After every harvest, Madhavi Guttikonda’s terrace garden is left with dried vines, old stems, weeds, and pruned branches. Most of us clear them away without a second thought. But Madhavi Guttikonda, the Andhra Pradesh-based home gardener behind the Instagram page @madgardener_madhavi, believes they are too valuable to throw away. 

For the past six to seven years, she has been using what she calls the ‘sandwich method’ to recycle garden waste into fertile soil for her terrace garden. It is a slow process, taking around two to three months, but it saves money, cuts down on waste, and leaves her with healthy soil for the next planting season.

In one of her recent Instagram reels, she shows how the method works and explains why she prefers making her own potting mix instead of buying fresh soil every season.

“If we put in the effort once, we........

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