Grow your own food: Start with onions and tomatoes, here’s how

It doesn’t take much to start your own urban micro-farm. You have the time; all you need are a few pots, and patience.

It doesn’t take much to start your own urban micro-farm. You have the time; all you need are a few pots, and patience.

Being home all day means you will quickly familiarise yourself with what makes different ‘crops’ thrive. “But you mustn’t expect too much. Treat everything as an experiment,” says Gurgaon operations executive Mangesh Gulkotwar, 33, who harvested a tiny batch of methi and spinach from his month-old balcony garden this week.

Your biggest investment will be time. “Even a balcony garden means you have to be farmer, financier and scarecrow,” he says, laughing. “You have to save your plants from pigeons. Spare about 15 minutes a day tending to them, with no exceptions.”

This usually involves rotating sun-sensitive plants, watering, weeding, and also re-enriching the soil every few weeks.

Mangesh Gulkotwar recently harvested his first tiny batch of methi and palak from his balcony garden. Expect about half your attempts to work out, he says.

Pot to Plate

Start with plants you can identify. Gulkotwar, who gets his tips from YouTube and blogs by urban gardeners, is growing amaranth, colocasia, tomato, green chilli and onion in his balcony too. He expects about half of them will survive.

Understand that every vegetable has a different cycle. Green onions are arguably the easiest to regrow. All you have to do is cut them about an inch from the roots, leave them in a glass of water, re-plant. Some, such as tomatoes, okra and aubergine, need a long time to mature.

Tomatoes and okra thrive in warm weather. And you can re-grow ginger by soaking ginger chunks overnight and transferring to soil in a sunny spot.

Tissue Cultures

There are a whole lot of seeds in your kitchen right now that you can sprout as micro-greens — coriander, fennel, basil, fenugreek, mustard.

“The leaves can be used as garnishes, in curries and salads, and really help add flavour and variety in these times,” says Mumbai stylist Melito Jenobia, 27, who has been harvesting chillies and tomatoes during the lockdown that she planted earlier this year.

“To grow micro-greens, you don’t even need soil. You can just place the seeds on a moist napkin in a container and tend to it by keeping the napkin moist,” says Vinayak Garg, founder of Lazy Gardener, a line of products for urban gardeners

Do a little research, adds Shaan Lalwani of Vriksha Nursery. “Simple information helps, like the fact that chillies and tomatoes don’t grow well together at all, but basil and tomatoes thrive together.”

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