Flower Girl: This Engineer from Telangana Grows 700 Varieties of Flowers, Vegetables on Her Terrace

"When you like a flower, you just pluck it. But when you love a flower, you water it daily. One who understands this, understands life", says Kusini Jyothi Priyanka, a nature lover .

Kusini Jyothi Priyanka is from Bhadrachalam, Telengana who worked as engineer in roads and building sector. She did face many challenges in teens and explains plants and nature as her stress buster.

She overcame many problems and now lives a stress free life with no expectations and rules and realised that plants and the nature are the perfect companions who showers humans with unconditional love. Kusini loved gardening, feeling the fragrance of flowers and bringing young plants and stems and seeds home was her way of life.

She says she enjoyed her gardening class activity on weekends at school. All Summers used to be at her grandparents home and was inspired by the activities being done by them. They had cows and farms full of paddy. She also thought of being with nature in her city home and created her own garden.

Her journey started in 2018 when she used to grow vegetable plants and leafy veggies in the ground it was successful no insects or pets attacked my plants and in return I have received great yields. Then she decided to grow more and started her terrace garden and it was a task to carry the soil and fill the terrace.

Then she started cultivating in pots as it was easy to be carried. She started with 200 pots of roses and lilies and some vegetables. At present she has 650 pots of of 9 inches approximately She claims her terrace to be a mini forest. She grows a wide variety of veggies like tomato, onion, ginger, turmeric, garlic, cabbage, capsicum, ladyfinger, groundnut, corn, brinjal, cauliflower, chili, potatoes, and creeper plants like bottle guard, pumpkin, better guard, long beans, peas, ridge guard. She uses a mix of garden soil, homemade compost, coco peat cow dung and vermi compost and has planted them as batch wise total I have given gap of 15 days per each batch so that the yield had to be in regularly First yield started within 20 days after planting I have not used any fertilizer and she doesn’t have any major pest problems or insects issue.

The First harvest is been always offered to her church says Kusini. Fragrant flowering plants like Madhumalthi, Jasmine, Raat Ki Rani, Rajanigandha, Champa, The Sweet Pure Lily of the Valley, Amazonlilly, Orentallilly, The Exotic and Elegant Freesia, Frangipani, Murraya Paniculata and Calcutta Kamini and Seasonal flowering plants like Dalhia, Calandula, Cosmos, Salvia, Petunia, Marigold, Chrysanthemums, Sunflower etc are all grown. Foliage plants like Coleus, Euphorbia ,Caladiums, Elephant Ear Plants, Caladiums, Fern, Bromeliads, Begonias, Hoya and Orchids are also grown. Air purifiers like Aglaonema Red Anjamani, Aglaonema Chlorophytum Green, Dracaena Reflexa, Money plants, English ivy, peace Lilly, Philofenfrom and Sansevieria and Fruit plants like guava, fig, lemon, mango also find their place in her terrace.

Her struggle was to pot the 600 pots and she used to feel very stressed physically but it helped her to overcome anger says Kusini. She was always excited to grow plants from bulb to bloom. When she started growing Asiatic Lilly, Oriental lily and gladiolus she monitored very carefully . The small saplings to flowering of chrysanthemums took nearly 3months to flower but she enjoyed growing and pinching them every week an she knew that after 3months its going to be a feast to the eyes. She loved growing capsicum and tomatoes among vegetables when asked for her favourites..

She thanks the birds and butterflies who come to visit her garden and a praise for her dad who is always there to capture her moments with plants and its blooms. What more do we needs as a human ,all we need is peace and connect to nature. Kusini supplies vegetables to her neighbours , relatives and friends and it hasn’t necessarily bought her money in return but it gave her better relations with people around her. The covid situation made her helping the needy and she is proud and happy about it says Kusini.`

With this inspiration she says she is interested in planning to extend this farming to few acres in return to create employment to others. “Every human has some task on this earth, and she feels helping people around you accomplishes that”. She is also helping herself in the process and helping others by giving them a chance to have good clean food.