Kitchen Waste

Our rooftop garden has enabled me to recycle our kitchen waste. This waste was earlier going to… well, let’s see, where was it going? From our house to the trash dump outside our colony, from there a tr uck will pick it up and it would most probably go to the landfill near Narela, north of Delhi. There it would rot along with toxic plastics and chemicals and other bio-hazardous waste and finally leach into the soil depleting it for goodness knows how long.But on our roof, kitchen waste put five months ago is still sitting there! And it’s doing a great job. Of course you can’t recognise it anymore, since all of it has decomposed naturally and beautifully mixed with the soil giving it a variety of nutrients.

हरे टमाटर

 

The word ‘nursery’ has been going around in my head for sometime now; one nursery for the plants and the other for children. What a wonderful world it would be if both the nurseries be merged into one, and children looked after the plants and the plants in return look after the children – giving them fresh, uncontaminated food. Dreams unlimited…!

 

चोधरी धरमपाल सिंघ

 

 This is the second crop of tomatoes on our roof. No, it did not come from the GM seeds – and what’s more, I didn’t even plant these seeds. So where did they come from? You got it… from the kitchen waste! Seeds thrown away with some of the juice while chopping planted themselves and there we are – a whole crop of green tomatoes… come from the blue!

Tomato

 

Can roof top vegetable farming ever be a subversive activity? Bill Mollison says it is. “If you are self reliant in food you don’t need to work for people you don’t like, it’s that simple! And it is insanely easy” he says. Check out his riveting interview on permaculture here.When I planted paalak (spinach) what I did was to take a handful of seeds and spread them in one pot. I thought if one seed doesn’t grow, the other one will. I didn’t know better (after fifteen years of very good schools and college!). As nature would have it, they all sprouted and became an over populated community!

 

छोटा पालक

 

On the other hand a few seeds – unknown to me – plated themselves in another bed where there was more space. Before I would notice they had grown into beautiful large plants.

 

Palak (Spinach)

 

This got me thinking. Over-populated enclosures are detrimental to the growth of any organism – they grow stunted – while growing wild they realize their full potential. Does it also apply to children? In the lovely film Taare Zameen Par, as soon as the little boy bunks class and goes out of the school compound, he encounters the fascinating colours and textures of the street. It seems one spinach seed went out of classroom and flowered… and how!

 

Ajwain Leaf (Bishop's Weed)

 

One of the least used plants from our roof is the अज्वैन (carom). Ajwain is a spice used for flavouring but also has several medicinal qualities. Diluted in water it is given to children to help digestion. Seeds of this plant are crushed and eaten raw as remedy for stomach ache. It acts within minutes.

Ajwain Leaf (Bishop's Weed)