Who doesn’t love a green, blooming balcony? There are hundreds of blogs that list tips and tricks to bring the picture-perfect image to your balcony. But, we all know it takes a lot more than pictures to sow and harvest herbs on a windowsill.  I’ve just spent hours sifting through scores of urban gardening blogs to find a few that are helpful to novice gardeners.

My motive was to dig out blogs by urban Indian gardeners, but I was successful in finding only two that fit my criteria - frequency of updates, pictures,  and well-documented steps and conducive conditions for growing plants.

Geek Gardener - is replete with information on container gardening and various varieties of vegetables to grow in a particular month in India.  Despite the low frequency of posts, Geek Gardener is an excellent resource for growing vegetables in a tropical climate. Every post has pictures of plants at very stage from sowing to saplings and flowering to finally, harvesting the produce. The pictures are like a step-by-step guide for a novice gardener.

Zucchini

The Urban Gardener: Sunita’s obsession with greens is evident from her blog, The Urban Gardener. The site has a good mix of vegetables and flowering plants. I’m slightly biased towards sites with pictures as this is a hobby that is visually motivating. The Urban Gardener ranks high in the “good pictures” area.

Sunset: An unusual entry for a blog list. But what we do without this site and its encouraging how-tos. If you’ve not heard of Sunset magazine before, then I swear, you’ve missed something in life. Just kidding Stop reading and hop over to the site!

Life on the Balcony: I’ve saved the best for the last. Though Fern Richardson lives in southern California, there is a lot to learn from her blog for urban gardeners in India. A blog with a professional look, good categorization, easy navigability, and above all, frequently updated, makes it a must-have in your Reader.

Veggies to grow this season

If you are keen what the rest of the world grows through the year, here are a few of my favorites:

Japanese Gardener for the enticing look of veggies.

Singapore Plants Lover for the colourful flowers and novel containers

Totally Inept Balcony Gardener for the yellow lemons, blooms and creepers

If you have been reading a gardening blog for a while now and find it useful, please leave a link in the comments section for others to benefit.

Image courtesy:

Zucchini - Geek Gardener

Veggies - Life on the Balcony

How have you all been doing? I had a fabulous, if only a busy, weekend driving to the outer parts of the city. Going away from civilization was rejuvenating in many ways. As we re-entered the Ring road, I could feel the CO2-high air dampening my spirit. On the brighter side, we came back with good memories and dozens of pictures.

The drive down the Varthur village road leading to Sarjapur village is a treat to one’s senses: a whiff of fresh air, greenery as far as the eyes can see, a variety of birds from kingfisher to wood pecker cooing around the trees, and vendors selling freshly picked Jackfruit by the roadside to appease your taste buds. And, it’s just a 15 minute drive from Marathahalli on a busy Saturday afternoon. What more can one ask for so close to a concrete jungle that Marathahalli-Brookefields-Whitefield section has become?

One thing that’s hard to miss on this stretch are the numerous nurseries of all sizes and colors dotting the narrow road leading to Sarjapur village. I stopped by a few to click pictures and picked a few more plants for my balcony.  Some of them are so big that it’s overwhelming to choose just one or two plants (isn’t small beautiful?). I know the limitations I have: in a south-east balcony with very limited sunlight, it’s tough to tend to flowering plants. But, flowering plants are my eye-candy. I just can’t get over them.  Ferns, Cacti, Palm, or Crotons don’t appeal as much as a herb, vegetable or Petunia and Glaxonia.

The picture below is of Madeena nursery. I recommend this place if you intend to buy in bulk. You will grow tired looking at the flowering plants, for it’s never ending. The Hibiscuses, in  particular, are big, bright and beautiful.  The guys are knowledgeable about the sun, shade, and semi-shade plants. There is very little room for bargaining. Most of their regular visitors are villa owners from the neighborhood. If you hear radical sentiments echoing on a radio, you’ve found the right place. I just bought a Tulsi(Basil) for Rs.15 from here.

Rows of pots till the eyes can see

Read the rest of this entry…

After doing a couple store/studio tours, I’m returning to my first love - gardening. Thanks to Natti, I discovered the nursery at Jeeven Bhima Nagar in Bangalore. Managed by physically challenged people, the nursery is well planned, maintained and customer-friendly. In absolutely no hurry to rush back home last Saturday morning, I indulged myself looking at the plants. Over to you all now

Flowering plants:

The nursery stocks only basic flowering plants as of now. According to the manager, they should be getting more of the Gloxinias, Star clusters, Passion flower and Petunias by this weekend.

