Janyaa founder Ms. Venu Nadella shares her experience with gardening.
My friends and family ask me if I have stocked up during these lockdown days. I keep telling them I don’t need to – because I am self sufficient. I have so many vegetables growing in my small yard, I even froze some of them. Now that it is spring, I am planting more and in no time I will have more coming. In spite of sharing with my neighbors and friends, I still have a lot to spare. And most importantly, I know where my food is coming from. So I don’t have to worry about contamination, I don’t need to clean them up with soap or vinegar or whatever that is we need to use to clean the vegetables we buy from outside.
I started growing my own veggies about 2 yrs back and since then I didn’t have to buy from the market at all – though I miss my farmers market trips. Well, honestly, I can still go – but I prefer time in my yard.
The reason I started growing my own veggies was I wanted to start a program in schools where children can start their own vegetable garden by applying science and math principles they learn through our JLIB (Janyaa Lab In a Box) program. So I started experimenting at home and now it is my passion. That’s how JNL was born (Janyaa Nature Lab).
We also teach life skills as part of our program where children get to practice financial skills such as estimates, budgeting, effect of interest rates, profit & loss etc. They learn the importance of bookkeeping too.
We piloted JNL (Janyaa Nature Lab) in 1 school last year and that was a huge success. We plan to expand it to many other schools.
Now with Covid, I am more determined to expand this heavily to schools as I see the need more than ever. We need to be safe and know where our food is coming from – at least most of it.
~Venu