This is the best time when you can actually spend a good time to take care of the kitchen garden and grow own organic fruits & vegetables. If you do not have a kitchen garden but you are blessed with a small backyard or rooftop then still you can utilize that to develop a small garden where you can grow own food during lockdown period due to coronavirus pandemic.
Whoever have already developed their own kitchen garden they definitely purchased adequate fertilizers, pesticides etc. Many people already collected seeds according to their planning from the local nursery. But what will you do if you want to build a garden right now when you won’t find a local nursery open. You can not visit a shop where agriculture-related products are selling because no public transport is there.
So what will you do now?
Collect seeds/plants
If you are planning to build a garden during this lockdown period then it would be very hard because you won’t get good quality seeds because all local nurseries are shut down. Then don’t get disappointed because you still can get some seeds. How?
You can collect vegetable seeds from those vegetables what you can buy from the vegetable market. Seeds of tomatoes, chilli, pumpkins, bitter gourd, malabar spinach, watermelon can easily be collected from market bought vegetables & fruits. You can even get a stem of malabar spinach, taro stolon (kochur loti) etc and sow it in the soil.
Planters for your garden
At this moment, you can not buy planters and you have now backyard available for gardening. So you have pick something from your house to grow fruits & vegetables plants. So what kind of planters available at your house?
You may have wastage buckets, empty bottles of cold drinks, plastic bag, empty bags for rice or flour, groceries, cement etc.
Potting mix for planters
For the potting mix, you actually have no choice because what is available at your premise that you have to use. If you have sand that you can add to your available garden soil. In case you dump your kitchen waste at a place in your premise then you can collect soil from there because that is now good fertilizer.
Fertilizers for kitchen garden
Fertilizer is an important thing for gardening. But what will you do if you can not buy fertilizer during this lockdown?
Rice boiled water is an excellent fertilizer. You can store it after straining and rest it for atleast 2 days and apply it to your kitchen garden. You can take a half bucket of water and throw all your kitchen waste into it for 3-4 days and then allow it to compost for another 3-4 days. Now strain it and apply that water by adding 2.5 buckets of additional normal water to your plant.
Stock the residual kitchen waste (semi) compost in a separate bucket for 2 months to make it perfectly compost. You can add it to your potting in future.
Pesticides for your plants
When you do not have market bought pesticide then you can use many things what are already available in your kitchen. You definitely have garlic, ginger, chilli, onion, mint (pudina) leaves, neem leaves, raw turmeric in your kitchen inventory. If you do not have then still you can buy those from the market because vegetable stores are open during this lockdown period.
Take atleast any two of those items and boil it for 10 minutes. Rest it for 2 days and strain it and dilute it and spray that water on your plants as a pesticide.
You can apply 3-4 days old buttermilk to your plants as a pesticide. If you store it in copper or bronze utensil for 3-4 days then it will be more affected.
Fungicide for your plants
Add 1.5 teaspoons baking soda (Sodium bicarbonate) to one litre of water and apply it on plants as a fungicide.
Multivitamins for your kitchen garden
Some time people spray multivitamins & hormones on plants for a better result but getting such thing during the lockdown period is like daydreaming. But it is not true because you can spray raw aloe vera gel diluted with water (2.5 teaspoons to 1 lt water) as multivitamins for plants.
Also read: Homegrown fruits & vegetables – March 2020, February 2020, January 2020
So develop your kitchen garden and share your experience by leaving your comment below.
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