An equally valid or more appropriate title could have been, 'My Experiments with window farming'. So my aim here is to share some of my recent adventures of window farming. In this computer era, one may write about window farming, where neither 'window' exists nor 'farming', as understood by us, normally. For example, we use the word 'bus', but there is no bus (vehicle) in our home. Then you say 'virus' (on your computer), and get frightened that you may get viral infection now, if you continue to work! We had actually all sorts of practical jokes happening around us, a couple of decades back when we first started using computers. A professor in an esteemed research institute got shocked when the computer said 'illegal character entered', as he typed his supposed to be password! He even complained to the computer administrator that he has not done anything illegal, never in his entire life but this computer is declaring him to be illegal (character)! Well, you can guess the rest of the story! A couple of years back while in Bangalore, I tried to search through the internet, whether there are any parks/gardens nearby and all I got were names of restaurants or residential complexes, not the parks or gardens I was interested in! Of course you have opened a window right on your computer/laptop/smart phone as you are reading this blog and hopefully there is no 'farming' so far. And I am writing about real (non digital?) window of a flat in Powai (Mumbai) and real farming, which simply means growing edible plants! If the definition is clear, let us move ahead.
I love plants and gardening; and farming in a limited sense, not the hard physical work involved in agriculture! As a child I used to participate and enjoy these activities, in my maternal grand parents' house, where I spent most of my childhood and adolescence. My grand father had a small piece of land around his house, where we had some fruit bearing trees including a few coconut trees, banana plants and we could grow considerable amount of vegetables for every day use. (Those days, it was not easy to buy vegetables in small towns and villages.) It was fun to dig the ground, sow the seeds, water it regularly and watch them grow and yield fruits. In rainy season, it was a different story. In our front yard, we would make a little raised beds and sow some seasonal vegetable seeds. No need to water! We were growing a variety of vegetables, cucumber, egg plant, ladies finger (भेंडी), ridge gourd, snake gourd, string beans and so on. Cucumbers were very attractive because we could eat them raw plucking directly from the plants, when they are very tender. So were string beans. We used to eat tender ladies finger as well, but mostly cucumbers and beans. That was real fun we had those days, which I missed when I grew up and settled in far away city. But childhood memories never fade and keep cropping up whenever there is an occasion, say visiting the place where you grew up or talking to people having similar experience.
I was fortunate several years later, when I got a chance to get back to my childhood fantasy, to have a garden around my house, thanks to the IITB campus where we lived for more than a decade. But those were the days I had so little time at my hand and could not get involved much in it, directly. It was my husband who worked in the garden almost always, although we (my children and me), did help him and participated often. Thanks to the family who lived there before we moved in, our garden was full of several varieties of flowering plants, trees like mango, coconut, papaya, star goose berries, curry leaves, lemon, lemon grass, flowering plants like hibiscus, jasmine, rose, just to quote a few. Plucking the star gooseberries was a challenge, so was plucking mangos and ripening them. We got real organic products! We did distribute some of them amongst our friends. Food tastes better when you share it. That is our culture. In short, we all enjoyed and even had garden parties occasionally, inviting friends. (सह नौ भुनक्तु!) That is now the bygone era. Sooner or later one has to leave the campus life. So did we, moved to a small apartment, missing all those plants around us. We did carry a few flowering plants and the Indian sacred basil (तुळसी), from our garden when we left the campus, and adjusted them on a small parapet (protruded area) just outside the windows of our flat. (Used the word parapet, for lack of a better word. It can not be called a balcony either.) Some died, some survived and all that we did was to water them.
