VietNamNet Bridge – Pham Trung Tuan, a freelance painter, has developed his vegetable garden at his home in a small alley of Cau Giay street in Hanoi. All the vegetables are grown with recycled waste products.

Vegetables grown on old slippers.

Tuan began planting vegetables eight months ago, and now has a large garden green with tens of kinds of vegetables for all year round.

Tuan’s vegetables are grown in special pots, from discarded PVC tubes, plastic bottles, jute bags, to old slippers which he re-designed to make them become beautiful and useful.

Tuan can turn anything into useful things, from car tyres to barrels and old bottles.

“I believe that if I can salvage old things, I can help reduce the waste to be discharged in the environment,” Tuan said. “Of course, I must be sure that things can be used safely.”

Tuan also uses a tower garden, a model which has become more and more popular in the world.

The tower garden model simplifies traditional gardening, using a unique vertical garden system that makes it easy to grow fresh fruits and vegetables at home.

However, Tuan has improved the model a bit and use diversified materials to create a tower garden model of his own.

In general, people do not plant vegetables in old barrels, fearing that the barrels might contain toxic chemicals.

Therefore, Tuan decided to use traditional methods, new materials and special techniques to create the vegetable pots which are cheap, safe and effective.

He has also been using organic garbage (compost).

“It is necessary to calculate how to use garbage in the most effective way, so that it can provide enough nutrition to vegetables and does not pollute the living environment,” he said.

Tuan is willing to share his “improved tower garden model” with other people and many of them have succeeded in developing gardens of their own.

“The gardens can not only provide clean vegetables with cheap production costs, because vegetables are grown with organic garbage, but also can create beautiful gardens at your home, where you can relax at any time,” he said.

Kham Pha