surprisingly simple. “The process is cost-effective, and low-maintenance. The only requirements are a lot of patience and perseverance,” says she.
At the outset, you don’t need to invest in fancy or earthen pots.
You can even make use of plastic bottles, buckets and bathtubs to grow vegetables. Take a medium sized bathtub; fill it with soil and home compost to grow cabbages, cauliflowers, capsicums, radish and onions.
The most important step in kitchen gardening is to make Amrut Mitti (nutrient-rich soil), which has abundant and diverse microbial life that support healthy plant growth. It is simple to prepare and the results are extremely effective. “Start with what you have. There’s no need to buy earthworms or any other stuff. Simply convert your kitchen waste into resource,” says Patil. Keep sprinkling some red earth in the pots from time to time.
Keep it covered with a layer of dry crushed leaves or sugarcane baggase. If the waste becomes too wet, add newspaper, dry leaves and soil to cover it. This helps in reducing loss of water due to evaporation. It insulates microbes and organisms in the soil from direct heat and also provides food for them.
Add a dose of Amrut Jal every 15 days, after you have sown the seed. Amrut Jal is essentially a liquid solution comprising cow urine, fresh cow dung (available outside temples), organic black jaggery and water. If organic black jaggery is unavailable, replace it with six ripe bananas/jackfruits, or two glasses of plain sugarcane juice. » Mix together ten literes of water, one litre of cow urine, one kg of fresh cow dung and fifty grams of organic black jaggery. » Keep this solution for three days. » Stir this solution twice or thrice a day — stir it twelve times clock wise and anti-clock wise. » On the fourth day, the concentrated solution is ready. » Mix one part of this concentrated solution with ten parts of water and Amrut Jal is ready. Add a fistful of wood ash every three months to your soil.