We talked about how each child will care about his plants, tried to gather some feedback about the process and discussed ideas for next time. I described the soil workshop to them and discussed the concerns behind it.

From a nearby flea market I managed to get some petis (wooden cartons used for transporting and storing fruits and vegetables. With a few modifications, the petis were usable as containers to grow plants in. We spread gunny bag at the bottom of the petis, put a mixture of soil and compost in it and then sowed the seeds.

View Delhi Public Fruit in a larger map
Photos

From the nearby Qutub nursery, I requested the head gardener, Ram Shankar, to come over to the shelter and demonstrate and explain to us the process of sowing the vegetable seeds and preparing the seedlings. I am interested in seeing if I can get the children connected to the gardener community over the long term. I see a lot of potential there for exchange of knowledge and skills.

Later we started talking about making a map of fruit which the children had seen or eaten in the public spaces of Delhi. The children described jamun, banana, amrud and mango. They also described temples, gurudwaras where they go food for free on a regular basis. We worked on a map of many of these places on Day 5.

Day 3: get baskets, setup baskets, get containers made, talk to neighborhood gardeners, put audio recordings on the Internet

Read more about the workshop at http://st.ation.in/wiki/projects:invisible-farm