Mistakes continued …

The Maalis (Gardeners)

Looks like there were quite a few mistakes I learnt from in my initial forays into gardening, so in continuation to the earlier post, here’s an account of my experience with the maalis. At least here in Gurgaon where I live, it’s difficult to get a maali who is passionate about plants or actually knows about them, OR at least is willing to learn.

Here are some issues I faced with them, and my learnings therein:

Supervise their work – I had a lemon tree in my front yard that I had planted two years ago, and it was just not growing well. After trying many things and thinking that the plant is not getting enough sun, I finally asked my maali to transfer the plant to another sunnier spot. To my horror I saw that the plant still has its roots packed in a plastic bag – the original one that the sapling came in. I was aghast and also surprised at how the plant survived such disaster.

LEARNING: Never leave the maali to do any work in the garden in your absence, or if he is reliable - without clear instructions.

When you start a new pot, you MUST have a good layer of crocs/ gravel at the bottom for good drainage. Most maalis don’t do this - they will just put one piece of stone and think it’s enough.

LEARNING: Even if you don’t know much gardening, don’t assume that maalis are better. Do guide them at every step.

See what they propose and get for you Maalis generally will get some small bags of what they would call chemicals and some fertilizers but they might be just some ash or some waste. So its important to observe what he is getting for you.

There are some training programs for gardeners organized by All India Kitchen Garden Association and you could get in touch with them. It’s a very nominal charge of about Rs. 400/-, so it might be a good investment J

My mistakes this summer

As a city dweller, I can identify with problems of urban gardeners. All my experiments have been in container gardening and how to achieve more results in less space.

The right container

I have tried growing bitter gourd, bottle gourd in big (20”) containers but did not get good results due to a couple of mistakes which I would like to share.

A Free running drainage hole is really important. The commonly available big plastic containers have a slightly convex bottom and very few holes. So it’s difficult to manage proper drainage. Putting earthen crocs increased the weight of the containers a lot, so I had experimented with coco peat, putting the agronet at the bottom etc. but drainage still was an issue. I was not very successful with these and I lost a lot of plants because of water logging.

Another mistake that I discovered I did was to put green leaves at the bottom of the pot. I should have used dried leaves. Talking to some experts, I found that when green leaves decompose, they release a lot of heat and that definitely was not a good idea in the hot Indian summer.

I am doing a couple of modifications for my winter veggies. I made extra holes with a drilling machine. Some one suggested using coconut husk instead of crocs for keeping the drainage hole unblocked, so now I have done that, let’s hope it works. Will keep you posted.

About choosing the container for growing vegetables, I try to use natural materials and avoid plastics. Earthen pots are the best but not available in all sizes. I am using old drums cut in half (vertically) and then put on an iron stand horizontally. It took a lot of effort but it gives a big area to grow leafy winter vegetables.

The bigger containers will not dry out soon but we can’t have too big a container for small plants. So size is also important.