Breakfast With Champions – Urban Leaves
Let’s Be Outdoorsy invites you for the 3rd Edition of Breakfast With Champions. It is scheduled on 22nd October’16 at Don Bosco International School, Matunga. Are you passionate about Gardening or Urban Farming? Then join us for breakfast and get ready to be amazed. REGISTER HERE
Champion For The Day
Preeti Patil is perhaps the pioneer of urban farming in Mumbai city. From a few pots at home to launching multiple community farming initiatives and teaching terrace farming to hundreds of city-folk, she is quite the green champion. She is the founder of Urban Leaves and has been a catering officer with Mumbai Port Trust since 1992.
Every day at work she witnessed large quantities of wasted food at the canteen. Getting deeply affected by this, Preeti started looking for some solutions. Her research led her to the inspiring work by Dr. R T Doshi. Her first step was converting waste into a resource via composting. In 2009, a friend suggested the name Urban Leaves and the rest as they say is history. Along With Premila Parera, seniormost volunteer, they have created and taught quite a few city folk the secrets of farming in a city.
Terrace City Farming is the best way to recycle waste into resource. Wouldn’t it be lovely to grow something yourself? I would love doing that but don’t have the space. Living in space crunched cities like Mumbai, you might think having greens around you, gardening or farming are too tough to pursue? Preeti will share her story and suggest ways you can follow your green dream.
Importance of Urban City Farming
Diitpi Jhangiani always says, “Urban farming is a great leisure workout.” Recently, I visited my friend’s place and guess what I noticed? Her father was busy with his little farm set in the balcony. He grows vegetables there. He says these plants are my kids. I was completely surprised and then he shared the benefits of urban faming with me. He said, “I m planning for a society meeting to share this idea and raise the point of terrace farming too.” Not only in a balcony or your terrace, you can even start this in vacant spaces around your building. As the urban population is increasing rapidly, urban farming will help in waste management and water management too. If we think economically, this is a good idea to consume pure food. If the idea of urban farming is taken on a large scale, it can even reverse global warming.
Growing Your Own Produce
Did you know you can actually grow most of the food you eat around you? If you are planning for Balcony Gardening, you can grow tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, green onions, radishes, beans and more. These vegetables can be grown in recycled containers too. You can use clay pots, plastic pots or simple containers; they will decorate your balcony well. Make use of organic soil mix of coco peat, compost and red mud gives a super result.
Once you get hooked on, trust me you will never get bored of growing your own food.You can grow vegetables; but growing herbs is easier and quick. Herbs like Basil, Curry Leaves, and Spearmint can be grown near a sunny window too, this doesn’t require much space. My favourite lemon grass too grows pretty much on its own. Did you know herbs play an important role for improving overall health of the body? Consuming herbs helps in healing wounds faster, strengthen the immune system, lower blood sugar and cholesterol.
I have shared this idea with my friends and family to start community farming in our society. Food harvested can be shared between society members or donated to an orphanage too.So what are your plans for next Saturday? Now that we have perked your interest in urban farming, I’d love for you to join us for breakfast with our Champions. So set reminder for Breakfast With Champions, we look forward to seeing you there.