Permaculture and Rooftop gardening is the most ecofriendly and cost-effective methods to grow healthy and organic plants in our home. To create awareness about permaculture and rooftop gardening, a Hyderabad based permaculture consultant, designer and educator, Upendra C Srisainath gives a few tips.
Upendra, who is originally from a civil engineering background came across permaculture in the year 2010 and realised the impact of poorly designed systems that are used in the country to grow and cultivate plants, which creates a lot of damage to the ecosystem.
This interested him to learn more about permaculture. “Permaculture is the development of agricultural ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient. It comes from the term ‘permanent culture’. The ecosystem designed by using permaculture mimics the natural ecosystem” tells Upendra. In permaculture, one does not use any pesticides including the organic pesticides that are available in the market. “We let nature take care of everything” he adds.
Permaculture studies how natural systems work and he uses that to design the ecosystem. Upendra says it is a combination of different subjects like farming, architecture and renewable energy which is used to create a sustainable and better ecosystem. “The fundamental idea of perma is to reduce pollution, wastage and energy” he adds.
In permaculture rooftop gardening, any plant varieties can be grown and it only requires a limited amount of resources. “As we do recycling, in this method, all the waste is going to go as compost. Vegetable waste and other natural waste can be made a compost and used as a fertilizer later. This is one of the major advantages” he tells.
“There are different types of containers which should be used for different types of plants. For example, green leaves need lesser depth containers and fruits like tomato, brinjal and lady’s finger need a minimum of 12-inch depth. Once people know about these details it will be easy for them to design their own garden” tells Upendra.
“Permaculture is a way of giving back to nature. And we can produce vegetables for almost 20 families in one yield. So more people should learn about this and practise this in their homes,” he said.