Frangipani

Hibiscus

Roses

What I liked about the nursery:

If you are a novice gardener like me, these are questions you will relate to. Do I need to water everyday? Will this plant require too much sunlight? Will it grow well in semi-shade? Sometimes, our questions tend to irritate the nursery folks. This nursery solves that formidable selection problem for us. The nursery is segregated into three sections: full sun, semi-shade and full-shade. Every plant in each section, is further labeled with its name and price making it a lot easier to choose. If you still have any doubts, the folks are pretty helpful and knowledgeable.

Price is another talking point of the nursery. For instance, you can get an aloe vera plant for Rs.15 or a lilly for Rs. 50.

Read the rest of this entry…

Pictures of some blooms in my balcony today:

Orange Hibiscus

Fragrant Jasmine

Read the rest of this entry…

Worried about the state of those lovely Gerberas and Dahlias in your balcony garden? Are your plants turning yellow and brown in turns? Do they look lifeless? Water, repotted soil, ample sunlight, no pests  - a quick look at the checklist says everything’s taken care of.  So, what’s killing them? It’s easy to step over the fine line between caring for plants and overdoing it. As Stephanie Donaldson says, our kindness can prove fatal for houseplants. Over-watering or lack of water are the most common reasons for healthy houseplants dying with a couple of weeks after being brought from the nursery.

Look at the images below.

Drowning plant

If your plants look anything like this, then it is an indication of overwatering. Take a closer look at the leaves. Towards the bottom of the plant, close to its roots, the leaves have turned yellow, and the plant is bent outside.

Read the rest of this entry…

Before we get to the wooden collections from Jin Kuramoto Studio, let me tell you how I got there.  I have two identical terra cotta pots with an interesting shape waiting to be painted and planted. I got it on my trip to Mahabalipuram; so they’ve been sitting in my balcony for over a month. I can’t settle on a design/color for the pots, and am constantly looking for fresh ideas. While scouting for modern patterns, I discovered materialicious.  According to the folks who run the site, “materialicious™ (”shelter, materials and objects”) is a user-submitted visual curation site featuring modern architecture and design, craftsmanship, materials and products.” True to every word. You can’t get your eyes off the page once you start browsing, and before you realise you’ve spent enough time wasting looking at the stunners.

Now, materialicious is what led me to  Jin Kuramoto Studio. The wooden tea sets and mirrors in striking, contrasting, and complementary colors leaves a lasting impression. It’s easier to reproduce the same effect with planters. I need not delve further into the effect it would bring into one’s garden.  The traditional wooden tea sets in subdued earthen colors with simple stripes is unique too.

Striped planters

Consider growing a herb garden in the smaller ones by placing them on your kitchen windowsill.

For dark, bright colored planters

Black absorbs heat and can be harmful for the plants during the summer months. Go for a little lighter shade while retaining the effect.

White rules

When you’ve run out of ideas, a easy fallback option is a white planter. - you can never go wrong with this one. Give it a little texture, group a couple of them in different shapes in a corner, and you have a winner.

While we’re on the topic of painting planters, I feel compelled to share how discarded cups were transformed into eye-catching reusable pieces with a little design on them. And, if those designs happen to be characters from Alice in Wonderland, can one resist?

Alice in Wonderland ceramic cups

Images:

1.2.3. - Jin Kuramoto

4 - Dagens Design

A  huge cotton tree, ladies fingers, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, peppers, chillies, potatoes, brinjals, carrots, cabbage, and beetroots - this was the backyard of our home when I was growing up.  The front section was relatively a colorful one in hues of bright reds, pinks, violets and oranges,  so much so that it was easy for the security guards to direct visitors to our place;  “the house with a large flower garden in the front” did it.  Marigolds, sunflower, dahlias, rajnigandhas, arali, and an assortment of flowers whose name I’m not sure of adorned the house.

My mother loved gardening. She spent hours and hours tending to the plants while my brother and I were at school. It came to such a point that my brother, all of three years, insisted on having only ladies finger for lunch and dinner every day. We moved cities and countries after three years in that small town, and never got to live in a individual house with a front and back yard. Years later, I found the same passion for plants in my father-in-law. He grew everything from palaks (the tastiest I’ve ever had) , mint, radish to cauliflower, potatoes and broccoli.  We rarely shopped for vegetables in the winter. Most of the produce from the garden was cooked.

That’s where my weakness for greens comes from. The limited 8*4 feet balcony space is no deterrent. Last summer, the pots mainly contained flowering plants. This summer, I’m repotting them with jasmines, and white and oragne hibiscus. I’m also adding some vegetables to the mix.

Certain vegetables thrive well even in pots. You can grow them in deep pots of 14″-18″ size or use planter boxes. It all depends on choosing the right vegetables - the ones whose roots don’t grow very deep. Get started with me if you want to grow your own vegetable garden.

