Our Terrace Garden

Welcome to our terrace garden!

Check out this photo timeline of what we've been doing since I arrived in India.

When I first arrived, the garden had been in production for about 5 months. Our team was surprised at how well the garden took off----in just those few months, we produced bitter gourd, spinach, mustard, lettuce, and methi: all to be used in our kitchen.

The garden began as four 4x4' built raised beds on our terrace, and one more bed on our ground floor. Now since I've come, our workers Deepak and Sumit have built two more beds as well as four box planters. One of the new beds can be seen being planted with tomatoes in the photos.

Our first project to tackle when I arrived was how to keep out the monkeys. Sumit had built a sort of canopy over the beds with some left over palette boards. The first photo depicts Manohar, Deepak and Nick planning how to design a cage around the beds. Once the planning was done, Deepak, Nick, and myself went to Sikanderpur ("the Home Depot of Gurgaon" as Nick puts it) to look for supplies, and deconstructed boards Sumit had built.

After a few days, a welder, some sweat, and a lot of excitement, we had a monkey protected garden! It was put to the test the first day we watered the plants inside the cage when a monkey came on the roof and shook the frame while we stood underneath. No more monkeys!

Since then, Deepak and I planted new seeds. We're currently growing cucumbers, garlic, onions, kakri (an Indian crop similar to cucumber), french beans, coriander and tomatoes.

In addition, we began a compost system (check out this post!). Because we rent our building here and everything we do must be moveable, we purchased a terra-cotta pot system called Kambha compost pots. Right now it is slowly getting started, and as a household we're learning how to transition to keeping our kitchen waste.

This past year I've learned a lot of variety and change (not unlike our garden). I started out learning to be connected to the ground in a classroom in high school, working in our school garden, working on a large scale farm in Nashville, and now on a small new rooftop garden here in India. Each situation has it's own lessons and beauty. I'm very excited to keep learning and growing (haha)!