Vegetable planting on balconies goes mainstream amid recent COVID-19 flare-ups in China - hortidaily.com

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"If you are a novice, we suggest you try leeks, lettuce, spinach, cherry radish, and other fast-growing species with short cycles. You can harvest in about half a month," a salesperson from the e-commerce platform Taobao told the Global Times when asked about vegetable planting methods for residential balconies.

Together with the country's spring sowing activities steadily moving forward, vegetable planting on balconies has become a new fashion, as many people started planting hydroponic vegetables as a source of fun food during the recent wave of COVID-19 flare-ups, making it as a new lifestyle to relieve anxiety and relax themselves during "agricultural work."

Dark horse
The sales of vegetable seeds have seen a continuous increase ever since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, with the number of buyers on Taobao recording annual growth of more than 100 percent for three consecutive years, according to a company statement sent to the Global Times.

After investigation, the Global Times learned that 70 percent of the vegetable seeds buyers come from first- and second-tier cities, with Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Guangzhou the most popular markets.