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.