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You may not have a sprawling garden or even a little patch where you can get a flower bed going, but despair not. Sonali Roy Chowdhury — a gardening enthusiast who has a diploma in landscape design and has been teaching the art of bonsai for 20 years in the city — helps you get little splashes of colour in flowerpots that can be placed on the window sill or the balcony.
What you need
● An eight-inch pot, the most convenient to move around
● Garden soil and leaf mold (compost from decayed leaves) in a 3:1 ratio
● Pieces of broken bricks (keeps the soil porous and allows the water to pass through the pot)
● Half a fistful of organic manure
● Sapling of your choice
● Water
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Preparation
Take three parts garden soil and one part leaf mold. Mix thoroughly and put it in the sun till thoroughly dry. Fill up about three inches of the pot with broken bricks. Add the prepared soil till three-fourth of the pot is filled. Plant the desired sapling. Cover the pot with soil till the brim. Water around the plant with a can. There should be enough water so that some of it drains out of the pot.
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Keep the pot in the shade for three days after planting and then expose to sunlight. Water around the sapling in the evening. After a week, add organic manure (available in nurseries) around the rim of the pot and water well. After 15 days of potting the plant, ‘feed’ the plant some organic manure and water and keep feeding every week.
Buds will appear within 45 days and will bloom in another 15 days.
Green thumbs up!
Text: Neha Banka