Billing for your fruit and vegetable shop in Ladakh
A rate for every truck, a weight for every bag and an account for every guesthouse, all on one phone.
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From the greens of July to the trucked tomatoes of February
Spinach from the kitchen gardens and cauliflower from the truck, each at its own rate
Keep the valley's spinach and radish as items of their own with their summer rates, and the trucked cauliflower and tomatoes as others with theirs. When the cold ends the local season, nothing is deleted. The local items simply stop selling, and next June they are there again with last June's days behind them.
The night the potatoes froze, found in the morning count
On the morning after a hard frost, put the shelf count beside the evening's bills. The potatoes that are short are the potatoes that froze, and you know it that day, while the trucker can still be asked for a fresh bag and the sacks by the wall can be moved.
The slip left in the drawer when a kitchen shuts in a week
When a guesthouse shuts within the week, the last sacks may still be unpaid. Write that kitchen's final morning on its page the same day and keep the page. When the kitchen opens again in spring, that unpaid morning is the first line of its page, and nobody can say it was forgotten over the winter.
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Why a Leh vegetable stall sets a new rate with every truck
Valley spinach in July, a truck's cauliflower by the first frost
Radish and spinach from the kitchen gardens are cheap in summer. By the first frost every cauliflower and tomato on the stall has come up the road in a truck. A load costs one thing on Monday and another on Friday, and both sit in the same basket under a card that shows one rate.
Frost in the back room
Potatoes, onions and tomatoes freeze on a hard night, and a frozen load cannot be sold by the kilo next morning. You cover the sacks, shut the door and still lose a few kilos. Nothing in the notebook says whether that loss came from the cold, from rough handling on the road or from the weighing.
The sacks you ordered for kitchens that have gone
All summer the guesthouse kitchens take sacks of potatoes, onions and greens. When the tourists go, the kitchens shut in the same week, and the sacks you ordered for them sit in the back room with a long winter ahead. What stays is the lane families, who buy a quarter kilo at a time.
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Kargil's apricot villages and the shop that sells their fruit
A vegetable shop in Ladakh sells fruit too, and some of the best of it comes down from the Kargil villages.
- In August 2025 over 10 tonnes of fresh Kargil apricots were flown to Mumbai, sourced from villages such as Batalik, Gargardo and Gongma Kargil.
What a vegetable counter in Ladakh keeps on its phone
Bills on your phone
At the weighing pan, a bill that reads one kilo of radish, half a kilo of spinach and a dozen spring onions, made in the time it takes to tie the bag.
Credit book (khata)
A page for the guesthouse kitchen that stops when the tourists go, its last morning's sacks dated, so the winter drop is a line you can read.
Low stock warnings
A warning on the onions set a little above the count you need, so there is room for the sacks the frost spoils, and the trucker is asked while the road is open.
A farmers' group that moved its stall bills to one phone
Questions Ladakh vegetable sellers ask about frost, trucks and guesthouse accounts
Greenhouse vegetables now come in January. Is that a new item or the old one?
A new item. Add the greenhouse tomato, radish or onion when the first lot arrives, so its January rate and its count stay apart from the summer's. The summer's days stay in the report.
A customer wants the greenhouse radish kept aside until Saturday. Can I hold it?
Yes. Write the radish on a page in her name with the day. Take its kilos off the stall count by hand, so no one else is sold the bunch, and make her bill on Saturday when she comes.
The sack came frozen on the truck. How do I show it was the truck's loss?
Put the load in on the trucker's page as it arrives, and take the frozen kilos off the count by hand. The load he sent and the kilos you kept sit side by side, so you show him the line.
Vegetables in January: greenhouses in Leh and fields that close in October
In January 2022 fresh vegetables grown in a winter greenhouse at minus 20 degrees Celsius were sold at the Main Market in Leh. For a vegetable seller that is another kind of winter stock: greens grown in the same town, not carried in on a truck over a pass. They are sold from the same weighing pan, though not at the same rate as the trucked ones.
Ladakh farmers cannot grow vegetables or fruit outdoors once October comes, so the administration is backing winter greenhouses for tomatoes, radish and onions. Those three are the vegetables every stall sells by the kilo all winter, which is why the greenhouse work is watched closely by anyone who sells them. Until then, most of a winter stall is filled by what arrives on the road.