My Balcony Garden: Permaculture in an apartment

I recently fell down the rabbit-hole of permaculture, which is a short-form for permanent agriculture. This is basically a way of cultivation that uses the environment around it to make the process regenerative. It's designed to use nature to give back what we get out of the process, and I find that extremely fascinating. To me, it seems like the perfect cycle; you grow what you eat ethically and sustainably, giving back to the soil in the process.

Human want is such an interesting thing, isn't it? When I stayed in smaller apartments earlier, all I wanted was a balcony, so I could have a few plants. Now that I have a balcony (which is quite a luxury in Mumbai), I long for a backyard to grow some of my own food!

Not wanting to be limited with my small space, I researched into practices that one can adopt in their apartment. And to my joyous surprise, I found that I am already implementing some of these!

Composting 

For about a year now, I have been composting our food waste. Not only has this significantly reduced the trash that we generate, it has also given us some high quality fertiliser for the soil. I use some of it, and give the rest to the gardener at our building complex. The compost also contains some creepy crawlies that add to the nutrition of it, and also aerate the soil. My plants are loving this extra TLC! The composter I use is by Daily Dump, but you can find many similar ones, or DIY one using an old bucket.

Regrowing food scraps

I knew I wanted to grow veggies, but I wasn't sure if I could. So late last year, I gathered some kitchen scraps and set out to prove to myself that I could. I planted the seeds of tomatoes, capsicums, chillies and lemon. After a lot of care, they began to thrive! Once the vegetables were ripe, we got the satisfaction of eating food we grew (which is such a happy feeling), and I could save the seeds to replant. I also tried some coriander using the kitchen seeds, but that was an epic fail.

Reusing kitchen water

During this time of pandemic, and even before this, we tend to use a lot of water in the kitchen. Water is used for washing, cleaning, cooking and what have you. So one way to reduce our consumption here is to gather up some of the used water, and feed it to our plants! There is some benefit to this as well; a certain bit of soap in the water reduces pests, and starch from rice provides nutrients to the soil.

As I fall further down this rabbit hole, I hope to add to these practices (and report here!). In the past few months, I've lost the habit of gardening, which is quite sad. Because gardening brings me a lot of joy. The idea of growing something that's living, and responding to your care is wonderful. In an ideal scenario, I'd grow my own food (something I will work to achieve one day). But till then, my humble kitchen garden will do just fine.