One day.. this is the small voice inside the head of each
expat in the Gulf region. This day may come for some unexpectedly, when only
their dead bodies reach their homeland.
A few others make this day come sooner by their meticulous planning, but
for the majority this day remains in the head only, until certain
circumstances force them to meet that day in their homeland. It might come as a
job loss or the urgent requirement of a loved one back home or old age itself.
Our son too will soon fly the nest since his board
exam is about to get over the coming week.
This makes me think about that “one day” pretty often. I was never a good planner and always had to
take life as it came. So guess even this “one day” if ever it comes and
whenever it comes may end up the same way! Yet, why should I not dream? So this
post is only to poke my conscious later and hope that it may nudge me to
action.
It is not a lofty dream either..not at all. It is only to
grow a vegetable garden and maybe have a few hens, fish? and maybe a cow and a
few ducks…. Hah! Not sure why on Facebook I always land up on such pages so as
to get all such ridiculous ideas! This is surely not for the lazy ones and for those
who would prefer to sit in front of the idiot box instead. I may end up as such
a person too, so let me just jot down to jolt me later.
Imagine growing a lemon tree indoors? Read it here
I do have a very very small collection of plants out here but the issue is that once we leave for our summer vacation it needs to be shifted to some place where it can be looked after during our absence.
Other than normal gardening, I stumbled upon Hydroponics and
Aquaponics systems. Tried the latter at home but am yet to succeed. Aquaponics interests me more since you can have fishes too in the bargain. My
colleague told me about a friend of his who returned to Kerala and is now successfully
managing it in only a cent of land! He dug a small pond, spread a tarpaulin sheet which extended a feet or two around the pond. Then he spread broken rocks on this extended space to plant vegetables. The pond was used to grow fish and the water was brought out at fixed times with the aid of a pump to flow through these rocks back into the pond. The nutrients in this water was enough for the vegetables to grow and there was not much loss in water too. One only need to feed the fish.
Hydroponics is a subset of hydroculture and is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil. Terrestrialplants may be grown with their roots in the mineral nutrient solution only or in an inert medium,such as perlite or gravel.
Aquaponics is a food production system that combines conventional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as snails,fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. In normal aquaculture, excretionsfrom the animals being raised can accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity. In an aquaponic system, water from an aquaculture system is fed to a hydroponic system where the by-products are broken down by nitrification bacteria into nitrates and nitrites, which are utilized by the plants as nutrients. The water is then recirculated back to the aquaculture system.
The following video shows a successful Aquaponics system in Kerala
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=636542556468002
