With the city becoming a concrete jungle with no space for gardens, a good number of residents have started setting up terrace gardens to add some ‘green’ to their living place.

In terrace gardens, apart from flowering and ornamental plants, vegetables such as brinjal, chilli, tomato and greens, comprising spinach varieties, can be grown throughout the year.

To encourage more people and for those who want to start their own terrace garden, a hands-on training and awareness session was conducted by Bio Blooms Agro Private Limited at Lakshmi Mills.

Thangavel Kanagaraj, Director of Bio Blooms, presented the session, which outlined how to build a terrace garden from scratch. Techniques such as potting, re-potting, pot mixture, sowing, plant propagation, which are useful in kitchen and terrace gardens were also explained. Participants also learned how to make an organic pest repellent from ginger, garlic and chilli.

The session also covered the components that go into the garden which ensure that the vegetables are completely chemical-free. In addition, Thangavel also told people how they can ensure that most of what we use for the plants is recycled from our own houses, right from kitchen waste such as vegetable peels, which can be used as a component in the manure, to using waste water from the kitchen.

The free session, conducted as part of Coimbatore Vizha, saw around 30 people attending it.