![]() “Luckily for us in India, there is abundant sunlight and rooftops can get clean rainwater,” she says. On tall buildings, she urges builders to design thicker rooftops and install windbreakers. To control the wind and torrential rainfall of Mumbai, Preeti also set up small miniature greenhouses of plastic sheet tents. Also, plants growing on the terraces need to be pruned so it won’t become difficult to pluck fruits.” If they get good external support, like a wall or a strong pole, the feeder roots nourishing the plants need just 9 inches of soil. She brushes aside people’s fear of roots breaking through the rooftops of buildings saying, “Roots don’t break into the floor unless they need to anchor. Citing an example she narrates how when she didn’t have natural land to grow, she used plastic laundry drums, half-sawn large drums and brick rings to fill them up with soil and the Amrut Mitti before planting the saplings.īraving Threats by Land Mafia, Techie Turns 25-Acre Barren Land Into a Forestīraving threats from the real estate mafia, G Srikanth from Tamil Nadu singlehandedly grew a forest on a 25-acre land near the Palar river. Preeti’s MbPT garden bloomed with help from Deepak-who had learnt these techniques from Prof Shripad Dhabolkar-and her own experimentation in the garden. She admits that though the produce on the rooftop didn’t meet the demand for cooking daily for more than 4,000 dock workers but what it did was make good use of the vast kitchen waste.Īfter learning from Dr Doshi, she started researching on the works of late Deepak Suchde, founder of Natueco farming, who taught the usage of Amrut Mitti is the best natural fertiliser using biomass like dry leaves, kitchen waste mixed water with cow dung and cow urine, natural jaggery, etc. All this was grown using the converted cafeteria’s kitchen waste into very rich manure. and leafy vegetables like spinach, amaranthus, mint, coriander, basil, ginger, among others. ![]() Within no time, the terrace top boasted of 116 other plant kingdom varieties ranging from coconut, pineapple, custard apple, papaya, banana, mango, gooseberry, okra, tomato, broccoli, tamarind, etc. Preeti Patil To build a green oasis on the roof “We started with only four saplings - two each of guava and chikoo,’’ recalls Preeti. ![]() Within five years, with help from her team in the cafeteria and after getting due permissions from the MbPT officials, she finally fulfilled her dream. In such a hot, noisy and dusty locality, Preeti Patil dreamt of making a green oasis. There are hundreds of cranes, cargo lifting machines, heavyweight trailer trucks transporting the cargo and accompanying constant din. The port is used to transport bulk cargo and throughout the day many ships are dock and leave the port. The dockyards at MbPT is a highly restricted area on the shores of Mumbai’s coastal area of the Arabian Sea. Preeti attended one of his workshops and realised that she luckily had an unutilised space of 3000 sq. From his experience on his own farm, he had started conducting small workshops for Mumbaikars and Punekars to teach them the benefits of balcony gardening using their daily kitchen waste. It was here that Preeti found a retired economist Dr R T Doshi, who had marketed NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium) and other manure and had switched over to organic farming on his small land in Kamshet located between Mumbai and Pune. A growing awareness of organic farming using farm waste, like fallen leaves, twigs, cow dung, food waste, was also on the rise. ![]() There was increased tourist travel, which included both international and domestic travel, that got people discussing happenings elsewhere. Luckily for her, the beginning of this century was also around the time when the internet boom came in. So imagine the amount of vegetable and fruit waste and uneaten food waste that ends up in landfills.’’ The huge mounds of kitchen waste triggered Preeti’s interest in finding ways to utilise it. Reminiscing about the beginning in 2001, Preeti says, “At the MbPT cafeteria, every day we prepare meals and snacks for thousands of port trust personnel. Read more > Preeti Patil, one of the first proponents of terrace gardening. BestOf2023: Environment Heroes Fighting for the Future of Our Planetįrom single-handedly cleaning oceans to braving land mafia threats to grow forests, The Better India's 'Environment Heroes of the Year' emerged as true champions of change in 2023.
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