Preeti Patil intends to start community farming with school children to teach them about soil-biology and plant physiology. Pic by Gajanan Dudhalkar

Would you like to be an urban farmer? Instead of growing just dahlias and chrysanthemums would you like to raise everything from basil and mint and even tomatoes?

Take in the profusion of green on the terrace of the HUB, an office used by NGOs in Mumbai’s Bandra district. Turn your eye in every direction and there are vegetables and herbs of one sort or another — tomatoes, okra, eggplant and herbs like wheatgrass. The lush garden has been put together by a trio of urban farmers — Adrienne Thadani, Karen Peters and her daughter Catie Peters — who also created a rooftop garden at Crawford Market and another terrace garden at the Sprouts Environment Trust office in Mumbai.

Or look at Firdaus Bakshi, also from Mumbai. Bakshi, who lives in Worli, starts the day by heading to his 3,000sqft terrace where he has an array of fruit trees including guavas, chikoo, starfruit and some varieties of mangoes. He is about to expand his one-year-old terrace farm and he’s also considering offering his services to other urban farmers who want to get into terrace-top cultivation.

It’s Farmville for real. These urban farmers are out to turn city terraces and balconies green — not with flowering plants but by growing a profusion of vegetables and herbs. “It’s time we start growing our own food by utilising whatever little space we have,” says environmentalist and Calcutta-based founder of Earthcare Books Bharat Mansata.

One of the pioneers of urban farming is Preeti Patil, an employee of the Mumbai Port Trust. Patil put on her farmer’s hat for the first time when she transformed the Port Trust’s 3,000sqft terrace into a mini-garden. Today, the yields from the garden are shared among the workers and Patil has made a name for herself in gardening circles. She now also runs a city-farming group called Urban Leaves in Mumbai to help people set up their own community city farms.

Adrienne Thadani, Karen Peters (in black) and her daughter Catie Peters (in blue) are growing tomatoes, okra, eggplant and herbs on the terrace of an office building in Bandra. Pic: Gajanan Dudhalkar

The urban farming movement has spread far and wide. In Bangalore Vinay Chandra P. is an adventure sports enthusiast who also runs a consultancy that helps people to start urban farms of their own. His company J-Gardens has set up 10 terrace gardens in Bangalore in the last few months and he says the trend is picking up. Says Chandra: “It started completely out of a personal interest in farming but went on to become a zealous drive to help city dwellers set up their own urban farms.”

What can you grow on a cramped terrace space? The answer is a surprisingly wide variety of vegetables and fruits — and in fairly large quantities. Mavis D’Souza, for instance, is a passionate city farmer even though she only has a tiny 200sqft space on her terrace. There is everything from cauliflower to turnips, pumpkins and even strawberries growing in pots. Davis says she started modestly but expanded her repertoire as she went along. The easier ones to grow are said to be several varieties of herbs, tomatoes and chillies.

It’s a similar story for Purvita Kapadia,40, who used to work in an IT solutions company but who has now chucked it up to become a full-time urban farmer. Her own terrace is just 10sqft by 15sqft but she grows a profusion of herbs and vegetables including basil, lemongrass, brinjal, tomatoes and capsicum. In addition, she has recently added several new items to her garden including tomatoes and cucumber. Of course, she has kept flowering plants to enable cross- pollination. Kapadia is also a volunteer at a community farm in Nana Nani Park in Mumbai where she has helped other volunteers plant vegetables like methi, carrots, radish and spinach.

Ila Mehta’s garden store guides clients all the way from selecting seeds to how to grow saplings . Pic: Jagadeesh NV

Cut to Bangalore-based garden enthusiasts Shailesh Deshpande, Athreya Chidambi, Sriram Aravamudan and Reena Chengappa who’ve formed a company called My Sunny Balcony. The bulk of their work for My Sunny Balcony still consists of setting up flower gardens for people but they’ve found a steady increase in the number of people who are interested in urban farming. “There are people who are waking up to this trend,” says Aravamudan. My Sunny Balcony charges between Rs 1,500-Rs 3,000 for a consultation which includes site visits and designing the garden.

