‘Social media is great for wannabe gardeners’
CHENNAI: To escape the hustle-bustle of our daily lives, what better way to kick-start your morning amid a terrace garden with a cup of coffee while treating your lungs to some fresh air? “Being in my garden every morning gives me a lot of joy as it is therapeutic and nurturing,” says Anu Ganapathy, a nature lover.
Anu, who worked for an MNC in the US and India as an HR executive, quit her job a decade back as her kids needed more time and attention then. Now, as the kids are old enough, she keeps herself indulged in activities that she always wanted to do. She learnt Spanish, studied Vedanta philosophy, travelled to new places and also learnt organic kitchen gardening.
Anu’s tryst with gardening goes back to when she was six-years-old; she would help her uncle water the garden. Her love for gardening rekindled when she started composting organic kitchen waste about five years ago. “When the quantity of ‘black gold’/ compost got better, I decided not to leave it unused and used it as manure to grow plants. I started gardening about three years ago with 10 pots, and now, I have 500 pots. Composting actually led me to gardening.” She adds that gardening took her back to her happy childhood.
The plants grown in her garden are mostly vegetables, fruits and herbs. The plants grown in her terrace garden include cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, lemon, chilies, radish, bitter gourd, ash gourd, beans, corn, strawberries and more. Herbs like oregano, thyme, basil, rosemary, lemon balm, sage, and medicinal plants like amrutha valli and brahmi. She also grows greens like palak, methi, amaranth, lettuce and arugula.”
Anu’s favourite plant are turmeric and cherry tomatoes. She says,” I have five to six varieties of cherry tomatoes and I absolutely love the way they look and taste. I also really love turmeric because it’s a powerful medicinal root and if there is one thing that everyone should have in their garden, it has to
be turmeric.”
As a gardener, her first produce was cucumber, and her family celebrated at home by slicing it on the dinner table.
Commenting on her knowledge of organic gardening, she says that she doesn’t refer to gardening books but does online searches and is part of lots of Facebook groups on organic terrace gardening.
She keeps a close eye on her plants just like a doctor would, by doing rounds and making sure that they are healthy. At times few plants might attract insects, in particular aphids (plant lice), so one can get rid of them by wiping or spraying the leaves with a mild solution of water and dishwashing detergent or utilise commercially available biological aphid controls, says Anu.
Talking about the latest gardening trend, Anu says that though she has come across other forms of gardening, she prefers traditional methods. “It’s perhaps the microbes in the soil that makes it a meditative process. If given a choice between gardening and shopping, or gardening and pretty much anything else, I would run up to my terrace any time.”
Her advice to those starting out in gardening is to remember that it is easy to grow plants, but not easy to maintain them. It’s better to keep it simple and small, so that initially, you don’t encounter too many problems. Once you are a successful gardener, it will motivate you to scale it up.
Anu aims to inspire others to start kitchen gardens — it doesn’t matter if they have a terrace, balcony or even a little window. She believes that the joy of gardening is something everyone should experience. At her workshop ‘It’s thyme to garden’, which she conducts a few times a month, she provides participants with seeds and saplings and information on where they can source everything they need for their garden. She also stays connected with them on social media.