Retired Kerala headmistress turns 3,500 sq ft home into Dragon fruit farm, earns whopping Rs 4 Lakh monthly

Retirement usually means slowing down. For former Kerala headmistress Remabhai S, it meant turning an empty backyard and the roof of her home into an unlikely farm. With no acres of agricultural land at her disposal, she packed hundreds of dragon fruit plants into just 3,500 sq ft and says the fruit and planting material now bring her around Rs 4 lakh a month. What began as a way of dealing with loneliness after retirement has grown into a small but intensive farming business in Kollam.

Gardening began after a difficult retirement

Remabhai retired on May 31, 2022, after teaching zoology for more than three decades. Her mother's death in the same year made the transition particularly difficult. “The death of my mother that same year made the loneliness more difficult,” she told 30Stades, explaining that she began cultivating plants at her home to stay occupied. But she didn't immediately settle on dragon fruit. Remabhai says she researched around 52 exotic fruits, using journals, online resources and visits to farms before choosing the Malaysian King red variety.

360 plants packed into 1,750 sq ft

With only about 1,750 sq ft available in her backyard, Remabhai adopted high-density cultivation. She installed 90 locally made concrete poles and planted four dragon fruit stems around each, taking the total to 360 plants. Old tyres were repurposed as supports, while GI pipes helped create the structure needed for the climbing cactus. Within six months, the plants began flowering, with the first harvest arriving in March 2023. She says peak backyard production eventually reached around 750 kg a month.


Her use of concrete poles isn't unusual for the crop. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) says concrete or iron poles fitted with tyres can support dragon fruit plants, with rooted stem cuttings commonly used for propagation. Instead of buying more land, Remabhai looked towards her terrace.

Concerned about carrying large quantities of soil upstairs, she experimented with growing the plants in homemade compost. She eventually placed 100 plants in 50 barrels, using compost and cow dung rather than ordinary soil. According to her account, the terrace plants began fruiting within five months.

Dragon fruit's adaptability has attracted other Kerala growers too. The state's Horticulture Mission has highlighted cultivation in difficult conditions and notes that growers are drawn to the crop partly because of its relatively low irrigation requirements and market value.

Fruit isn't her only source of income

Remabhai says her reported Rs 4 lakh monthly income combines fruit sales with stem cuttings, which she sells for around Rs 70 each. She claims to have more than 2,500 customers, supplying planting material across India as well as to the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Her experience doesn't mean similar earnings are guaranteed for every small-space grower. But it does challenge one familiar assumption about farming: that significant production always requires acres of land. For Remabhai, the expansion wasn't into another field. It was simply upstairs.