Inspiration to grow my own food
After several failed attempts at tickling my nurturing instinct, I have finally fallen in low with growing my own food while living in a small apartment. Size doesn’t matter nor does the presence of rooted soil. What matters is a conviction and devotion towards your plants and very importantly learning from one’s mistakes. I have finally got the itch to cultivate edible plants wherever I could find a wasteful container or pot. I see that empty yoghurt container as a seedling grower or my egg-tray as a micro green starter. The few of my favourites this season have been leafy vegetables and micro-greens. It is amazing to see how easily they grow and bring such freshness to the summer platter.
Lockdown or no lockdown I think I have always survived on the instinct of finding a new hobby. I have had a feeling about my attention deficiency where I fail to concentrate ons task apart from coding. First gardening happened then water painting and finally macrame towards the end of this season. I am glad that I have finally found my green fingers.
Growing food is infectious
Something which started with me dabbling with herbs became a keen revolution for me. But there were days where I was swamped with work and commitments and a plea to my hubby to water the plants in scorching sun came handy. He willingly watered them and then started taking keen interest in their growth. Little had I expected that he would be smitten too. The sense of achievement that growing from seed is addictive.
There came a time when it was a complete shutdown and even getting the basic necessities was a luxury. So I started hunting my pantry for seeds looking at a few youtube videos. First we had coriander seeds and then it was fenugreek. So easy to grow either we ate it as micro greens or sometimes we matured it for a while and enjoyed it with numerous flatbread combinations.
School Projects
Schools were also sensing the need to keep the kids engaged. Every week there was new easy project to germinate or grow. We did a 30 day project of growing avocado seedling. Growing in a glass of water was testing my patience that is when my hubby came to the rescue. He kept changing the water to maintain the oxygen levels and exactly after 50 days our seedling peeped out. Phew!
Another amazing project was growing tomatoes from cut slices. Something which I had never expected and used my own logic that it would rot underneath. But when the seedlings grew out of soil like a new bride I couldn’t contain my excitement.
We have now done celery, garlic and pea shoots all from fresh produce without the need for us to buy seeds. Our pantry is now the new seed capital.
Growing Organic
Gardening could be a gaming challenge if you set your levels. After growing the next challenge was growing organic and understanding crop rotation and also using organic fertilisers. I have gone into making my own compost but this should be my next challenge. I have been reliant on egg shells, onion peels, dried tea and coffee pods for improving the fertility of my soil. Also Amazon and some local producers which make comfrey liquid to add to the plants.