Read the rest of this entry…

Pleasant in the mornings, hot in the afternoons, showers in the evenings and cool in the nights. That’s Bangalore weather for you. During late afternoons, it gets totally dark setting the scene for a heavy downpour. And, this is when I get busy giving into a latest obsession - hand painting terracotta planters. I’ve tried on different colors on a few planters we picked on our return from the Mahabalipuram trip. It’s an understatement to say I’m having fun painting them. It’s fun mixing the colors, wiping it away when I feel the colors are either too strong or too subdued, and start redoing it from scratch. The colors look stunning in the hot summer weather. And, I’m constantly searching the web for inspiration.

Some of my latest rustic creations:

The circles are stenciled on a terracotta planter white white as base. I haven’t primed the surface and the surface is not smooth (no sanding) as I wanted it that way for outdoors.

Puzzling circles planter

Here are a few I liked at Crate and Barrel. I’m in love with colors. I think the herb designs on white planters look neat. I’ve been toying with the idea of growing parsley once again. Every single time in the past has been a disaster. It so happens that rats are fond of the green leaves and once the plant starts growing, it attracts the pests. The floral patterns, though a tried-and-tested one, never fails to charm me. When you’ve run out of ideas, you can safely go back to this one  and still feel good about it.

Floral planters

As always, I’ve saved the best for the last. This set is from Anthropologie. The colors and designs look very Indian. They remind me of mehendi and designs one often sees on handicrafts. Bright colors, cool shapes and intricate eye-catching designs definitely make them stand out from the rest.

Anthropologie planters

The weather is changing; it was hovering over 39 degrees burning us alive with the heat just two days back and today it is all cloudy and chill. The drastic change in weather is a welcoming change to our moods but not so much for the plants.

Have you noticed how the growth of plants suddenly slows down when seasons change? Just as we adapt ourselves in clothing and eating habits based on the weather condition, it’s important to modify feeding patterns for plants through the year.

In her book on homemaking tips, Household Wisdom, author Stephanie Donaldson writes, “There is a world of difference between a healthy, ?flourishing houseplant and the sad specimens that die a slow, lingering death on the windowsills and mantelpieces of far too many homes. The mortality rate among houseplants is staggeringly high. Half the fatalities are killed by kindness such as overwatering and and overfeeding, while the other half starve to death — an occasional splash of water and no feed.”

Here are some tricks that have worked for me:

1. Group the plants together.

2. Develop a watering pattern for every season. Check the moisture content in the pot by inserting your finger in the soil before you water. If you’ve placed the pot in a saucer, then the roots will remain moist for more than a day. If you’ve been watering every evening during summer and continue to do so even during the monsoon, then the plants are bound to die a slow death.

3. Some plants require a lot of sunlight while others thrive well in shade. However, avoid keeping any plant directly in sunlight. South-facing windows or balconies receive more sunlight during the day than the north-facing ones. Choose your plants based on the location of your balcony or garden.

4. The compost in soil when you get plants from a nursery lasts for a maximum of six weeks.Some plants such as money plant do not require any manure while others can grow at a faster rate with manure.  Tea leaves, vegetable and fruit skins work well as manure.

5. Beware of pests. I’ve lost way too many plants to pests. Check the underneath of leaves for any signs and spray a pesticide at least once in three months.

6. Remove the yellow leaves regularly. Yellow leaves are not signs of a dying plant. Old leaves give way to new leaves.

What are your tricks of caring for houseplants?

Balcony Garden

An orange hibiscus. Few white nandyavattais. Enough to give a great start to one’s morning. The flowers have bloomed in my balcony garden after a dry spell of nearly 5 months. The balcony has been receiving very less sunshine the past few months, thanks to the incessant rain and gloomy weather of Bangalore. At one point in time, I was afraid I would just have to move all my pots to the common garden area downstairs. Which I did, infact, last week by moving about 8 small pots containing Tulsi (Basil), other herbs, ferns, and assorted flowering ones. It was not a easy decision considering how much effort went into procuring and tending to them.

So, seeing these plants bloom and flower has put a smile on my face. Here are few tips to take care of your balcony garden during the monsoon:

1. Do not water them everyday as you would during the summer months. Once or two times a week is more than sufficient. Dip your finger in the pot to test the moisture content. If it feels wet, then refrain from watering for a day or two.

2. Signs to watch out for or droopy leaves or new leaves turning yellow. Don’t worry if the old leaves (the ones at the bottom) are withering away after turning yellow.

3. Keep your balcony illuminated by allowing natural sunshine to flow in. Take care of not blocking the sunlight by hanging too many clothes or placing furniture.

4. Check for pests at the bottom of the leaves.

5. Call in a gradener to find out if manure is required.