Green thumbs tend courtyard vegetable patches
Print Edition
Cabbages, celery and leeks fill the 50-square-meter courtyard of a family in Meilong Town this late autumn. The vegetables in the garden supply about 90 percent of the greens eaten by the six-member family.
“With no fertilizers or farm chemicals, the wholly organic vegetables and fruits planted by our own hands make this courtyard a year-round garden of health and nutrition,” said Zhang Jianrong, the head of the family.
Zhang’s success in backyard gardening is catching on as more consumers worry about food safety in the products they buy in markets. Seventy-one families in Zhang’s Taoyuan neighborhood have started to plant their own fruit and vegetables at home.
“The government is helping change public attitudes about home gardens,” Zhang said. “Where once they opposed the idea, now they are encouraging us to plant vegetables and fruits for family consumption.”
Freshman farmer
Zhang, who works in the Office of Environment and Sanitation, used to be a fish and poultry farmer. He had never gardened before. When his grandson was born five years ago, he had the idea that homegrown food was the safest way to start the toddler out on a healthy life.
Zhang bought his first seeds from sellers in West South Market, Tangwan Old Street and the agriculture gardening institute on Beiqi Road.
“Before then, I had planted only some flowers in my courtyard,” he said. “I had to learn vegetable growing from the ground up.”
He read books, watched TV gardening shows and talked with people who knew gardening. The secret to a great garden, he discovered is in the soil — and organic soil is best. The family now recycles all its soft kitchen scraps into garden compost.
Zhang makes his own natural fertilizer by fermenting green seed and bean cakes in water, and then using it on his plants. Up to 15 kilograms of the green seed cake left by squeezing out the oil lasts a whole year, he said.
Zhang also composts the soil by dumping green peelings, eggshells, shrimp shells and chicken bones in holes dug 20 centimeters deep in the soil.
Organic fertilizer
“Kitchen scraps are very good organic fertilizer when they are recycled into the soil,” he said. “But it should be food that hasn’t been cooked with oil or salt.”
Insect pests are the bane of every home gardener. Zhang said he has tried spraying his plants with water where hot chillies have soaked. He also picks off larger insects from leaves.
Ants, he has found, are often natural predators of aphids and other small vermin. He said he tries to attract ants by digging meat bones in the soil.
The greatest pleasure of a home garden is on the palate.
“Now I find it hard to eat non-organic vegetables purchased from markets,” Zhang said. “My vegetables and fruits are so fresh and succulent.”
Over the course of a year, he grows more than 40 seasonal vegetables, many of them in pots. Greens like lettuce and purslane grow nicely in porcelain containers.
In summer, the family tends pumpkins, Chinese watermelons and white-flowered gourds. Zhang reckons they harvest about 800 kilograms of vegetables a year.
“I spend three to five yuan (about 50 to 82 US cents ) on a packet of seeds, and the germination rate is more than 90 percent,” he said. “The cost of planting vegetables is much lower than buying them in markets.”
He said the family spends about 1,000 yuan a year on the garden.
Zhang said residents in his neighborhood obey the “three no rules” in their gardens: no bothering the neighbors, no damaging the neighborhood environment and no cultivation on public greenbelts.
In an age when government is touting a low-carbon green lifestyle, other areas like Jinmei and Luoyang neighborhoods are using the experience and gardening skills of Taoyuan to help them grow their own vegetables.
“The government used to oppose home gardens, but now we encourage use of such land resources,” said Jin Jianxing, director of the Agriculture Service Center in the town.
There are now eight districts in Shanghai that have started to promote home gardens, including Minhang, Xuhui, Huangpu and Baoshan. An estimated 500 families are involved.
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