In the previous episode, we showed you how you can plant a Miyawaki-model forest on your terrace using fibre tanks. That is slightly costly and a bit labour-intensive as well. The expense involved in creating the required moulds, fabricating the tanks, and transporting them on the one hand and the lack of expertise of the technician on the other can create problems. So we spent some time thinking of a simpler alternative. Recently, we came across a newspaper report about a man in Hyderabad or Bengaluru who created a wonderful forest on his terrace by clumping plants together in their hundreds, each plant growing inside a thick grow bag. We ought to congratulate him on his great imagination! It has inspired us to replicate the idea here, using two things that are cheaply available. One is the bucket that contains printing ink, which printing presses sell at the rate of about Rs 35 per piece, after use, to scrap shop owners. But as the scrap dealers have to clean them using a certain solution, when we purchase them, each costs between Rs 75 and Rs 100. I have used some of them here. They are durable and last up to five or six years or more, especially on terraces if they are not pushed around. Besides, the shade of the plants will give them additional protection. Often it is direct sunlight that causes the plastic buckets to lose their toughness and get degraded.
The other cheap object is the huge paint barrel. The top part can be removed, a couple of small holes bored in it, and used to grow plants like ginger, turmeric, arrowroot and others, on the terrace. Since this segment is usually three inches deep, it can hold rhizomes like ginger that will not grow thicker than two or two-and-a-half inches. If required, we can even cut the top part of the barrel to be four inches deep. It is even possible to grow plants like spinach and tomatoes on such shallow bucket-tops. The barrels are available in the market at Rs 200. We can buy and use them to put up Miyawaki forests. The trick is to follow the example of our friend from Bengaluru, and place all the buckets or barrels together. The drawback of this technique is that there is no scope for the interlocking of roots, one of the key advantages of the Miyawaki method.
The reasons why trees in Miyawaki forests do not topple even in stormy winds are: one, the closely-planted trees hold one another upright with their interlacing branches; and two, the intertwining root systems support each other. Earlier, during times of lathi-charge or in the event of an elephant going amok, people would interlock their arms and form chains in order to break the run of fleeing people, and thus prevent stampedes. The intertwining roots perform the same function and stop trees from falling in the wind. But this is a model worth experimenting. Here, as we plant a tree sapling in a bucket, we add vegetable plants as well.
One of the advantages of this kind of terrace-forests is that you can decide the number of buckets as well as their configuration, and thus design your own forest. Here, we have a group of six barrels, another of twelve, one in the shape of an ‘L’, another in the shape of an ‘I’. You can opt for an amoeboid shape or a circular one by merely dragging the barrels, and placing them according to your wish. I have begun my experiment already and shall certainly show you the results in course of time.