Winter flowering plants

Winter is upon us, and while it's not as cold as Australia, it is quite cool during the nights. This is a good time for winter annuals. We have managed to kill almost all the plants we have bought so far. So, we decided to buy more to try our hand at killing them :)

Winter flowers

This is also a good time for the Bougainvillea to flower. Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) use Bougainvillea liberally in their landscaping. They look great as on the median and growing along canals. I have mostly seen light pink ones, but there are white, orange, yellow and other shades of pink.

In our plan, we have kept  the dark pink one to climb up our bedroom window. We bought a second orange one for the lower balcony. As they grow quite large, we bought big pots for them. We got all this from Jai Bajrang nursery close to our workplace.

Bougainvillea

I forgot to take a picture on the day we bought them, hence the orange Bougainvillea does not have flowers anymore. Sporty goes around wagging his tail and knocked the paper-like flowers off!

We also bought a Marigold. Marigolds look great and  repel mosquitoes and flies. This is not an annual, it will grow throughout the year. In the two weeks we have had it, it has already given us additional flowers. I take it as a good sign that it has settled in and will hopefully last long!

Marigold

The wicking bed that I had built previously was turning out to be the death bed of anything that was growing in it! The Coleus and Peperomia died pretty quickly, only the Money plant survived. Since the soil is always moist, I decided to try out a fern. It lasted for an even shorter time than the others! That is when I finally gave up and decided to move it outdoors. Since the surface area is quite large, I wanted to put a lot of plants in it. We settled in on annuals as they are cheap to buy and will die before summer anyway. This will give us an opportunity to figure out whether the wicking bed works better outdoors.

We got these plants from Umiya nursery in Gandhinagar. The owner here was the most informed that we have met so far. He knew the plants names and could recommend us plants for specific situations. Our annual plant collection consists of three colours of Petunia, two colours of Dianthus, two colours of Chrysanthemums, Pansy and Gazania. They look good together and I hope will grow out a bit more to cover the empty spaces in between.

Purple Petunia

Pink Petunia

Red Petunia

Red Dianthus

Pink Dianthus

Red Chrysanthemum

White Chrysanthemum

Gazania

Pansy

Composting kick-off

Ever since I got interested in gardening, I wanted to try composting. But in Australia, there were too many weather challenges that prevented me from starting the process. Hence, it was on my wish list for India.

Before I bought it for myself, I had the chance to buy it for Mom. She was already recycling her vegetable waste by putting them into the various pots she had. But, this was attracting flies and was visually unappealing. Hence, I convinced her to try out Daily Dump's composter. She has been using it for more than three years now.

I waited to buy mine till we atleast had a couple of plants that it could be used in. I finally placed the order last week to pick it up from a local centre.

Here is what it looks like. It is a 3-tiered Khamba (small) depending on our vegetable consumption.

Daily dump compost bin

We have started using it and marveling at how little waste we are throwing out now! We compost vegetable peels, left over food, bread ends, egg shells (crushed), meat bones (washed), coffee grounds and tea leaves.

It has been a month since we have started using it. So far, we have nearly filled the top bin. It looked a bit dry and was not composting quickly enough, so I have added a bit of water. Hopefully, it will break down sooner then.

The lowest bin will house some dried leaves that will be mixed with the partially composted waste. We asked our society's maali to give us the leaves. He was really thrilled that we were making our own khaad.

Let's see how this turns out.

Wicking bed

I attempted my first DIY project in the garden.

We have 5 Styrofoam boxes that we brought over from Australia. They were pretty sturdy and I thought to use them for something other than storage. I wanted to use them in the garden, but did not want to use them for growing edibles. Their waterproof nature gave me the idea to use them as a wicking bed, as that needs an enclosed water reservoir.

A bit of definition here: A wicking bed is a kind of self-watering garden bed, where the plants suck up water from a layer below their roots. This action is called 'wicking'. In nature, the plants grow in fertile soil, below which are the many layers of coarse soil, stones, etc. that separate the growing medium from the water table.

In this project, I used the following:

• Styrofoam box
• Expanded clay aggregate
• Plastic pipe - large diameter and small diameter
• Geo textile fabric
• Growing medium - soil + cocopeat + compost
• Plants

Now, since I have been a project engineer in my past life, I had to make a timing plan and a costing sheet :) In the end, I still had left-over paint, geotextile fabric, clay aggregates, soil, compost and cocopeat.

Here is the styrofoam box that I used. It looks pretty boring this way and bore the signs of transport. So I am going to perk it up.

Styrofoam box

I painted it using Fevicryl acrylic paints. I had to coat it 3 times to get a nice and even colour.