It was not until recently, that I got into the great idea of window farming. After my retirement, I had even made sincere efforts to see if I can go to some smaller place in my native place and pursue a little bit of my childhood fantasy. That did not work out. I was not lucky or it was a blessing in disguise. In the last decade, there have been a hue and cry about climate change, pollution in cities, plastic misuse and organic farming and so on. I read a lot about the recent trends about urban farming, composting at home and what not. It was not very easy to gather correct information. Also, most often it was some kind of social work, composting and growing vegetables on the terraces of hospitals for the inmates etc. without much clarity about individual ventures, big get together to learn this with registration fee etc.. Now, with so much self learning that we have been used to and the practical experience that I have from my childhood, it made little sense to me to join such clubs and spend (waste?) so much time and money on that. More over it was not clear from where to get soil, how much it will cost, whether on the small parapets of my flat something can be done at all, since they had fixed pre decided agenda which would not explain all this. At that time my elder daughter Aparna brought to my notice that there were articles on home composting, very simple and down to earth. There were blogs from individuals who did terrace farming, mostly from cities like Bangalore and composting done at home by many individuals in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Some of my relatives in Bangalore also did it. They are all usually, individual houses however small it may be with private terrace and some times a small back or front yard. Never the less, I took interest and started experimenting and thinking, determined to do something in that direction.
First, let me explain how this simple composting at home can be done. You can take any kind of planter of a big enough size or a plastic bucket (or bin) with holes drilled at the base. You can drill holes in plastic wares very easily, by heating a metal rod and inserting it into the base of your plastic container. There are also neat and beautiful earthen ware sets specially designed for this purpose. I will share some links to get an idea of what it is like, later. But for now, let us start the lesson. Start with a few pebbles just like what we do to plant anything in a pot. This is for air circulation. Then you can start by filling a little mud at the base, keep adding all your daily kitchen waste, alternating it with dry loose mud. Every day the wet kitchen waste shold be covered with dry mud. You can have lid for your bin. Avoid cooked food waste (that attracts unwanted pests and insects; and likely to produce foul oder.) Also, do not use non veg waste. It is suggested, I have no idea; but guess it will smell bad when it decomposes. And we are keeping the waste in a corner or balcony or parapet of our small mega city flats! So that is the caution. If some one wants to experiment, that is his/her choice. I would like to know, just for knowledge sake, since I am a pure vegetarian. For better result (faster decomposing) you can chop your waste to smaller size in case they are too big. The principle is one layer of wet waste, one layer of dry mud. Once the bin is full, put a lid and keep it aside. You can start a new bin and repeat. Once in 2-3 weeks you can turn it around and mix and leave it. Normally, in about 4-6 weeks the composted mud will be ready for use. Since you are using mud along with and wet waste, you can directly plant in it some thing that you like to grow. I mean you can use it as potting soil. Now how fast it decomposes and turns into compost depends on the wet waste we use and also the size. Bigger chunks would require more time to degenerate. Like corn reed would not degenerate for a very long time. Pomegranate skin will take longer time than papaya skin or banana skin. But if they are there in semi decomposed state, it will not disturb the ecological requirement of plants, unless the proportion is too large. It will not smell. In rainy season, the bin should be covered and kept as dry as possible. In other seasons, if it is too dry one may sprinkle a little water. A little balance between wet and dry components. With this much care, I never experienced any bad smell and the ready compost was smelling like the smell of mud after the first shower (rain) hits the ground. These are all part of learning and enjoying.
Now here is an alternative to dry mud. There is a material called coco peat, which is manufactured mostly in the South, but marketed every where I think. It comes in the form of a block, like brick. When you pour water on it it expands and becomes more than five-six times the original block. And it is in powdered form and you can dry it (it automatically dries within few hours) keep it in a container like a big bucket. You can use it instead of mud. The resulting compost can be used as manure. It will retain water and is good for the plants. But I think if you want to plant something, it is better to mix this compost with mud. Routinely, you can keep adding dry mud and coco peat alternatively, as the dry component. It is possible to use dry leaves, instead of coco peat or dry mud. One should understand the principle of dry and wet combined effect, scientifically. I will share a few links where you can read more about composting.
Before that let me tell my experience. It was not easy to get dry mud of good quality for reasonable price in Mumbai. Some times I got cheated. The mud used to be mixed with cement chunks, probably collected from construction sites. Sometimes it was very sticky, nearer to the clay used for making Ganesha Vigraha, if you have any idea of how they make Ganesha idol for the festival. And buying dry mud in rainy season is nearly impossible. You have to store it before hand. Coco peat is very handy but is a bit expensive in Mumbai compared to other cities, in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala for sure. You can buy it online from Amazon as well. Using mud all the time, would make storage heavy and there is not so much space to keep so many plants in our small apartments. So I shifted to coco peat recently. I also use dry leaves from my own window/terrace garden and some times dry the mutter skins in the sun and use it as dry component. I am lucky, I get full sun light in and around my flat. That is also needed for plants to grow well. Keep learning and experimenting or the other way round!
