Gardening

I have always found gardening to be a pleasurable activity. During the summer holidays (school days), my sister and I visited my grandparents. Watering plants used to one of the evening routines. Over a few summers, we have seen beautiful flowers, tender okras (ladies finger), coconut trees grow tall, banana plants spread uncontrollably, etc. But my simple contribution then was to water the plants.

Hobby Revisited

In the last one year, I have revived interest in gardening. My friend Ketan gave me "money plant", mint and basil. Money plant has not yet fetched me any money: I am still a Phd student trying to graduate as soon as I can. But the plant is growing well and is awaiting to be re-potted. The mint plant died in the winter despite my best efforts. Yes, I did take a lot of efforts to keep it alive. I talked to the plant everyday motivated by J.C. Bose's suggestion. Even placed a light bulb closed to the plant: (1) Light for photosynthesis. (2) Heat to keep it warm. Basil is alive and probably also needs re-potting.

Promoted as an Assistant Outdoor Gardener

Ketan then invited me to help him with his garden. I was obviously excited about the promotion and landed up his place. We had to build a support structure for a bunch of creepers. The creepers were planted across an area of 8ft x 5ft. The plan was to

1. Plant six wooden planks which will act as pillars.
2. Then connect the pillars horizontally by four more planks to give the structure a solid support.
3. Tie a bunch of threads which will be hanging over the plants.

As the plants grow taller, the take the support from these threads. In order to complete this project, we got wood from Home Depot to build the support structure.

1. 1in x 3in x 8ft planks (4)
2. 0.5in x 3in x 8ft planks (6)

The idea was to make the structure 5ft tall so that picking the plant produce from the top would be easy. Accounting for one foot of the pillar below the ground, we needed 6ft length of these planks. 2ft of wood was sawed-off (of course its going to be used elsewhere :-)).

My task was to dig the ground to make one foot deep boroughs and place the six pillars which took me 2 hours to finish. Not bad at all. We then made a similar support structure for a grape plant in another hour. In all, it turned out to be a very satisfying afternoon in the garden.

Karthik