MULTAN, April 13th: Senior Vice President of Multan Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MCCI) Khawaja Badar Munir said that Pakistan is blessed with a variety of climatic and geographic regimes, which create diversified agro-ecological conditions suitable for growing almost all kinds of vegetables. We must promote kitchen gardening to produce hygienic and non-toxic vegetables to save our family from different diseases like cancer, Hepatitis,".He was expressing his views at one-day Kitchen gardening help desk jointly organised by SMEDA and MCCI.He said that we should utilise our roofs ,lawns,shades for this purpose and it can be made profit-oriented and MCCI would provide guidance besides help in financial assistance from banks and technical assistance from agricultural university. Nabeel Ahmed Ikram of NSAU university said In the modern age of urban life and industrialization, the land for cultivation is continuously decreasing and hence more problems for getting fresh vegetables, grains and other edible commodities is also arising. But to cope with this situation, the concept of kitchen gardening has been introduced formally in metropolitan cities of this world.In kitchen gardening, vegetables for domestic use are grown in home lawn or other space available. This is also a hobby for many people as well as quick source of healthy food. But like any other form of cultivation, kitchen gardening should also be managed and have some inputs.He suggested that different types of vegetables should not be mixed. This is helpful to prepare the land each time for sowing new seeds.Availability to the light is very important to vegetables so keep in mind the place to sow must receive at least 7-8 hours of direct sunlight.Winter vegetables: pea, spinach, fenugreek, cabbage, cauliflower, radish, carrot, turnip, sugar beet, onion, garlic, coriander and salad leaves etc.Summer vegetables: chilies, cucurbits, bitter gourd, giant gourd, bottle gourd, okra, eggplant and tomato etc. State Bank representatives Sana Zahra and Faheem Arshad explained the requirements for the bank loans to establish cold storage.They also said that banking sector was binding to provide loans to small and Medium enterprises They further said that Alflah,Faisal and Jehangir Siddiqui(JS) banks are providing loans for kitchen gardening on merelty 6 % markup. Khawaja Nadeem Shehzad, Mirza Ali Ahmed, Khurram Javed Butt, Haji Ikram Arain, Sana Niaz Burrana, Mrs,.Sarwat Zahra ,Sadaf, Rizwana Tabassum Durrani, Muazzama Hasnain Advocate,Najma Perveen, Farah, Arooj and Muzaffar Ahmed aldo joined them and said that 24 percent of the population in the country is undernourished and the number has increased rapidly in recent years, this situation demands increase in productivity per unit area with good quality. Household gardening has a vast potential for addressing the food and health of the urban and peri-urban population. The obvious advantages associated with household gardening, such as pesticide free produce and availability at the doorstep on one side and on the other hand, vegetable and herbs have high nutritional values. If these are grown, households could be able to get balanced diet which mainly contributes to the healthy society.
