The growing popularity of gardening has spawned several DIY fertiliser hacks, which advocate turning your kitchen wastes into fertilisers for your plants. “A lot of kitchen waste contains nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, each of which has a role to play in improving the health of your plants,” says David Corrie, director at Earth Garden, a landscaping firm. However, not all of these DIY hacks are suitable for apartment living, as our readers found. They share their insights on what they found effective. 

Composting: Aditi Prabhu, a nutritionist, tried composting by following instructions she found online. “Each time, the compost didn’t turn out as expected and the procedures described were long and painstaking,” she says. Pratha Narang, a photographer, says that her neighbours complained about the smell and said that the compost attracted cockroaches when she tried to create a compost pit in the refuge area of her building. Narang now soaks banana peels overnight and uses the water for her plants. Prabhu dries kitchen wastes such as onion peels, leafy greens and the outer layers of cabbages under the sun for a few days before adding these to her plant pots.