Gardening - A Beginner's Journey!

If there's one thing that me and V have been consistently doing in our life after marriage, it has to be the gardening. 

Our terrace garden journey started out one fine weekend, when we randomly did a Google search to find out a nursery nearby. Luckily for us, we found that there was this placed called Indra Terrace Garden near our home. It was pleasant surprise to see such a place in Chennai. It was a home with a small office space in the ground floor, the house in the first floor and the garden in the terrace. And man, what a garden! It had everything from spinaches to chillies, drumstick to bitter guords, tomatoes, mint, marigolds, every inch of the terrace filled with so many bags, pots & shelves of plants. All this grown without any fertilizers or pesticides. We instantly knew we had hit the jackpot, coming to the right place. 

The owner was also kind enough to give us various ideas and details on how and where to start and also an insight on how he managed to do all this despite of him being a full-time employee in a company. 

Our journey began with spinach (amaranth a.k.a Mola keerai) For anyone interested in starting a terrace garden, I'd advise them to begin with this spinach variety. Its almost a foolproof green with a 100% yield. In the 3 years since we started this terrace garden, we'd have taken atleast 3 yields every time we sowed the seeds. Of course we did have 2-3 failures in between, attributable mainly to due our lack of proper care and unable to spot the pest attack early. 

To grow spinach in the terrace, you can use anything from an old paint bucket, or water can or a pot or a tarp grow bag. The height of the bag should be atleast 1.5ft tall (this is sufficient as the roots of the plant aren't going to be too deep). The most important thing for growing any plant is the "soil composition"(potting mix). If you don't get that right, you may not see the desired results. The preferred composition for spinach would be 45% cocopeat, 45% compost, 10% red soil. 

Prepare the potting mix and then sprinkle the seeds onto it and give the soil a good mix. Ensure you only sprinkle the water carefully across the bag and not pour it, because the initial sprouts would be tiny and may fall off / pushed down when you pour water.  

First Sprouts

Make sure you keep checking the plant when you water it everyday. This way you can spot out pest attacks in the early stages. Because once it the pest attacks start, they spread across multiple bags pretty quickly and before you can think of what to do your entire lot would be gone. Most often the pest attack on spinaches can be controlled by spraying neem oil mixed with water. 

By the end of 15-20 days the plants would be ready for harvest. You can either pull off the entire spinach (together with the root) off the bag or cut off the stem a couple of inches above the soil - this way the leaves will grow again and you can take another 2 yields from the same set. I'd personally recommend the latter.

Put in a handful of compost atleast monthly once and also spray Panchagavya fortnightly to ensure the plant grows well.

A picture from my insta, as I'm unable to find the original picture

Once you're done with the all the harvests, let the soil barren for a week (do water it regularly though) and keep mixing the soil to ensure that it doesn't become hard. Make sure to add a handful of compost before you start your next batch.

My two cents for someone who would want to start their own garden - 

• Start small
• Care and spend time with the plants
• Don't hesitate to get your hands dirty or get upset with the smell of the neem oil / Panchagavya (the smell is surely nauseating), you can always wash your hands once the work is done. 
• Don't fear to experiment. You may fail quite a few times, but don't give up. Analyse what could've gone wrong and think / read / ask for corrective measures. There are lots of online forums, and videos which would help you. 

Lastly, the joy of seeing the efforts your toil as a flower blooms or a vegetable pops out is priceless. You'll also learn to appreciate the effort a farmer puts in to grow the food on your plate and make you feel grateful for them.