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How to grow your own food at home in an apartment – tips on creating an urban garden on a balcony or rooftop in Hong Kong, and common errors
- A minimum of four hours of direct sunlight and using high-quality compost are among tips urban farmers give for how to grow food at home in Hong Kong
- Rookie errors include plants being too crowded, too much or too little watering, not fertilising or trimming, and forgetting to harvest
Reading Time:5 minutes
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Gardeners often talk to their tomatoes or chat with their cucumbers. But plants, too, have the ability to “communicate”.
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If a lemon tree is thirsty, its leaves curl inward, while those of a basil plant develop brown or black spots if it has been overwatered.
But as Hong Kong emerges from its hottest summer on record – and record-setting rainfall – the “conversation” has been depressing.
“We can see and feel the impact climate change has had on the growth of our crops,” says Godfrey Leung Kwok-fung, founder of Living Farm, a community organic farm in Tai Po, in the New Territories.
Farmers are more sensitive to climate change, says Leung, and this summer’s crops such as cucumber, bitter melon, water gourd and hairy gourd have been the most affected.
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“The more extreme weather we face, the less we have to harvest,” says Leung.
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