I’ve been fascinated by the Instagram reels or YouTube videos where people are engaged in farming and gardening activities in their backyards and terrace garden area and harvesting fruits, vegetables and flowers for their day-to-day needs.
I’ve been living in rented house which make all the tenants think twice before doing any of that. As it comes with a lot of risk of any future drift with the landlords or what if we need to shift to another house, then what’ll happen to those plants etc. etc.
I’ve been trying to read to declutter from the screen of mobile and computers.
Although my work as a digital marketer and website developer doesn’t permit me to do so, but I’ve been trying to use screen as much required and devote most of other time to give rest to the body and relax with reading, either with kindle or through books.
I’ve been a huge fan of book fairs, as we as readers get to introduce with all kinds of verity of books from around the world. Be it fictional, non-fiction, religious, educational, competitive, motivational, self-help, finance and other categories of books.
and generally in my state Andhra Pradesh where i’m living right now, this book fair generally happens once a year in Indira Gandhi stadium in Vijayawada city.
The city is around 30km away from my hometown Guntur. and I love to ride as well. So whenever there’s a book fair, I generally don’t skip it at all. As a rider and frequent traveller I’ve been keenly attached to the city of Vijayawada.
Either the city’s night life, the entertainment zones, malls, movie theatres, parks, yummy, delicious food, temples, Krishna River etc. makes me fall into love with this city.
So I went to the book fair for the second time, I visited this book fair last year also which was a lot of fun to see more than 200 retail book outlets where many visitors including school and collge going kids to old aged people also visit there to get their choice of books for their spare time.
I forgot to take pictures of the venue that time, but somehow, I found the official pictures from the National Book Trust of India’s Instagram page, so I’m embedding that post below so that you can refer to those images as well.
There I purchased few books and one of those is “Terrace Garden (Midde Thota) by Thummeti Raghothama Reddy, Published by Rytu Nestham Publications.
This book is the guide I’ve been looking for since long time. The main thing is that while watching YouTube or Instagram you get knowledge but half here and there, not the complete knowledge to get started.
In this book Mr. Reddy is explaining how he started his terrace garden journey in Hyderabad in a small house with his spare terrace available to grow vegetables, fruits and flowers and not being dependent on shopping from market for his day to day vegetable needs.
Midde Thota in local language in Telugu is Terrace Garden or Dhaba Garden.
In this book he not only said about terrace garden but living an inclusive happy life by avoid the chemical heavy vegetables from the market.
The author was been posting in facebook page since long time, but Rytu nestam foundation has tried to acquire all hid knowledge and writing in this book.
Terrace Garden Book
As we humans grown in our life, most of us are been migrating to urban cities for our livelihood, which is making the way of living much more difficult for all the people living in the urban areas.
The demand of more consumption but resources being less, farmers are heavily dependent on chemicals and pesticides for getting more yield from their farming.
Even though we’re eating vegetables from the market but the satisfaction of eating is lacking, as the food lacks, taste, quality and the nutrients required, rather it’s full of pesticides which damages our health slow and steadiliy.
Coming to growing our own food, fruits and flowers on our own terrace garden or backyard if you have sufficient place could be a great way of restarting a part time hobby which in return can bring you so much happiness and yield fruits and vegetables in the near future.
Terrace garden requires a small focused habit of indulging in it every day, pouring water, maintaining the cleanliness, adding organic fertilizer like dry cow dung every month on the top of every plant beds, adding organic pesticide spray like neem leaf waters etc. make you grow plants organically and yield results that will bring smile and satisfaction inside your soul.
Here some of the plants that I’ve been growing since January 2026 in my terrace garden
I’ve started getting flowers, vegetables like Mirchi and tomato, green leafy vegetables like Amaranthus, Palak, Radish and more from the garden,
It’s been a satisfying journey. I always recommend to you start seeding at the start of every season. For eg. in the winter you can start in January to February, as from March onwards heavy summer will start which will cause damage to your saplings and seeds from growing in big sizes due to the summer is very hot in India making plants go dry sooner.
in the Rainy season you can start seeding and planting sapling in the June to July month onwards and the Winter you can start planting in the November month onwards which would yield good results after 2 to 3 months.
So what plants you should go for?
I always recommend going for seasons variants for fruits and vegetables which does accommodate with the local weather of your locality, you can get seeds and saplings online from Amazon or Instagram as there’re many pages online which are providing organic seeds.
After that you need to invest in some gardening tools, pots, and soil mix to get started.
You also require a tool pour water to the plants as well. Overall, I Invested around 5 to 6 thousand initially to get started.
for the tools you can these from the Amazon as mentioned below.
Tools and equipment’s for your terrace garden
I’ve tried to attach all the tools and growbags and soil mix I’ve used in my terrace garden above you can buy seeds from online or your choice of store from nearby areas.
I would highly recommend to go for online purchasing for seeds as you’ll get variety of seeds as per the season and for sapling you can go either online or offline.
I would highly recommend the book so that you can initial get an idea of how you can get started, how to plant the seeds, how to use the soil mix, how to plant every day, how to take care of the plants and maintain them would be so much easier for you.
Will update more about this in this blog or in the comment section below. Please feel free to ask if you have any questions or doubts regarding this.
Thank you.
