The document is an issue of an ezine called "Let's Grow" focused on sustainability and earth matters. It includes an interview with Professor Sultan Ismail on topics like sustainability, soil as a living entity, and parenting. It also provides tips for protecting gardens in summer heat and announces an art contest. The interview highlights Professor Ismail's views that sustainability requires an integrated understanding of living and non-living things, and that soil is a complex living system like the human body. He emphasizes the importance of connecting children to nature.

1. Feature: Interview with
Prof. Sultan Ismail
Art Contest !
22April2020
Let’s GROWThe Earth-Speak eZine
TheOrganicFarmHarvesting since 1995
Tips to Protect
your Garden
against the Heat
this Summer
Issue 1
Photograph: Alladi Ramashree

2. Photos - Verse - Tips - Experiments - Insights - Quotes - Interviews - Poetry - Recipes - Interactions - Techniques - Profiles - Text - Art
TheOrganicFarmHarvesting since 1995
In this Issue:
A Mo’zArt
Tips to Protect your garden
Against the Heat this Summer
Feature: Interview with
Prof. Sultan Ismail
T
he Neem Flow
er
Beautiful, fragrant,
and somehow mystical
“A mind all logic is like a
knife all blade, it makes the
hand bleed that uses it”
-Rabindranath Tagore
Dear friends,
Welcome!
This is the 1st
edition of ‘Let’s
Grow’, an eZine on
Earth matters. We
bring you in this issue
words of wisdom by
sustainability expert Dr.
Sultan Ismail, summer tips by
Alladi Mahadevan, stunning photos cour-
tesy Planet Earth, an Art contest, and verses
from Kahlil Gibran, with some odds and
ends of info and insights tossed in. We hope
you will enjoy it, and that you will partici-
pate in the making of the next issue by send-
ing in your views, your art, your poetry,
pictures of your
garden, farm or
veranda, and your
feedback on this
issue to:
info@theorganicfarm.in
or WhatsApp them
to 90801 70795
Every day is Earth Day,
but still, here’s wishing you a
happy one today :-)
Love,
Sumana & Ramashree
(Alladi Ramashree, Partner, Green Embryo,
Alladi Sumana, Intern, Green Embryo)
Design
Content

3. TheOrganicFarmHarvesting since 1995
Photos - Verse - Tips - Experiments - Insights - Quotes - Interviews - Poetry - Recipes - Interactions - Techniques - Profiles - Text - Art
A Mo’zArt
A moment of Art captured
on the field, among the
hundreds that the Earth
paints everyday… This is a
‘kanakambaram’, a
Firecracker flower. Ripe
seed-pods ‘explode’ with a
characteristic sound
(hence the name) when
humidity is high, often
when its going to rain. The
seeds find their place
under the sun, nourished
by the moist air and fed by
the coming rain.
Photograph @ The Organic Farm, Nerkunampattu by Sarath Chandra S (Project Trainee)
Art Contest !
Mustard is the spice of
choicewhenpickle-making
is on our minds. Winter
is when we lovingly eye
ourpicklejars,andmustard,
a major ingredient in
most of our pickles, is
known for its ability to
treat various respirat0ry
ailments, here as well as
in the West - that can’t be
a coincidence, can it
now…
This is a mustard flower. This fortnight’s art contest invites you to draw mustard flowers
(as in the example above) and send it to us at info@theorganicfarm.in You can use Wet or
Dry Medium. Winners will be announced in the following categories in our next issue:
Wet Medium (Ages 6 - 10, 11 - 16, and 17+), Dry Medium (Ages 11 - 16, and 17+).
Smt Lakshmi Vijayaraghavan, artist and art teacher, has kindly consented to be our judge.
Photograph: Alladi Sumana

4. Tips to Protect your Garden Against the Heat this Summer
TheOrganicFarmHarvesting since 1995
Photos - Verse - Tips - Experiments - Insights - Quotes - Interviews - Poetry - Recipes - Interactions - Techniques - Profiles - Text - Art
‘You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the
earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, “Be like me, ripe and full
and ever giving of your abundance.”
For to the fruit, giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.’
-Kahlil Gibran
Excerpted from ‘On Good & Evil’
The call of the koel is in the air and so is the
fragrance of mango flowers. But summer also
brings with it the need to protect our gardens from
the escalating heat. Here are some handy tips to do
just that from Alladi Mahadevan:
w Create a simple support structure using dried
branches or thin bamboo poles, and tie a
white cloth over it shading your plants from the top and/or from the western sun.
Wet this cloth in the morning and evening to keep your plants cool and happy.
Make sure the cloth is not thick or dark-coloured and the sunlight can still pass
through it
w Using a stick or branch, make holes in the soil about 5-6 inches away from
the stem of the plants. This helps aeration, and also, when you water the
plants, the water goes deep into the soil/pot sooner and keeps the roots
moist for longer.
w Instead of leaving your soil/pots bare because of the burning heat/water
scarcity, just put in some legumes (peanut, cow pea, various beans) from
your household provisions into the soil. These can grow with very less
water, and their roots will fix nitrogen so that your soil will become
super-enriched. You’ll also get to harvest your very own peas and beans!
The germination stage will need water though
Ok then, happy growing!

