How does your garden grow?
ROHINI RAMAKRISHNAN
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Would you like to have a garden? Is space a problem?Here is a simple solution.
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Green haven: My little patch of garden.
Visiting Ankineedu Dawooluri’s house was a green encounter of a pleasant kind, especially on the hot summer morning. The first impression — where on earth is the house? For all you see is a tent of green, green tendrils twirling up towards the sun, well, literally to where the terrace was supposed to be.
Ankineedu hails from Tenali in Andhra Pradesh and once upon a time had large tracts of land. Now living in a small house in East Tambaram, his instinct and love for horticulture still moves him to make use of the strip of soil that runs around his home.
Easy steps
“If you really want to have a garden, even a little space would do,” he says, taking us around his house. Every bit of space is used for his garden. “Children can utilise their time and creativity with a little supervision from adults, and the results are fruitful and tasty,” he chuckles.
The first step would be, he explains, to dig the ground well, turn over the earth and to keep it moist. Now it is ready for the seeds.
His technique involves using the ground for planting. He has then made the creeper climb on a strong support up to the terrace. And the yielding field is on the terrace. A network of thin wires holds these pandal vegetables like bea
ns, ridge gourd and snake gourd.
Cluster beans and kovakkai too are ideal for terrace gardening. Brinjal and tomatoes can be grown in huge garbage bags that are perforated at the bottom. The fragrance that reached our nostrils was attributed to the jasmine creeper
that spread over a large area. With space being taken care of, the house being “clothed” in green, kept it cool.
Children can turn the season of summer into a beautiful experience by starting their own terrace garden. Vegetables freshly picked from the garden give a special flavour. What better gift than this to give your friends, relatives and especially your neighbours?
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