THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Don’t have the heart to throw away your favourite pair of jeans that have worn out? Then follow in the footsteps of Abhinav P S, a Class 8 student who turned his old jeans into planters to grow vegetables.
With his experiment yielding good results, the boy has earned praise from various quarters. Many curious visitors are arriving at his house at Manakkapady in Karumalloor village of North Paravoor to have a first-hand experience of the new cultivation technique.
This is not his first stint at farming. During Covid, Abhinav grew bananas and tapioca at his home. However, when he found his small savings were insufficient to buy mud pots to plant saplings a month ago, the ‘young farmer’ latched on to the new idea.
“My mother raises hens for eggs, but they destroy my vegetable plants more often than not. Also, our compound easily gets waterlogged. So, we were thinking of a way out and hit upon the idea to use old jeans for cultivation after seeing a video on social media,” says Abhinav, who is ably assisted in his endeavours by his friend Bhiri, a Class 7 student. Both study at the Karumalloor FMCT HSS.
“We planted seeds of tomato, brinjal, lady’s finger, and green chillies in nine jeans. All of them have sprouted. Another five planters have been readied for my brother’s birthday,” a beaming Abhinav says.
So how have they turned the jeans into planters? The boys cut plastic sheets and staple them inside the jeans as a lining. Then, they use two sticks to support the jeans and fill soil and gravel in the two legs of each jeans till they provide a strong base. They keep on adding the soil till they reach the top, before sowing the seeds