5. Photos - Verse - Tips - Experiments - Insights - Quotes - Interviews - Poetry - Recipes - Interactions - Techniques - Profiles - Text - Art
Dr Sultan Ismail is a world-renowned figure in the
areas of sustainaility, eco-reserach and natural agri-
cuture. He is perhaps best-known for the coining of the
word and concept of ‘Vermitech’ - using earthworms for a
variety of wonderfully interlinked organic purposes such
as waste management, agro fertilising, soil enrichment
and maintaining a natural ecological balance. Currently
Director of Ecoscience Reseach Foundation, his work in
all fields sustainable is well documented and available on
the ‘net at erfindia.org and on countless other sites; I’m sure
you’ll want to look it up after reading these snippets from an exclusive interview:
On Sustainability and Education
Speaking about sustainability, Dr Sultan Ismail says, “Our greatest mistake is that
we segregate and specialise. Somebody talks about air, somebody about water, and
somebody else
about soil. But
unless we bring
together all these
ideas, there cannot
be sustainability.
The problem starts
with school, where we
start teaching children
the difference between
living and non-living. We
always tell children that air is
non living, whereas we are living.
But we forget to tell children that if we
remove the non-living air from our body, we
also become non-living….Water the teacher says is
non-living, and they say that we are living. But they don’t say, if
you remove water from our body, we become non-living.
Understanding that what they call ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ is
actually integrated into a single entity is most important to
understanding the concept of sustainability. Soil is incomplete
without soil-air and soil-moisture. They all exist together as a
wonderful tripod of existence...”
Profile: Professor Sultan Ismail
Sustainability
is not a process
of agriculture, it is
a way of life, a way
of looking at life...”
cvi
On Soil as a Living Entity
Drawing parallels between the
systems in a human body and
soil systems, he says, “Soil
itself is a living organism.
Soil has a digestive
system, because you
bury anything in it, it
can decompose it,
and it can absorb it.
This is the same
way in which our
own digestive
systems work.
Soil also takes in
oxygen, gives out
carbon dioxide
just like we do…
We don’t pull up
plants every day
to feed their
roots. The way we
“
TheOrganicFarmHarvesting since 1995

6. Photos - Verse - Tips - Experiments - Insights - Quotes - Interviews - Poetry - Recipes - Interactions - Techniques - Profiles - Text - Art
“We tell our
children that air is
non-living, whereas
we are living. But we
forget to tell them that if
we were to remove
non-living air from our
body, we also become
non-living…”
take medicine through the mouth to reach different parts of the body, the
same way we feed the soil and this percolates through channels
and systems which are created by soil organisms, in the
form of a circulatory system, and reaches the
plants. So soil also logically has a circulatory
system. Just like we eliminate unwanted
material form our body, saline soils
bring out excess salts and throw it
onto the surface. If you were to put
anything in soil that is plant
matter, it decomposes this but
then in the same soil you put in
a seed it helps it germinate…
The moment we think that
soil is only mineral matter,
and we just add minerals on
it, we became crop-centric
and not eco-centric. And
unfortunately sustainability
takes a back seat…
Sustainability is not a process
of agriculture, it is a way of
life, a way of looking at life.”
On Parenting
Reminiscing about his child-
hood, Dr Ismail recalls how
rough he used to be as a
child. Once he was jumping
up and down forcefully and
kicking the ground, when his
grandfather scolded him
saying, “Don’t hurt the Earth,
don’t hurt the soil, it gives you
everything!” “It was a small
input,” he says, “and at that
point I didn’t know how
much it would contribute to
who I am
today…”
“Please bring up
your children in
such a way that the child interacts with Nature, is
involved with Nature. Because once children start
loving Nature - birds and butterfles - they will
naturally be attracted towards their lives and habi-
tats. If you want to have a plant or tree, you will
need to have soil, and that bond with the soil will
last a lifetime.”
In the current situation when we are all looking to
engage our children, Dr Sultan Ismail’s website
SimpleTasksGreatConcepts.WordPress.com is a
treasure-trove of amazing experiments you can
do at home, starting from making invisible ink to
building a micrograph.
On Opportunity
A world authority on vermitech, vermiwash and
vermicomposting today, Professor Ismail believes
TheOrganicFarmHarvesting since 1995

7. Photos - Verse - Tips - Experiments - Insights - Quotes - Interviews - Poetry - Recipes - Interactions - Techniques - Profiles - Text - Art
“When life offers
an opportunity, there is
wisdom in accepting
it...”
that when life offers an opportunity,
there is wisdom in accepting it. His
formal education is in Fisheries. It
was a matter of chance that he started
working with earthworms - he was
asked to suggest an area of work for a
student, and on that day, in 1979, the lab
only had earthworms as live specimens.
“On that day, if I had resisted, if I had said
no, I will only work with fish, I would not be
here today and you would not be speaking to
me…”
On Human Activity
“The present crisis can be linked to natural ecosystems being
disrupted. In the natural ecosystem, viruses exist everywhere, in every
species. If you destroy the habitats of other species in the name of construction of
various sorts, then these microorganisms face loss of habitat, are devoid of their
host, and they start looking for a host. And the easiest prey is human beings. This
(Zoonosis) is a big threat for the future generations… “
A fortnight after this interview, Dr. C. Johnson from the University of California’s
School of Veterinary Medicine reported her findings, which were along these exact
same lines, and said, “Our data highlights how exploitation of wildlife and the
destruction of natural habitat in particular, underlie disease spillover events,
putting us at risk for emerging infectious diseases”
Thank you so much for your time and your wonderful inputs Sir!
TheOrganicFarmHarvesting since 1995
Phone: 98402 77566
90801 70795
Email ID: info@theorganicfarm.in
Website: www.theorganicfarm.in/letsgrow
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