Painted box

Then I started making my layers. Right at the bottom will be the water reservoir. I used expanded clay aggregates. This layer provides the base for the soil to sit on, hence needs to be able to support the weight of everything on top of it. The clay aggregates absorb some of the water, so the space does not go wasted. The height of the water trough should be less than 13cm, while the soil height should be between 15cm (for leafy plants) to 50 cm (for root plants). The box I had was not tall enough, so I filled the box till 8cm with the stones. Additionally, I am only going to plant leafy plants, so kept the soil height to the minimum.

Heights of layers

Here is what the clay aggregate layer looks like.

Clay aggregates

Once the clay aggregate has been layered, we need to make a drain pipe outlet. I used a small diameter pipe and ran it through the wall of the box. Once the trough is filled with water, the drain pipe will drain the water when it reaches the top of the stones. This will indicate that we should stop filling the water in the bed.

Inside view of the drain pipe

Outside view of the drain pipe

Next goes in the larger diameter pipe that we will use to pour water in the trough. I had a moss stick from the money plant I bought. That suits the purpose and would look good as well. To make sure that no stones get stuck in the mouth of the pipe that is in the water trough, I put a bit of geotextile fabric over the mouth. I did the same with the small pipe as well.

Before we put in the soil mix, we need to add a layer of geotextile fabric. This will prevent the soil from falling into the water trough.

Geotextile layer

The final layer is the soil mix. I mixed red soil, cocopeat and compost.

The plant selection was a difficult one. This is an indoor planter and I had to select plants that would not be poisonous to dogs. Additionally, I wanted a collection that had different colours and leaf sizes. We finally settled on a Coleus, Money plant and Golden Gate Peperomia.

Here is what the final product looks like!

Completed wicking bed

Plants in the wicking bed

Poles apart

I killed a succulent.

Everyone claims that succulents are the lazy gardener's boon. They thrive on neglect and look pretty while doing it. Well, mine is dying and making quite a scene doing it too!

Dead Popplet plant

There are two factors at play here:
1. Melbourne was rainy and cold most of the time.
2. All the plants were growing in the ground.

So now, not only do I have to learn how to grow plants in containers, I also have to manage the 40+ temperatures.

Oh well, no one ever said gardening was easy. Bring it on!

Greening our terrace

The whole point of a large terrace is to utilise it in various ways. We are fortunate that ours is large enough for us to plan to have seating in one area, vegetables beds in another and a lawn in a third.
We started with the lawn in this corner first. We toyed with the idea of artificial turf, but it gets really hot and uncomfortable to walk on. Despite the fact that grass needs maintenance, it is the right choice for the project.

Proposed lawn site

We gave the contract to Bhavya/Dharti Nursery after speaking to several others. This nursery promised to do all the steps, whereas the others were only providing the grass and soil.

As a first step, they built a retaining wall around the proposed lawn. A layer of Dr. Fixit's waterproofing was poured below the wall.

Retaining wall construction

A hole was also made in one corner for the water to flow out. This prevents waterlogging of the lawn, especially in the monsoons.

Hole for drainage

Dr. Fixit's waterpoofing layer was poured in the lawn area before the remaining things went in.

Waterproofing the lawn base

After it dried, the base was ready for a layer of broken bricks. This was to absorb water during watering and prevent run-off. A light-weight mixture of soil was layered above the bricks. 

Ready for next step

Finally, the grass was laid on the lawn. The finished product looks nice!

Terrace lawn

Starting our India garden

It's been almost two weeks since we moved to our own home in Ahmedabad. It has a lovely terrace on the top floor and an L-shaped balcony on the bottom. We selected it primarily for the open space, which would allow us to continue gardening.

Drawing room balcony

Continuation of drawing room balcony around the corner

Terrace balcony view

Entrances to the terrace

Storage nook

Over the years, we have planned a few things for the space we have. For instance, we know we want to grow vegetables in raised garden beds. Other ideas came (and are still coming) to us as we live here. The master bedroom has french windows with an overhang roof. This would be ideal to train a fragrant creeper like jasmine.
However, all big things must start small. In this case, with two plants.
There are two large nurseries close by. Both deal with commercial clients who landscape, so had a lot of feature plants. The collection was good, but some of the trees were a bit overwhelming for a small garden. Two plants are worth mentioning though.
The first nursery had a Thai mango tree. It was about 3 feet tall and already had ripe mangoes hanging off the branches. It was ideal for a terrace garden.
The second nursery had a Karaunda (करोंदा) tree. It reminded me of the tree in Ghaziabad. The plucking of the vegetable (fruit?) was hard as the tree is quite thorny. Preparing it is even harder as it has to be cooked well enough such that the seed pod in the middle can be slid out. The vegetable is extremely sour and not to everyone's palate. Yet, it is synonymous with my childhood. Sadly, it won't grow on a terrace.
Having browsed through all that, we picked up one plant each from each nursery. From the first one, we bought a Money plant.

Money plant

From the second one, we bought a Curry leaf plant.

Curry leaf

Now onto bigger and larger projects!