At a slightly different level, blogger Sunita Rao runs a gardening blog called The Urban Gardener that offers advice on both flower gardens and urban farms. Rao has an urban farm and also a few acres outside Mumbai and she recently harvested broccoli, spinach and radishes. She’s waiting to harvest cabbages next. She runs a consultancy for urban farming for those living outside Mumbai and says: “People can mail me for advice and help in gardening knowhow.”

(From left to right) Shailesh Deshpande, Athreya Chidambi, Sriram Aravamudan and Reena Chengappa of My Sunny Balcony offer customised garden designs for clients (as seen in the photograph above) Pic: Madhu Reddy

Another place where urban farmers can head for help are the garden stores from where urban farmers can procure organic seeds and saplings. Take a look at Bangalore-based garden boutique set up by Ila Mehta two years ago. Mehta understands the essentials of urban farming. She says: “I have a good mix of flowering plants, herbs and vegetable saplings. For each plant or sapling a customer picks up, we tell them how to go about planting it.”

Many of these urban farming enthusiasts are also designing garden accessories to ensure that everything goes as it should. So Chandra has put together everything that people might need to start an urban farm. He has wooden crates (varying in size from six inches to nine inches), organic seeds, appropriate soil material and vermicompost and proper gardening tools.

Similarly, My Sunny Balcony too specialises in designing garden accessories like bamboo-like fences, terracotta pots with mosaic tiles, custom-made wrought-iron ledges and so on. Bakshi on the other hand is in the process of designing containers made out of mild steel with a fitting in-built on top which will act as a shade for plants. “Terrace farms usually face the problem of reflected light and heat. These containers with a filter frame attached on to it will address this problem,” says Bakshi.

Though many of the urban farmers insist that it is easy to grow all manner of vegetables and herbs, the fact is that it can be tough at the beginning. Chandra admits that there was a lot of trial and error involved as he learnt about various irrigation techniques, appropriate soil mix and the use of proper garden accessories in urban farming.

The others too are trying to popularise innovative methods of farming in an urban set-up. Thadani and Peters for instance are recycling plastic bottles to popularise the concept of drip- irrigation. “You just need to drill a few holes on the cap of the bottle to make a dripping effect to water the plants,” says Karen Peters. Drip-irrigation is the slow application of water at the root level of plants. “In today’s busy homes, drip irrigation works well where you do not need a steady supply of water,” says Peters.

Bakshi too is trying to adopt olla-irrigation (unglazed clay pots) on his terrace farm. In this method, the olla is buried in the ground filled with water. The water permeates the vessel’s clay walls and there is automatic moisture migration from the pot to the root of the plant. “In cities, where water scarcity is a problem this age-old ancient technique is cost-effective,” he says.

Firdaus Bakshi has several fruit trees on his 3,000sqft terrace farm and is now planting vegetables. Pic: Gajanan Dudhalkar

The concept of square-foot gardening is also gaining ground with these urban farmers. This is an intensive cultivation method specifically suited to small urban spaces, that maximises crop yield in the minimum amount of space. “Each of the beds is divided into 1sqft units and each of the units is then marked out with sticks so that each unit remains visible. Different seeds are then planted in each square,” adds Sriram. However, one needs to keep in mind the mix of plants that can grow together.

Soil nutrition is the most important and organic composting is the only way to achieve that. Patil makes her own amrut-mitti — a mix of green bio-mass consisting of fallen dry leaves and twigs, coco-pith, cow urine, cow dung, jaggery and top soil.

Almost everybody seems to have ambitious plans. Thadani and Peters organise HUB Harvest on the HUB office terrace where the yields of their produce are sold. Patil wants to start community farming with school children very soon “to make them learn about soil-biology and plant physiology”. Bakshi, on the other hand, wants to document relevant information about urban farming and make it available to gardening enthusiasts.

So what are the dos and don’ts of urban gardening? Says Mohan: “Too much water, too much fertiliser, too much of anything, will kill your plants faster than anything else. Compost kitchen waste and add it to the soil. Read as much as you can about the plants that you are growing. You’d be amazed by how much you can learn.”