Here are some links to begin with.
This information is more or less same as what I explained above.
This web site deals with waste management, more than just composting. Nice videos. They sell their product. There are beautiful bins meant for composting. Method of composting is essentially same, but more professional. For quick view, look at some of the following youtube videos (available on the above web site).
You can get more ideas from this web site, 'daily dump'. They suggest use of microbes, which I do not use. In fact that is not required and even if you use it once, you need not keep using it repeatedly. One can also use a little bit of older compost to generate microbes. Some of my cousins in Bangalore do like that and have suggested to me the same. But I use just the simple method. Once you empty the compost, the bin will surely have some left over microbes and that is enough I believe.
There is another commercial organisation called Trust basket. My daughter and I both tried Trust basket compost bin, an online product, for composting at home, but we were not happy with their compost bin and microbes they sell. We were disappointed. It was not giving the desired result and also it produced foul smell. If you google search, you will find out all about Trust basket, which is marketing compost bin, coco peat, planters, seeds and many other garden related products. The agent they use for accelerating the composting process is not good and not required also. However for coco peat and other products you may try Trust basket. It looks a bit more expensive over all.
My daughter Aparna, is happy with daily dump compost bins. Again, using microbes repeatedly is not necessary. I think what I am doing currently is the best. You can buy daily dump compost bins, so that it is very neat, nice looking and suits a city flat.
Now let us move on to the real goal of this blog viz., window farming. I have only prepared the background for that, as the first big step. In the beginning, when I made compost for the first time, and planted some plant which I already had, I had no idea what I was going to grow. But as bonus, I got some cucumber and pumpkin plants coming out from the compost. They grew pretty well. This was during rainy season. I share a few photos of these creepers from my window farm below.
Pumpkin flower
(in case you don't recognise!)
Madras cucumber. ↓
The size of a cricket ball! 😀
That was a few weeks after I started composting. Then, I sowed fenugreek (मेथी )seeds, got tender leaves and made a dish (दाल/सांभार you may call it). I learnt how to grow mint (पुदिना) from the twigs and grew. They are still there on my terrace. They keep spreading and growing when you cut. I grew turmeric (हल्दी, ಅರಸಿನ in Kannada) and similar one, known as mango ginger (अंबी, ಅಂಬೆ ಕೊಂಬು in Kannada). These are for roots. Whatever may be the quantity of roots that we get, the leaves are so attractive. Turmeric leaves are used for flavour and also for wrapping and cooking a kind of pudding made of rice. It is very famous in our place, called kadabu (ಕಡಬು), traditionally made on the first day of Diwali. It is very delicious and the flavour of the leaves is just amazing. Together with ginger roots, all three roots cut fine with a little bit of lemon juice, salt and a seasoning with mustard and asafoetida, makes very nice pickle. Since two years I am making it with my own farm product, which lasts for a couple of months for two of us. Ginger also can be grown but I did not try it seriously. I did plant it once and got some, but did not continue to grow. Here are a few pictures. Mint, Aloe vera and hadjod (हडजोड) are grown on the corner of a small common terrace of our building.
← Methi
Mint, Aloe vera, Hadjod
↓
Turmeric and Mango ginger
I grew some string beans (some variety of it). The seeds were collected from my native place when we visited. The creeper was a feast for the eyes! Here they are.
When we got 8-10, we made a small salad, by chopping it fine, adding fresh coconut, lemon juice and salt (you can add a small amount of chopped chillies too). If it were only one or two, we just plucked them and ate like how we were eating in our childhood, re living our childhood!
👧👦
We have some chillies too! Again, grown from the red chilly seeds, from the kitchen, a variety which is less spicy. We do not get many. About a dozen are there in the plant at the moment. Also, our chillies are totally bland, may be because our compost is totally vegetarian (सात्विक)! Not even cow dung used!!😝
I was wondering why don't we grow them as decorative show plants like this. →
😃😃
I had to shift my tomatoes to the common terrace of our building where I manage a few plants in a small portion. Seeds got from my kitchen tomatoes!
