With home-grown marigold flowers, Kerala group of friends kickstart business this Onam

Ernakulam (Kerala) [India], August 19 : Usually during the Onam festival season, Kerala imports bulk of flowers used in making floral carpets and other ceremonial decorations from neighbouring states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
This year, however, four youth from Ernakulum district started cultivating marigolds from June this year with the aim of using home-grown flowers instead of buying from outside states.
Marigolds are the centrepieces for the pookalam or floral rangoli that people decorate out on the floor usually in front of their homes during the 10-day long festival.
The four friends - Haneesh Sree Harshan, CG Jibin, Sujith Lal and PV Vineeth got together to start cultivating marigold flowers from June this year in less than one acre of land and planted 800 marigold plants. The crop of flowers have been already selling it in retail and wholesale.
They are also planning to harvest the remaining Marigold flowers just a day before 'Thiruvonam', the most auspicious day in the Onam season.

Haneesh Sree Harshan says: "The motivation behind this was that one of my friends had already done such an intiative in 2017-18 initially and it was successful. We then decided to go ahead because in this COVID situation, we wanted to earn some extra income because times are tough."
"For this, we got a lot of help from the authorities like Panchayat. So we are quite happy about this. We are getting flowers from Tamil Nadu and other states initially. This year, we haven't faced any calamity. That too helped," he said.
CG Jibin, who is an artist, said they are very happy with the results.
"We got unexpected results. This is the first time any kind of farming has been done by us. Before we got into it we consulted with several people and asked for their inputs. We are very happy with the result. Usually, flowers for Onam have been coming in from other states. That's where the idea came from. This is from the idea that why can't cultivate flowers in our own state," said CG Jibin, an artist told ANI.

Sujith Lal, who is employed in a Bengaluru firm says, "100 kg of flowers have already been sold at many places. But now since the demand is high, we are selling it for Rs 150 per kg. We planted 800 saplings in June. These saplings were obtained from the panchayat and they were the first to provide manure. The rain has not affected the plants."
PV Vineeth who is an electrical contractor said, "Our flowers are of better quality than the flowers that come from outside."