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In today’s article, we will quickly debunk 20 interesting and unbelievable gardening myths and reveal some extremely useful scientific facts and tips related to Gardening.
Well, This can be a very nice high school project for kids, to grow two similar plants, one in a transparent container and one in an opaque container and then compare these two. As you can see nothing happens to the plant grown in transparent containers. The actual concern is, root exposure to AIR and even the heat from sunlight that can cause drying and can damage your plant. But still you are advised to keep the roots in the dark. This is because of algae growth due to light and your roots are not getting enough oxygen because the algae is stealing the oxygen and nutrients for itself. So light as such does not hurt the roots, but air, heat and algae hurt the roots and kill the plant.
There are many studies and researches conducted on this topic. Basically, Plants lack a nervous system – that is a brain and other neurological structures like nerves and pain receptors, so they should not feel pain, unlike in humans and animals where we have specialised pain receptors.
But according to some researches, “Plant can know of themselves being eaten” because studies have shown that plants release defence chemicals in response to caterpillars munching on them.
Other points include: Plants fight for territory, seek out food, evade predators and interestingly trap prey like what your see in carnivorous plants like the venus fly trap. They are as alive like any animal, and – like animals – they exhibit behaviour.
This is False! Many people recommend you to provide support to these young slender plants due to the risk of wind blowing them and things like that. Unless it’s a strong wind, tying a sapling or young plant to a support stick or any kind of support will actually do more harm than good. Research has shown that trees without support, over a period of time will develop thicker trunks, more supportive roots and more resistance to breakages.
.
There are many signs to know whether your plant can still survive. If your plant is looking dry and has shed its leaves, most of us think its dead. But actually, it may be alive or can be revived. Please watch my detailed episode on this topic demonstrating how to save a dying plant. I have linked that video in description below.
Yes! Some, but not all plants can be propagated from just a leaf or a section of a leaf. Leaf cuttings of most plants will not generate a new plant; they usually produce only a few roots or just decay. There are many ways you can grow leaves into a new plant, like 1. from a leaf petiole, 2. by dividing a leaf into multiple pieces for example fleshy succulent plants like sanseviera or the snake plant and other succulents. Other methods of propagation like cane or stub cuttings, root cuttings, leaf bud cuttings and so on.
Water proofing the terrace is not always necessarily, unless you plan to build raised bed terrace garden. If you grow in container, you only need to check whether the water draining out of the pots is easily flowing out of the terrace and not stagnant.
It might sound weird but, there are many incredible Uses of Charcoal in the Garden. If you want to develop a healthy garden, please watch this episode till the end.
There are many types of charcoal available to purchase. But the good news is charcoal is very inexpensive to buy, though online prices are a bit on higher side than offline purchase. You get Hardwood and Softwood charcoal. Hard wood charcoal is best for gardening. Will tell you why as we proceed further. You also get special charcoals like coconut shell charcoal, bamboo coal, horticultural charcoal, activated charcoal and so on. It doesn’t matter, you can just use hard wood charcoal for your garden.
PURCHASE LINKS:
Wood Charcoal https://amzn.to/3FsyoNh
Coconut Charcoal https://amzn.to/3KTRKw3
Let us discuss the benefits of charcoal in gardening.
10. FILLING YOUR POT BOTTOM: Charcoal is porous and light weight and filling your container with pieces of charcoal at the bottom of your container, instead of using heavy weight rocks and pebbles, reduces your pot weight and you can lift or move your pot easily. This is a great boon for terrace gardeners.
9. CHARCOAL MULCHING: You don’t always need straws and twigs for mulching your top soil. You can use spread small charcoal pieces and enjoy the benefits of mulching. Mulching creates a protective covering over the soil surface and prevents moisture evaporation from the soil. It also helps to prevent weed growth over the soil.
8. GARDEN DÉCOR: Using a layer of small pieces of charcoal as mulch, especially around light-colored plants is a nice and unique way to create a different look in your garden!
7. AS AN ANTI-FUNGAL: Mixing charcoal to soil is an effective strategy to treat or prevent fungal infections in plants, especially succulents and adeniums which are more prone to fungal rot. Just include 10% of small pieces of charcoal in your potting mix to keep harmful fungi at bay.
6. INSECT KILLER: Sprinkle powdered charcoal over your plants. This helps deter many insects like the voracious beetles which can create havoc in your garden or on your crops.
5. PESTICIDE RESIDUE REMOVAL: The absorption qualities of charcoal powder, especially activated charcoal, helps in neutralizing the harmful effect of pesticides. Mix 500 grams of charcoal powder to 1 gallon of water (1 gallon is 3.78 litres). Spray or sprinkle this over the pesticide treated plants. This is very useful in edible gardening.
4. REDUCE FERTILIZER FREQUENCY: Charcoal will also absorb any fertilizer you put into the garden and will hold it over a long period of time, providing the plants a slow, steady supply. Here, you need to know one thing – Hard wood holds more nutrients than soft wood.
