My Plants and I

I am a total novice when it comes to gardening. I have always lived on a first floor flat or a maisonette and so never had the pleasure of a garden. The first time I had experience of being in a garden was with my in laws. They have always had a garden and it was nice to walk about on the lawn, smell the roses and even pick some blackberries, grapes and tomatoes that were grown by my father in law.

Now do not get me wrong I am not useless with plants. I do have a green thumb as I have always grown pot plants in my home. When I lived in India we had a terrace where we grew a few pots of roses and tulsi plant. This was a limited potting experience as the monkeys that roamed free around our locality always broke up the pots to find the little bugs living in the soil. After breaking of a pot practically every other day my mother gave up as it was getting expensive to buy new pots every week.

In UK I had only one window sill I could use and that was in my kitchen. I had a whole host of plants scattered all over the house. There were succulants, cacti, Christmas cacti, rubber plants, cheese plant, happy plant (some call it the money plant – its lovely deep green fleshy leaves on woody stem which I had seen growing in large bushes in Maderia) and occasional rose. Generally my plants thrive and grow with occasional watering and talking to them. I find that the thriving of plants is a good indicator of the health of the home. One winter all of us in the house were ill with severe flu and all my plants actually died down to a leaf of two in the pot. It was sad for some of them did not recover while others revived quite happily. I had to get a new happy plant as that one did not make it. One of my colleagues was giving away her plant as she was bored with it. That plant lasted for nearly 20 years and from the branches that drop off I managed to plant another 5 pots. The old stem finally died out just last year and the babies of my plant were given away to family when I came to Australia.

One wonder was that after having the plant for years, one year it suddenly got flowers, small white star-like flowers which lasted for nearly 2 months. I asked everyone I knew if they had seen flowers in this plant and even took picture to show them around my mother in law’s friend circle (many of them are into gardening). But everyone said no they had never experienced flowers growing in that plant. The flowers came every 2 years and lasted 8 weeks during winter. Here in Australia I have seen this plant grow in big shrubs and covered in flowers!

So you see my estimate that I do have a green thumb is not wrong. Once I had another succulent with small leaves that had serrated edges which grew in the window in the bedroom and then the bathroom for a long time. One day I put it in the bedroom on the dressing table right in front of the mirror. It went crazy and shot up long shoots and grew profuse small yellow flowers. I looked as if this was a plant that saw itself in the mirror and thought there is another plant and flowered in an attempt to reproduce. But sadly the effort that was put into the flowering meant that the plant died and I did not have the heart to replace that plant. However I did make sure not to put any plant facing a mirror again.

Cacti are another favorite with both of us and I used to have many different ones. I was only disappointed in growing aloe in the pot as every time I tried to re-pot it did died. Then my foray into bonsai was also a failure as I do not think I pruned it right nor fed it correctly. Maybe I will one day attempt it again and have more patience with it. The cacti occasionally flowered and required very little maintenance. There is one of the cacti that had got very fine white spines almost looking like fine hair. This tended to be bothersome if one touched it or brushed against it accidentally. It was a very small pot and so I placed it on top of the bathroom cabinet to keep it out of the way.

What happened is funny but I need to tell you that I wander about the house at night without switching on lights if I need to wake up either to drink water or to use the loo. As per my habit I went in the dark to the toilet and as I sat down thought ouch… it hurt.. in a sleepy haze I got up and as I turned to pull the flush thought why is there something black in the toilet bowl? I switched on the light and found that the cactus was in the toilet. Then a bulb went off in my head too! Eureka… there had been a sound earlier and I was not awake enough to get up and see what it was. The pot had toppled over and fallen on the seat and into the bowl. Ahhhhhhhh now I realised the pain … all those tiny white fine spines were stuck on one buttock and thigh. How was I going to get them out? My husband was on night duty and so could not be woken up to help! If I tried brushing them off they would go deeper and would also get into my hands. My sleepy mind thought, put some cream on the skin covered in cactus spines and try to wipe it off. So there I was in the middle of the night trying to apply cream on my backside without driving the spines further into the skin, swearing to myself. I do not think it really made a big difference but it was soothing to have the cream on after the burning pain of the cactus spines. This story was the rounds of the family and friends. I think my mother in law’s friend had a good laugh as did my colleagues at work.

Now despite these odd disagreement with plants in the house I have always wanted a garden however since I was always having hay fever it had not been a good idea. Now after all these years and also the fact I am on numerous drugs that curb the hay fever the move to Australia made it possible to have a garden. I now have a house and a small garden. I can now indulge in some of my dreams of growing my own vegetables and herbs. Since I am renting I am not going to uproot the lawn but start with pots. So I went out earlier in the week to Bunnings. This is a huge store with all the household and garden things.

Spent money of starter kit for coriander, basil, chillies and broccoli; also got a pair of gardening gloves and a trowel. As for potatoes, I had done some reading about growing those. Found a set of potatoe grow bags in sale and soil that was specially prepared for vegetables. However, I could not find seed potatoes. All the websites indicate that you need to buy seed potatoes and the ones from the supermarket were washed and cleaned. In the past if the potatoes have been left for a few days in the basket they have sprouted and so I am confused about this. Having given it some thought I am going to just keep back a couple of potatoes (I buy brushed potatoes and so have not been cleaned off the eyes they have) and see if they sprout and then I can grow them.

Yesterday, I got down to the planting of seeds of the coriander, basil and chillies. The first two are supposed to require shaded area and some sun light while the chillies are to have full sunlight. In the afternoon wandered around the house to see which place I could put the pots. Have chosen the front verandah for this as the middle part gets dappled sun through the tress only in the morning while the corner gets direct sun all day. There will be seedlings in the next 10 to 12 days… I shall keep you al posted with the growth diary and eventually pictures of the produce like some of my friends do on the facebook.