A new hobby developed during lockdown
After completing my secondary schooling I moved to another city in August 2010. I never got chance to move back to my hometown until 2020 when pandemic began. I came back to my hometown in July 2020, almost after 10 years. I am staying here from last 6 months now. Both of my siblings also moved here during pandemic.
Initially when I came here we used to buy vegetables in every 2–3 days. I remember the struggle with washing those vegetables in clean water, followed by salt water and then keep them aside for some time.
Being from farmers family we naturally had interest in planting. We have a small house nearby our farms. We have plenty of free space in the front and back yard. We had planted a few trees of Coconut, Banana, Mango, Sapodilla, Pomegranate, Lemon in last few years.
This time we decided to grow a few vegetables by ourself in the front yard. We thought of starting with Coriander and a few crops of Chilly and Brinjals. As decided we planted a few crops of chillies and brinjals. Below are a few pictures of those..
Though we thought of growing only a few vegetables, we end up growing many more like Methi, Dill, Beans, Black Grams, Tomato, Bitter Ground, Field Beans, Ridged Gourd, Sweet Potato, Mint, Garlic. Below are a few more pictures of those:
In our daily food we use homemade Chilly powder(kanda lasun masala). It is made using 2–3kg dry chillies, 2 kg Garlic and a few more ingredients like dry Coconut, Onion and Spices. We make it in summer and use it for entire year.
Every year we buy these ingredients. This time we will be using chillies and Garlic grown by us.
Every day we spend around 15–30 minutes with these plants which includes plucking vegetables, removing grass, watering plants, adding compost or sometime just observing them.
Apart from these vegetables we have also added a few flower plants like Rose, Indian Jui, Jasmin, Tuberose, Marigold, Plumeria.
When I started spending more time with these plants I realised that it is a great stress buster. During this I got to know amount of efforts, attention and time it takes to grow these plants which made me conscious about quantity to serve myself to reduce food wastage.
I feel everyone should give it a try. You can start with a very simple ones like growing Coriander in earthen flower pot.
Hope this encourages you to give it a try.
Stay happy! Stay healthy!!