3. INCREASE SOIL PH: If your soil is highly acidic like PH of 5 or below, you need to increase the soil ph to desired level. A soil ph of 6.0 +/-0.5 is considered ideal for most plants. The potassium content in charcoal and also wood ash raises the pH balance of the soil and neutralizes the acid. Just don’t add too much ash, because if you increase the soil ph too much – like over 7, the plants may not do well, because most of the nutrient absorption in soil happens at a PH of around 6.0. So, How much of charcoal to add per container or per plant? You can add 100 gms or max 200 gms of charcoal per standard container – like a 12-inch container. Of course depending upon your soil PH level. You can read a detailed post on soil ph and its importance in improving flowering HERE.
2. IN POTTING SOIL: Charcoal acts as an excellent soil conditioner, thanks to its low cost, and in fact it’s a suitable replacement of lime in soil additive mixes. It makes the soil a well-draining soil which is very important for plant growth. It is the high porosity of charcoal that benefits plant soils because it offers more of the oxygen that plant roots need to stay alive.
1. REMOVES BAD ODOURS IN SOIL AND COMPOST: You can sprinkle charcoal powder over your compost to reduce foul odors that may arise during composting. Also, when included in potting soil, charcoal soaks up the nauseating odors of compost and manure, while leaving the nutritional integrity of the mixture intact.
]]>Variegated species are not recommended for low light areas, as the leaves will lose their coloration. As a general rule, variegated foliage requires more sunlight than darker green foliage.
PLEASE WATCH VIDEO BELOW FOR THE LIST:
]]>Adenium obesum, also known as desert rose, is a succulent plant with red, pink, white, and many varieties of flowers. Adenium is an extremely beautiful plant and sometime called Natural Bonsai, because of its thick stems and the modified fat lower stem called as Caudex.
Let’s Start with:
How to grow Adenium from Seeds: The most important criteria to grow from seeds – the Seeds must be fresh and healthy or from a reliable source. The ones you get online may be old and may not germinate. If you have one adenium and you take proper care of it, you should good flowering and then seed pod formation soon. It’s best to grow from fresh seeds or buy a plant from a nursery or even online. You can purchase adenium online because it’s a drought tolerant plant and easily survives without water even for 7 days.
Well, When you are growing adenium from seeds, you need to apply some tricks and hacks for successful germination.
First thing you need to do when you notice an adenium seed pod is tie some thread around the pod to prevent spillage of seeds before the seed pod matures and releases seeds. It has a special seed dispersal mechanism by wind, where each seed had this fluffy stuff which is easily carried away by wind. Here you can see, I have protected the seed pod from its natural dispersal mechanism. When the seed pod starts drying and cracks open, it’s the time to harvest the seeds. Separate the seeds by gently pulling this fluffy stuff……. So these are fresh adenium seeds we just harvested!
Now the first secret to get a great success rate in germination? These seeds are very delicate and are more prone to fungus. So what you need to do immediately is pour in some antifungal powder like bavistin or SAAF or any antifungal powder like Carbendazin + mancozeb combination. You can also add a mixture of cinnamon and turmeric powder if you don’t have antifungal. Coat the seeds with this antifungal powder whether you keep them aside for storage or plan to sow them immediately.
Now the next important step: The growing medium. You can use sand or some cocopeat mixed in it or soil plus sand plus cocopeat. If you have perlite, this is another great stuff. The idea is to have a loose well draining light weight soil mix for the seeds to sprout. You can mix small amount of anti fungal powder into this mix which combats the fungal rot.
Plant the seeds and cover with a thin layer of potting mix and do not plant too deep, they may not sprout. Then finally, you also mix some antifungal into the water or spray can and use the same solution to spray or gently sprinkle some water once every two days.
You can see they should start germinating within a week. On third or fourth week, you should see the beautiful tiny caudex of these babies. When they are about two months old, you repot these into independent containers. During transplant, you need to remember few important points during the process of repotting as well as post transplant care, like:
General Care Tips for Growing Adeniums:
5 Tricks to make caudex grow thicker:
Some Adeniums develop a thicker caudex themselves, perhaps determined by the genetic characteristics of the plant, but others may require human interventions. Apply these 5 Tricks and hacks to make the adenium caudex powerful and thicker.
How to save a Dying Adenium or How to treat Adenium Rot:
There are two problems to diagnose. One is root rot which can lead to stem rot and death of the plant. The second problem to differentiate from the first one is soft caudex or soft stems which may or may not destroy the plant.
You can carefully look for Some signs of root rot or impending danger like:
a. Leaves becoming yellow and dropping,
b. Caudex pimples – like If you see some pimple like spots popping up on the caudez, this may indicate too much water inside the caudex and the plant is trying to creat exit pathways for this excess water.
c. Softening of the caudex or branches is another sign. Normally the caudex and branches are firm when you press with fingers. But if its getting soft, then there is a danger.
d. Inspect of any Injury. Generally injured stems or caudex can start to rot from the injury point. This is called Focal rot and is easy to treat when diagnosed in early stages.
