CHENNAI: When the floods came like an uninvited guest, my plants on the terrace embraced us. My whole family felt safe there. We were content with nature, with the birds and the squirrels, and we all ate idlis together in my garden,” recalls Lakshmi Venkatasubramaniyan, with tears in her eyes. CE spoke to her about her 1,200sqft garden and the techniques she follows to maintain it. The 45-year- old has been terrace gardening since 2002, starting with flowering plants.
Her garden, with 5ft trimmed trees such as red guava, chikku, star fruit, custard apple, varieties of drumstick, tamarind, herbs such as stevia (good for diabetics), Thai and Italian basil, krishnar tulsi, flowering plants such as jasmine including ramabanam and ramar malli, adeniums (dessert rose), thazhampoo, vegetables such as multivitamin spinach- all vitamins, bay leaf constituting to more than 300 plants, shows her passion for plants.
“Those days, my father grew lady’s finger and tomato and my mother plucked flowers from our own plants. It was a part of our life. That’s how I started,” she says. However, she was new to terrace gardening when she began. The BSc Math graduate gained knowledge from Namaalwar books, videos, facebook pages and a lot of other books on gardening techniques. “I struggled to change from traditional pot mixes, which contained, red soil, river soil and cow dung, to the modern method of adding coco pete to the soil,” she says. Coco pete or coir pith is a spongy medium that when mixed with soil, can retain water in it and makes the pot mix loose and lightweight for terrace gardening.
One blunder she talks about is blindly following books that instruct people to 'pluck leaves that are infected'. “Each day, I plucked one leaf of peerkanga and one day only the stem remained,” she laughs.
When space hinders gardening, she suggests beginners to do plant companion planting where a tree, herb and creeper can be grown together. Grow kaaramani, fenugreek and thatta payiru as companion plants with other plants, as they are nitrogen fixating plants. “Vertical garden can be opted for if there is no space. Customised pots are available to be fixed on the wall,” she says.
If spending for plants hinders gardening, don’t worry, she has solutions for that too. Replace jute bags, milk packets, aata bags, watermelon skin, egg shell or orange skin if grow bags are not affordable.
“I have remodeled a tire in to a container for spinach and it works out well,” she shares.
“The right time to sow seeds is aadi maasam,” she says. October- January winter vegetables such as carrot, coriander, broccoli, exotic veggies, stevia and strawberry can be grown.
While all want to get rid of pests, she says that good pests follow bad pests. So we can’t completely eradicate pests, but can distract them with 3G, perungayum, buttermilk, panjakavya, jeevamrithum which is made by processing cow dung, cow urine, handful of garden soil, besan flour for three days. On the fourth day, dilute it with water in 1:10 ratio to enrich the microbes in the soil.
Plants in turn take nutrition from them. Strong smell of herbs such as mint, neem leaves, karpuravalli and tulsi can also distract bad pests by covering the smell of other plants.
“I buy red sand, seeds, cow dung and bone meal which is rich in phosphorus from the Cathedral road nursery,” she says, as she believes the place is reliable. She has been awarded the 'Outstanding Gardener' award 2015 at Chennai garden’s meet, organic garden foundation, and first prize in best terrace garden competition held by VGP trust in September, 2016.
