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

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