Lease land & grow your own veggies

Hyderabad: How about growing your own vegetables? May sound implausible for denizens of the city! But it is true. Several families in the city are already into it. Here is how. A firm rents out land on which vegetables can be grown and delivered at your doorstep once a week.

The rental is based on the area of land. Lakshmi Dheksik Reddy, managing director, Minikroft, says, "We have two farms spread over seven acres in Sankarpally and Injapur. We started two months ago and have 88 subscribers, all from the twin cities." People can subscribe by downloading the app Minikroft from Playstore.

A subscriber can choose from a list of 30 kitchen vegetables and green leaves, out of which one can choose as many as 17.

Potato, garlic and ginger are, however, not available.

The popular ones are chilly, tomato, brinjal, lettuces, palak, corrionder, mint, beans methi, rich guard, bitter guard, bottle guard.

Sameer, who works for Gotech and a resident of Gachibowli, has enrolled himself as a subscriber. He speaks of the benefits: "My wife insisted and we decided to go organic. Though it is slightly costlier, we are happy as we know the veggies are fresh and organic." He further added, "The quantity too is good, to the extent that we share them with neighbours."

There are different land parcels, depending on the size of the family: 340 sft for family of two; 540sft for four people; 700sft for family of more than six. Monthly subscriptions for these lands are Rs 1900 for 340 sft, Rs 2,500 for 540sft and Rs 3,500 for 700sft parcels.

Having a family of four, Sameer took 540 sft land for lease and made use of the services of select farmers engaged by the Minikroft. Per week, they get about seven kg of vegetables door-delivered to them.

"I have subscribed for 3 months package. I am receiving my harvest weekly once and the quantity is sufficient for my family. It lasts fresh till the end of the week," said Sushma, a housewife and a resident of Kokapet.

"Quality of the produce is high along with the quantity of the produce. Extremely happy to grow vegetables on our own farm for my family," said Madhavi of Fortune Towers, Madhapur.

People can also visit the farm on weekends and purchase the produce, adds Dheksik Reddy.

How to Monitor Your Farm

A customer can monitor their crops anytime through the application or through personal visits to farm on any day.

The whole process of farming from sowing seeds, watering crop to collecting harvest will be intimated to the customer personally in the application.

Selection of crop, removing of crop or adding a new crop can also be done through the application. The app also features questions and answer section to help us farming better.