Our story
ವಂದೇ ಬೀಜಂ — Vande Beejam — means a salutation to the seed. Everything we do starts there.
We are all gardeners by nature
Our forefathers grew their own food. Most of us in the city have not put a seed in soil since school, and we have come to believe it takes land, time and a knack we do not have. It does not. It takes a plant that has been given a proper start, and a way of watering it that forgives a busy week.
That is what we set out to make: a vegetable plant anyone can keep alive on a balcony or a terrace, and keep picking from.
Why native varieties
We grow the vegetables Karnataka kitchens actually cook with — Byadgi menasinakayi, musuku badane, heerekayi, karibevu — in varieties suited to Bengaluru weather. Some of them come true from saved seed, so a plant you buy from us can be the start of your own line.
Why the grow bag and the olla
Most terrace plants die of watering: too much, or none for a weekend. So each of our full-size plants is raised in the bag it arrives in, alongside an olla, an unglazed clay pot buried in the soil that lets water seep out as the roots ask for it. You fill the olla and leave the rest alone. How our bags are built has the detail.
We follow natural farming methods in how we build the soil and feed the plants.
From the same hands
The chatnipudi and breakfast mixes come out of the same kitchen the vegetables go into, made in small lots. The crafts are made by hand from grass and reed.
[Who makes them, and where.]
Where we are
[Where the farm is, how it started, and who runs it.]
We deliver plants around Bengaluru by hand, ourselves, so the person at your door is someone who knows what is in the bag.