Effect of different foliar treatment and profitable practice of terrace garden in urban environment, Tirupur, Tamil Nadu

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Globally, home gardens have been documented as an important supplemental source contributing to food and nutritional security and livelihoods. Terrace garden is usually established on the rooftop of a building. Besides the decorative benefit, roof plantings may provide food, temperature control, hydrological benefits, architectural enhancement, habitats or corridors for wildlife, recreational opportunities, and in large scale it may even have ecological benefits. Green roof tops with living vegetation provide green spaces, mitigation urban heat island, energy conservation, improving the air quality and increases biodiversity. Terrace gardens give pleasure to city dwellers and provide an opportunity for enhancing creativity as well psychological benefits. In addition, they change the visual appearance of the building, screening from neighbors, and conceal unwanted pipeline and unappealing scenery. One such terrace garden was established in terrace portion of a house located in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu. Three different foliar treatments viz., Control (T1), Panchagavya @ 3% (T2) and 19:19:19 @ 1.5% (T3) were given to observe the growth and yield attributes of the Tomato plants. In which Panchagavya @ 3% (T2) recorded the best results in all aspects. In tomato, maximum plant height of 23.4 cm at 35DAS and 42.5 cm at 45DAS, number of leaves as 143 at 35 DAS and 218 at 45 DAS, number of lateral branches as 8 at 35 DAS and 9 at 45 DAS, stem diameter as 0.76 cm at 35 DAS and 1.2cm at 45 DAS, minimum number of days to first flowering as 42 days, minimum number of days to 50% flowering as 58 days, average fruit weight as 93.8g, total yield per plant as 0.62 kg at first picking, 0.65 kg at second picking and 0.68 kg at third picking and Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) of 1:1.8 was recorded from Panchagavya @ 3% (T2). Besides tomato other vegetable crops such as Brinjal, Bhendi, Chilli, Radish, Lab lab, Spinach and Tropical Amaranth were also grown and calculated Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR). The fixed and variable cost for terrace garden was recorded to be Rs. 1876 and Rs. 554.3 respectively. The gross return and net return obtained from terrace garden were Rs. 1545.5 and Rs. 991.2 respectively. The Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) obtained from entire terrace garden during the period of 5 months was 1:1.78. The practice of Terrace Gardening is an emerging and important business venture for the urban middle and upper classes families that assure health and profitable benefits.