Readers routinely ask who actually writes the guides on this site, and what qualifies us to give gardening advice. This page answers both questions honestly, including where our expertise ends.
Our Contributors
Shiv Kumar — Founder & Soil / Composting Lead
Shiv started Farmer Bazaar Journal after several years of growing vegetables and ornamentals on a north-facing apartment balcony in eastern India, where limited direct sunlight forced a lot of trial and error. He handles most of our soil health, composting, and container-mix coverage, and maintains the compost setup and pH-testing records that our soil articles are based on.
Hands-on focus: home composting from kitchen waste, potting mix ratios, soil pH testing and organic amendment.
Growing conditions he writes from: apartment balcony, roughly 3–4 hours of direct morning light, humid subtropical climate with a heavy monsoon season.
Contact: hello@farmerbazaar.shop
Anjali Verma — Container & Balcony Gardening
Anjali has grown leafy greens, herbs, and flowering plants in pots and railing planters for over eight years across two different Indian cities. She writes our balcony and terrace gardening guides, and is the reason our vegetable recommendations distinguish clearly between what thrives in low light versus what needs full sun — a distinction most generic gardening lists ignore.
Hands-on focus: low-light vegetable selection, container sizing and drainage, seasonal planting timing for Indian climates.
Growing conditions she writes from: urban balconies and a small shared terrace, mixed sun exposure.
Dr. Rakesh Menon — Plant Health & Organic Pest Management
Rakesh holds a postgraduate degree in agricultural science with coursework in plant pathology, and spent several years in agricultural extension work advising smallholder farmers before moving into home gardening as a personal pursuit. He reviews our pest and disease content for technical accuracy and writes most of our organic pest-management guides.
Hands-on focus: identifying common pests and fungal diseases, organic treatment methods, plant immunity and soil-borne disease prevention.
Review role: technically reviews any article that makes claims about plant biology, pest life cycles, or disease mechanisms before it publishes.
Where Our Expertise Ends
We want to be equally clear about what we are not. We are not commercial farmers, we do not run a nursery, and we have no experience with large-scale field agriculture, greenhouse commercial production, or hydroponics at scale. When a reader question falls into those areas, we say so and point them to agricultural extension resources rather than improvising an answer.
Similarly, none of us are qualified to give advice on plant-derived remedies for human health, food safety certification, or agricultural law, and we do not publish content in those areas.
How to Reach a Specific Contributor
General questions and topic requests go to hello@farmerbazaar.shop; corrections and accuracy concerns go to editorial@farmerbazaar.shop, where they are routed to whichever contributor wrote or reviewed the article in question. Full detail on our research, review, and correction process is on our Editorial Policy page, and our testing conditions are documented on Our Testing Setup.