Growing up in the ‘80s a backyard garden was apart of me. Orchards with fruit trees, a vegetable patch and paddy fields came with all houses in my village. So when we renovated our house in Kochi I wanted a small backyard garden. There was no sunlight in the small backyard I had wedged in between houses so I thought why not try the balcony! I had some terrace area too so we set up 30 grow bags in a space of 200 square feet on the terrace.
It looked good initially but then I encountered a few problems. The first came from my ten year old.
That patch of terrace was his football field and he couldn’t practice his moves there among the grow bags. Living in the city every square feet of space was accounted for!
2 Months into my terrace farming juncture I noticed that the waterproofing was inadequate.
When the yield was low I realized that the sunlight was very low on my side of the terrace. Tracing the sun was impossible and I had to make do with the little sunlight!
Watering the garden seemed fun for the first few weeks but then when I had to go away for a few days I was aghast to find all my plants dead.
Too much of water also proved bad. The monsoon completely killed my garden and the terrace was a mess.
After I set it up again I realised I didn’t know much about farming. And what to get from where. I wished there was one standard process that was followed so that confusions like mine were laid to rest. There were just too much of information on the internet and around me and it just added to my confusion!