HYDERABAD: Edible Urban Gardening is the need of the hour. The forced time at home with children during the Covid-19 lockdown can be used to start such projects that are educative and fun.
What you need
Method
Note: You can grow tomatoes and chillies, in the same manner, using seeds from ripe tomatoes or chillies in the kitchen. Chillies can be grown from dry red chillies too which you will find in any Indian kitchen. Use larger containers and fewer seeds while growing tomatoes and chillies since these are larger plants than the greens and we do not harvest the entire plant unlike in the case of greens. Older children can write down recipes using these ingredients. They can also write an article on the nutritional benefits of these greens. Some of these have therapeutic value. These can also be researched into and information documented. Encourage children to take photos or draw pictures of each stage and add these to the documentation. Learning can thus be systematically written down and can be presented aesthetically.
Gardening is fun and exciting. It becomes an activity that one looks forward to each day. Gardening with children will also gradually encourage them to eat healthy and develop a taste for fresh salads. You can plan sowing seeds in such a way that you have a continuous harvest. Making children learn from such Do It Yourself Projects improves concentration and memory. Even so-called slow learners and children with learning difficulties will find such learning fun and effective.
— Seetha Anand Vaidyam
(Seetha lives in Hyderabad and heads Ananda, Foundation for Holistic and Healthy Learning & Learning which works in the areas of education, health and environment)