I am Neha. I am a computer engineer by day working a job that keeps me reasonably happy. I also love growing my own food, being outdoors in nature/trekking and drinking coffee.

While growing up, we always had a garden around our house. My mom was an avid gardener and we had a lot of mango, jackfruit, guava, custard apple and papaya trees in our backyard. So growing the food that we eat is not an alien concept for me even though I grew up in a city.

When I moved to US for my studies and later to work, I hardly did any gardening relying on the abundant organic farmers market produce instead. I moved back to India after 10 years (in a city different from where I grew up in) and started thinking about having
my own garden again. Around this time my mom was diagnosed of cancer and just as a means to maintain my sanity I threw myself headlong into growing food. It was a super impulsive decision and within a week our nearly empty balcony housed raised beds, compost, pots and other garden supplies.

In retrospect I feel gardening kept me sane, gave me a sense of purpose and lot of peace of mind in the times when I was really struggling emotionally.

Even today, whenever I have an emotionally hard day I just spend an hour or so in the garden getting my hands dirty and I immediately feel calm and centered. So this is my number one reason to grow food - The peace of mind. Of course there are some other obvious benefits - having the freshest and the most nutrient dense organic food just a few steps away, zero food miles, making sure my son also knows about the effort that goes into the food that he gets to eat. This is just another way of me trying to reduce my carbon footprint further.

 I garden without the use of any pesticides or fertilizers (that is the point of home gardening, actually!!). Home made compost, which is made from kitchen waste nourishes the soil to produce healthy vegetables to put on the plate. That cycle is truly precious.

Have a composting and gardening story too? Just write to us at hello@dailydump.org and you can get featured on our blog!