Turn your terrace into a kitchen garden

Fancy a lush, green kitchen garden with fresh vegetables? All you need is the subsidised DIY kit
Turn your terrace into a kitchen garden

A do-it-yourself kit for kitchen gardening is something that many have not heard about. Gardening has become so simple that everything you need to cultivate a garden can be packed into a kit, says the department of Horticulture. The Government of Tamil Nadu has announced the do-it-yourself kit programme for the promotion of roof top vegetable garden in Chennai and Coimbatore.

This kit introduced under the Urban Horticulture Development Scheme contains vegetable seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, a polythene sheet and gardening tools along with a technical booklet with instructions. This has been introduced as a platform to city dwellers to cultivate their own vegetables in polythene bags on their rooftops.

A budget of `5 crore has been allotted by the government for this do-it-yourself programme. Each kit costs `2414 and the government has made it available to the people at a 50 per cent subsidised rate. These kits can be obtained from the Horticulture offices in Chennai and Coimbatore.

The Horticulture department has taken into consideration the environs of a city and introduced the usage of light weight growing medium, containers, water proof spread sheet, water soluble fertilizers, bio pesticides and fungicides. These components would help city dwellers make the best use of the space they have in their living quarters to create a kitchen garden.

The programme aims to motivate people in major urban centers of Chennai and Coimbatore to grow vegetables on roof tops. The department also aims to reduce air-pollution and provide nutritional security through this exercise.

S Damodaran, Minister of Agriculture, Government of Tamil Nadu inaugurated this scheme here recently. Saidai Duraisamy, Mayor of Chennai, and Sandeep Saxena, Agricultural Production Commissioner and Production Secretary, presided over the function.

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The New Indian Express
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