I am successfully growing some greens like Indian spinach (ಬಸಳೆ in Kannada, मायाळु in Marathi) and something called goli soppu (ಗೋಳಿ ಸೊಪ್ಪು) in Kannada, (the equivalent of which I do not know in any other language, and not even in Kannada of other parts of Karnataka except the coastal Karnataka). I am able to grow substantial amount of these green leaves, cook them often and even share some with my daughter occasionally. We had some aravi (अरवि ) too! Could make one or two chutney from the leaves and a small dish (variety of raita) from the roots that I could finally dig up!! Here are some clicks.
↖ ↑
अरवि ↓ मायाळु ↓
ಗೋಳಿ ಸೊಪ್ಪು
I ventured upon growing pea nuts once, prompted from my husband! The plants grew very well, but very few small pea nuts. And tried on potatoes. The green leaves of potatoes were so attractive, that we almost got tempted to eat them as salad. But from the internet search and discussion with others, I came to know that potato leaves are not edible. No potatoes could be harvested any way!😀 But I learnt how to grow peanuts if at all, and not possible in small pots. Similarly about potatoes it is possible, but requires some organisation and management. More about how to grow them, expect me to write a separate blog!
Here is the pea nuts crop!
And the potato plants!
Paddy sample grown for fun →
When it was green it was very beautiful too, but missed the photos!
From my compost once I got a beautiful plant. I protected it although I was not sure of what plant it was. After discussing with other people like me and applying my own childhood memory and finally of course with the help of google, I identified the plant. It was a boon by some birds.
From my compost once I got a beautiful plant. I protected it although I was not sure of what plant it was. After discussing with other people like me and applying my own childhood memory and finally of course with the help of google, I identified the plant. It was a boon by some birds.
The plant is oudumber (औदुंबर), also known as Indian fig. It is called atti (ಅತ್ತಿ) in Kannada. I transported it to a place where it could possibly become a big tree some day. I have a few pictures of the plant as it grew, which I took, before parting with it!
There were many other surprise bonus! The following is Indian lily moth caterpillar. Interesting. The small lily plants were in the pot for many years. In the rainy season they will grow well and blossom but in other seasons, won't flower and even dry up sometimes, though I kept on watering. Last rainy season I was both scared and thrilled to see these caterpillars. I missed taking photo when they were in large number, eating up the lily leaves. They eat up very fast and thoroughly. Then they disappear. The plant starts growing again, and again the caterpillars crop up and eat the plant! This cycle I could observe happening two-three times. I learnt that they are called Indian lily moth caterpillar from my younger daughter Gouri and counter checked it from the net.
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The myna birds are very bold and chirp very sharp sitting on the window and one fine morning, a baby myna was being taught by her mother, to fly.
Motivated by the audumber sapling which came for free, I made a few more tree saplings: Soap fruit (रीठा), jamun, jack fruit etc. Here are a few clicks.
↓Reetha took three months to shoot up!
This photo →
of the saplings of Jamun and Jack fruit was taken after transporting it to Khardi where we finally hope to plant the tree in the ground, to grow!
This is a fairly good account of what is being done in Powai window farm. I use a lot of herbs like aloe vera, lemon grass, insulin leaves, ajivan, tulsi etc., very often fresh from my window farm and some times share some of them with our friends. I get fair amount of Indian spinach and goli soppu, good enough to make main dishes. It is an ongoing experiment. It is not money versus the product that you can compare. More as fun! I have influenced my maids and they are also trying to grow, particularly mayalu and karela. I intend to write more details about all the plants that I grow, what they are used for, how to grow edible plants and what difficulties we encounter and how to solve some of the difficulties etc. in an upcoming blog, 'Sustainable waste management at home'. That is likely to be more technical but may be useful. So if you get inspired by this blog, you may look forward for the next one! Of course window farming is not for you if you are the kind of person who thinks whether it is worth to spend so much time, money and energy on such fancy hobby or if you are really tight scheduled, having no time even to think about it. Hope, you enjoyed reading my write up! Thank you!!
