Finally Winter is here - Preparation started long back
Finally the winter is here, and I started preparing for it long back, even before going to Kolkata. You haven't seen much of my garden posts because the weather has been really harsh this year like last year, raining continuously. It's impossible to work in the garden, because the soil in the pots needs to be dry, and the rain stopped only for a week during last three months, so I utilized that opportunity to plant some chrysanthemum saplings at my native, that I got from the nursery. You can see these guys have made nice sheds, to protect their plants and they start putting the stems in early August itself.
They have now renovated their sales counter, with a lovely AC hall, after all the look matters.
Loved how they developed these chrysanthemum plants and asked if its on sale and the answer was most likely not. They want to keep it on display. So the curious me asked how they developed these to be uniformly bush and learned a new thing. These plants have changed pots for the fourth time - so they start with a mini pot, then every 7-10 days, they replant it on a bigger pot. That's quite a lot of work, as you can see, they were doing this now as well. And most likely they will end up with two more changes, making them beautifully flowered. This is a government nursery selling saplings and plants in very competitive price, but I was happy to see the productivity of their men - you barely see such dedication in govt organizations. And their secret of success is bone meal fertilizer to produce strong roots - I did not know about it so procured few packets from the market to apply, as its organic as well.
Went to native with full preparation and planted these chrysanthemum saplings in late September.
And then reworked on this whole area and planted the all seasoned inca saplings that I grew. It needs lots of planning to align my travel to native, so that I can plant some happiness for my parents - flowers in winter will refresh their energy level.
And two weeks before my last visit, I brought french inca saplings from the same nursery for my garden, society and native, a total of around 100 saplings - a lot of calculation had to be done for that. I planted many of them in pots, to allow grow them better by the time I go and carried with me, as you can see. But then suddenly there was a twist to the plan - Cyclone Dana planned a visit to us and Dad's condition became bad just before that.
So in a hurry, I prepared the containers and kept inside as we wanted to take Dad to hospital first, because the news channels advised to stay inside home as wind speed could go up to 120 kilometers per hour. Thankfully it did not land near us and noting much happened - media spread more wind than the actual.
Before coming back, I planted these saplings, applying some organic fertilizers and bone meal that was procured on my way. The backside of my car is like a mini garden depo for this reason. Hopefully we will see the result in my next visit - I will plan to take some saplings, if some causality happens to some of these. Gardening is a lot of work, but at the same time so much fun as well. You plan one thing but then you can't control how it goes.
The weather settled a day after the cyclone and we were relieved to have a morning tea party.
Had to give fresh look to the scooty that was bought for Dad - comes handy for me in native. It's difficult to ride a car there as the roads are quite narrow.
The apple berry tree has grown nicely this time and we will have a lot of them next month.
These weeds are never going away, from last three years, even though we have cleaned them several times. I took a photo and showed in the shop and got a medicine to spray, but then weather spoiled the plan.
Before coming back, it was a must to carry these organic jewels.
Have told Mum to plant these Papayatrees just near the wall, so that we can pick them from the roof top when they grow :) But hey, we can only plan and work - rest is in hands of nature.
These are now accessible from the roof top - safe not to be stolen by others, but that's just human - squirrels have full rights on them.
That's it for now, will share my garden update in another post, stay tuned..
copyrights 