Cultivation of Indigenous Vegetables in Containers Through Roof Based Gardening

Due to increasing number of buildings and decreasing open space available in urban areas, home gardening in the backyard has now shifted to roof based gardening which is an excellent way of cultivating indigenous vegetables. Producing vegetables in containers kept on roof top is considered most viable and easy way as compare to other options available in terms of cost and installation including repair and maintenance that can be adopted by families to improve their nutritional needs. But rooftop gardening without proper knowledge and training may lead to frustrating outcomes and wastage of money and time which might result in unwillingness of the people in initiating this project. So, the present research was planned to suggest a suitable micro model of container gardening for its promotion among the urban population where households can easily grow vegetables in containers kept on roof top for personal consumption which will ultimately improve health, income and wellbeing of family members. For the present study, two rooftop vegetable gardening practitioners were purposively selected from Ludhiana city of Punjab state. The selected practitioners were actively growing few vegetables in containers without any technical knowledge and were willing for setting experiment trials at roof top of their houses. So, 25 vegetables that thrive well in containers were grown in both the seasons (12-13 vegetables in each season) and total twenty five containers of appropriate size and material were used in each season for growing these vegetables keeping in mind weight bearing capacity of the roof covering an area of 480sq.ft. Further, they were advised to use organic manures, i.e. FYM to meet the fertilizer requirement of vegetable and to practice hand hoeing for weed management. Yield was recorded weekly for every vegetable to calculate the average yield. Total expenditure for setting of container gardening with twenty five containers was calculated. The actual consumption of vegetables and expenditure on purchase of vegetables annually by each practitioner family before trials was also noted. Results revealed that the average annual consumption of vegetables by the families was 58.4 kg per person with total expenditure of Rs.14016/- on vegetables annually. Further based on the results of the study a micro model of container gardening for a family of 2-3 persons was suggested with total costs of Rs. 11211/ respectively.