Saffron Trail | Nandita Iyer on Simple Hacks To Grow Your Kitchen Garden In India

0:00 Hey guys.

0:01 I'm really excited because Nandita is a

0:03 really dear friend and I, I totally love watching all the stuff that she

0:11 talks about, you know, kitchen garden, how

0:13 to grow plants, kitchen hacks that she shares, her pictures, just look out of the world. So for everyone who is into vegetarian food, loves cooking and has been following either Nandita or us, you know that we are obsessed with everything.

0:34 Hi. Hey Nandita.

0:37 First up, I love how you've done up your house. Like every corner is Instagram worthy. I don't know how you've got great taste.

0:46 Thank you. Thank you.

0:48 The reason why we're here today is to understand how to thrive your kitchen garden and a couple of food hacks. So Nandita, any hacks that you've got over the last 60, 70 days which has worked for you or you've discovered you've shared with your community, which is kind of easy for, easy for people.

1:07 There's one post which I've also written on my blog, not during this time but earlier, that you know everyone, when you see kitchen garden, you think day one you'll be growing big things. And you know fruiting vegetables, which essentially means things like bindi and bengan and pumpkin. All these are called fruits even though they're vegetables. So grow fruiting with fruiting plant. But actually you can just start off with leaves which is the first thing that grows and it's the easiest thing to use up in salads and stuff.

1:40 And again, you know the misconception that you need some fancy salad greens. Only it's not sad because you can literally use anything green in your salad as long as you know it's edible and it's not poisonous added to your salad. So just recently the seed shops and all these gardening websites not have opened up because until then you were not getting delivery of anything literally. So a lot of seeds in the kitchen itself, things like methi mustard and you know, dried peas, the vatana which you have green and white, all these and even lot of beans, you can just soak it and know sprouted and then put it in a thin tray of soil.

2:27 You usually end up having a lot of these plastic knickknack cups and ice cream boxes and literally anything or only you need access to some medium like a coco peat or soil without which it's difficult. But as long as you have that, you can actually use whatever, you know, old containers instead of throwing it away in the plastic waste, you can use it for this. And these also make very good things for microgreens because for that, you literally need only a big, shallow tray.

3:00 One inch of soil is enough, so they really help. And you can use whatever seeds you have in your kitchen because, you know, all those are edible, and whatever grows out of that is also going to be edible. You don't have to worry. So just smoke, sprout, and spread it on a thin layer of either just coco peat or just soil. And, you know, just keep snipping. Once you get, like two or three leaves, you can snip the top and it will keep doing again.

3:28 So you can literally grow these and add to your own salads and stuff. So this is the most basic thing you can do. Then again, things like celery, lemongrass, spring onion, coriander, all these things which come with the root, you can always keep it in water, and they do grow a bit in water itself. Even celery, you'll get a few extra leaves in the water, so you can actually do that. It's great that we're talking all this on World Environment Day, which is very topical.

4:02 It always helps. Even if you can grow a little bit of anything, it's great. Don't again, think, I have lived in Bombay all my life, so I know that even growing few pots in your balcony is amazing. You, you know, sitting in Bangalore, it's easier to grow more things. It's given the weather also, and also more space. But even if you're in an apartment and you have like a grill, extended grill from your kitchen or your, you know, living room, you can keep a few pots there, depending on the sunlight availability, of course, and start these small, small things.

4:39 Even chillies and stuff, you know, imagine. And people often think that this pudina and chilies, it's just 5, 10 rupees, so why bother growing? But, you know, that's. That's just that one thing is all it takes to add so much flavor to your dish, because it's just plus. And you just. Even a few leaves of something you add from your pot is going to make your food so much more flavorful. Because it's the final layer of garnish that you're adding.

5:07 No, absolutely. I think what you said is, is very critical because I. I've been growing the chilies, and guys, it's not high maintenance. If I can do it, I think anybody can do it. And now my kids are doing it, so I've outsourced it to them. But that joy of plucking that chili and holding them in your hands is just something else. I agree with Nandita when she says just because you feel like, why bother? But I'm telling you that joy is, is infectious.

5:34 And the funny thing I like to say is that when you've grown your own coriander and chili, you will never ask the Bhajiwala to give you that for free. Because you know the value. You know the value and how much goes into it. You know, I love that. That is so true.

5:53 But Nandita, tell me something. When you say that take these beans, soak them overnight and then pot them next day.

5:58 Not overnight. Yeah, you can soak them overnight and then like how you sprout moong and stuff. Yeah, you can sprout them for two, three days. And once you see the tiny sprouts or you can directly do it from sowing, once it's become a bit soft, you can directly do it. But sprouting just gives it a bit of added advantage to.

6:18 Right, but then will they grow as tall as the microgreens or they'll grow taller?

6:23 Which ones are you talking about, Zach?

6:25 Cholli beans. Right, because you have chawlika bhaji.

