After learning the basic philosophy of permaculture at The Green House farm in Chattarpur, I learned that all planting should be done in order to mimic the dynamics / ecosystem of a forest. Since then, at home, we’ve been trying a different approach. Unlike earlier when we used to keep our pots clean, bin the garden waste, get wary of insects and generally had a very manicured approach to gardening.

We slowly and gradually started adding all our spent tea waste, egg shells, shredded garden waste, floor dust from daily sweeping, bird poop, flower – incense ash – match stick waste from the mandir, dirty water and anything that was not too processed, at the base of our plants. In a way we were trying to complete the carbon-nutrition cycle and also, side by side trying to reduce the amount of kitchen waste being sent to landfills.

 *I have a decent understanding of chemistry & bio-degradable compounds so wouldn’t put stuff that I was unsure about.

We were also experimenting with composting on our terrace in a terracotta pot. Its quite a happy feeling at the end of the day when most of your house waste goes back in your plants and there only a teeny bit plastic waste left which too, we tried to up cycle in various ways.

As a result of putting all this biomass into our pots, there was a 2 inch rich layer of humus in a couple of months. With the onset of monsoon there was a beautiful nursery of tiny snails aka escargatoire, playing around a marigold that my father had put there. Watch the video and you’ll know. 🙂

Source: growingfoodwithkhirkee.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/monsoons-and-snails/