Karnataka: Hostel students grow vegetables in their backyard

UDUPI: While most students learn about farming only within the four walls of a classroom, students at one hostel in Brahmavara have gone a step ahead and created an organic vegetable garden. The garden is in an eight cent area in the Pre-matric Girls’ Hostel run by the Backward Classes Welfare Department.

The hostel has 60 inmates and most of them are from agricultural backgrounds. The vegetable garden was started by the inmates about six years ago. But now the number of plants are enough to put dinner on the table of the hostel inmates. The students here cultivate lady’s finger, brinjal, flat beans (avarekalu), tomato, spinach and pumpkin.

Hostel warden Ashadevi Nayak said, “Our goal here is to teach the students farming by using organic manure.” The students behind this success story say they love what they do. Students Nikitha, Aishwarya and Nethra said working in the garden has taught them a lot about the hardships of farmers. On Sundays, students get together to remove weeds while they spend 15 minutes every day to water the plants. Each student is responsible for at least one plant. After they planted saplings of various vegetables last October, students have harvested 50kg of brinjal, 25kg of lady’s finger, 30kg of avarekalu, 5kg of tomato, 20kg of alasande this January.