6:28 It depends on how you choose to cut it. So if you, if you cut it when it's this big and you, you throw a thin layer like a carpet, then you grow it like microgreens. But if you're going to let it come to this and then you transplant it into a pot, just one of it, then it will go into a big plant. There are a lot of resources on YouTube also. There people are growing all these things in pots, not even on a garden soil kind of thing.

6:58 Everything is grown in pots. And almost anything, I mean, depends on the pot size. Of course. Things like papaya and all, you need a 2ft tall pot, but even papaya. And people, a lot of people use these paint drums, you know, the plastic paint drum, you can just paint it a nice white color or blue color or something and use those drums to, you know, grow these like those blue colored small water drums which you see all those can be, in fact even where I live here in my back gate, there are a lot of small shops and there's one tiny, I think hair saloon or something.

7:38 And that guy has taken every possible paint container and he's grown like one urban garden outside in Bismarck. He has grown like that much of stuff. So I'm always inspired when I see that, that literally you can catch hold of anything and grow in that.

7:53 Right, Tell me from the herbs point of view, right? Basil, celery, all of these. So like basil do you like, do you think the quality of the seed and all that will matter? Or how do you start with like,

8:06 you know, seeds? There are some good ones on Amazon itself, you know, basic companies like Craft, Kraft, then Omax, Omaxc. So these are all good quality seeds. And you know, I think sometimes what the mistake we do is we dump all the seeds directly in soil and sometimes it's too hot or you over water and they can't survive in that kind of thing. So there's something called paper germination, where you just take a plate and you put like two layers of tissue paper on it, keep it wet, add some water so that the paper becomes wet but not so wet that it tears apart.

8:46 And then you put like, you consciously keep 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 seeds in like different corners of the plate and you keep it covered with another plate or, you know, I mean, cling wrap is plastic, avoid. So try and keep it covered with another like, you know, like the cooking utensils that come with the lid. So keep it covered with that with a glass thing. So what this builds a slightly higher temperature and humidity inside that plate.

9:12 So each of these basil seeds, you see that they have this tiny green sprout coming out in three, four days, which is a bit of good quality and they have a good germination rate. So then you take a smaller cup, like an ice cream cup or something, fill it up with soil and that slightly small germinated thing, you put it in that. So go stage wise. So now in that you allow it to come for, you know, six leaves, eight leaves to, you know, like 4 inches height, and then you can transplant it into a bigger pot.

9:41 What happens is that you directly put the seeds in the pot because to germinate they don't need soil, it just needs water. Okay, so that is a bit on the plate itself. So this, by this method you can actually, you know, see how much is, you know, germinating, how much is not germinating. So you're not putting so many in the pot and waiting that I've put 20 seeds. But sometimes nothing may germinate because the seeds were not good to start with.

10:06 Right. So try this method of this paper, then small cup and then transplanting them to a bigger pot, they definitely have a better success rate that day. And all these branded seeds are usually good because they test for germination and. Right.

10:22 And also when I have the basil growing, I usually, what I, I typically do is I, you know, the seeds, part of it, the flour which you get of the basil, you typically take that and if you just do that and you throw them back, do you just put that back in the pot or again you do the paper job.

10:36 You can, you can because you, or you can again go back to that other method or you can do this. But that whatever seeds, they have to be like literally brown and dried out. Should be that really dried out husks of the flowers. Otherwise if it's still green in color, then that seed is not going to germinate.

10:56 Right, Right.

10:58 This method plate to come and then to the pot is like a more systematic method and you can each stage you can actually see what is happening instead of directly throwing it in the pot. Yeah, it doesn't even for me it hardly works. It just gets lost sometimes over watering, blows away in the water. So many things can go wrong there.

11:21 Right. Also Nandita, any, any tips on how do you, where do you get your soil from or you know, any, any bid on that or any difference between cocoa and soil?

11:33 Yeah. So coco peat, I don't know either or so coco peat is usually added to soil to lighten the weight. Yeah. And it holds water so you have to, you know, it doesn't need that frequent watering. So what happens if you just take soil and you put it and your potter grows. Everything will go out in a day or so. But when you have coco peat, it retains water. So it's like typically made from the coconut husk leftover of those fibers.

12:00 So it holds water, so you have to water it less. So that's one thing, it makes it the medium lighter because just soil, if I take a, you know, 12 inch pot of only soil, it's going to be very heavy. But if I mix it half cocoa peat, it will be 50% lighter. So those are the things. And a good mix. Some plants have different requirements, but most of the times a generally good mix is you know, one third, one third, one third of garden soil, cocoa, peat and compost.

12:31 So if you mix this in a big pot and add it to all your pots, it's a good medium. And even compost and everything. Sometimes even I order on Amazon because it's just here. And there are a lot of good brands these days. Like literally I, if I have, you know, I sometimes think where am I going to buy? Should I get out? And after searching everywhere, I see that it's available on Amazon itself. So there's nothing wrong with.

12:55 Just a lot of good brands are selling online and even compost, like a lot of companies are selling good quality compost. So until you start making your own, which even I have because we have a centralized composting unit in our community, so I don't make my own compost. But you can always buy and you can use that in your plant. That's the best manure, organic manure. You can do your plants.