Well, The Treatment steps vary depending on the signs and symptoms.
If it’s a focal rot, you need to cut off that portion using a clean knife and then apply antifungal powder over the wound and just leave it to heal and keep it in full sunlight. Do not pour water over this wound.
If the caudex is becoming soft, you can remove the plant and inspect its roots. Then soak this in a strong fungicide solution for few minutes and then hang it in air in sunlight for 2 to 4 days. It should start shrinking and possibly start healing. If its getting firm, then you can repot in a fresh potting soil and then water with antifungal mixed and leave it undisturbed for a week.
Onion skin and peels are usually thrown into the bin. But starting today and after watching this episode till the end, you will never throw them again!
Onion skin and peels have antioxidant and antimicrobial properties and contain many useful substances like sulphur, quercetin, Potassium, phosphorus, zinc, iron, iodine, vitamins, pectins, saponins, flavonoids and so on.
Have you even wondered why tears start flowing out of your eyes as soon as we start chopping onions? This is Onion-Chemistry. Before we start with the 5 uses of onions in gardening, let’s quickly know the scientific reason behind this interesting scene:
While chopping onions, cells inside the onion are broken down and the gas that comes out forms sulfenic acid. This acid gets mixed with enzymes and forms a gas called propanethiol S-oxide. When this gas reaches our eyes, it gets mixed with our tears and forms sulphuric acid which causes irritation of the tear glands and that’s it.
Well, Now let’s list out the benefits of onions for plants and gardening:
5. COMPOSTING: If you are not using earthworms for making your compost, You can drop onion skins and peels a little deeper into the compost bin and get a nutrient-rich compost in the final result. But You should avoid adding them in your worm composting bin, this is because earthworms hate onions and similar odorous substances.
4. MULCHING: For Beginners, A mulch is a layer of material applied to the surface of soil for benefits like preserving soil moisture, reducing weed growth and so on. You can use onion skins for mulching and the dry onion peels will decompose soon and enrich your soil with potassium and calcium, which is so good for your plant growth.
3. ONION PESTICIDE RECIPE: If you do organic vegetable gardening without using any chemical pesticides and fertilizer, you will certainly realise the importance of these organic recipes, especially if you do not have the universal organic pesticide like the great neem oil. Do not worry!, you can make a potent organic pesticide using onion and other stuff.
– Take a Large Onion and drop it into a kitchen blender
– Add 4 fresh cloves of garlic into this.
– Add 2 teaspoons of Red Chilli Powder.
– Add 1 teaspoon of Cinnamon Powder.
– Blend this into a fine paste by adding some water.
– Now Add about 2 Cups of Water to this and mix well and allow it to steep
overnight.
– Then in the morning, strain out the liquid using a nylon cloth or a fine
sieve to get your pesticide concentrate. You can store this concentrate in
refrigerator.
– To Apply as pesticide, Use it in 1:5
dilution in water. That is to one cup of this pesticide add 5 cups of water and
most importantly do not forget to add some 10 drops of liquid detergent soap
for the surfactant effect and to coat the leaves and retain the pesticide
effect for longer time. Use this twice weekly until all pests are eradicated. This
will successfully kill common pests like aphids, mealybugs, whiteflies and many
others.
2. ONION
PEEL FERTILZIER: There are two
methods to make onion peel fertilizer, one is to boil the onion peels for few
hours in water and the other method is to soak the onion peels in water for 24
hours. Some do not recommend boiling.
So, take 2 to 3 handfuls of onion peels
and drop in 1 litre of water and allow it to soak for 24 hours.
After 24 hours, strain out the liquid and use it as a liquid fertilizer. You
can use it without dilution or with further dilution of 1:1 in water if you
regularly fertilize your plants. Use it once in 15 days to see the effect in
about 3 months.
1. ROOTING HORMONE RECIPE: Not really a rooting hormone, but you can call it a rooting agent. Onion due to its antimicrobial properties and when mixed along with other stuff will certainly improve the results of rooting your plant cuttings. To prepare this:
– Take ¼ Onion
– Add ½ a Cup of Fresh Aloe vera Juice extracted from a leaf.
– Add some cinnamon or willow bark into this – Its better to have it Presoaked in a cup of water for 24 hours.
– Now Add this cup to the blender and make a paste or solution. Then Strain out this liquid to use as as rooting agent. Just dip the cuttings into this solution or apply this with your finger and plant the cuttings. You can watch a detailed post on the 10 natural rooting agents you can use to add into this recipe or experiment this recipe with more stuff.
1. What is a Seed Ball?
A seed ball also known as seed bomb, earth ball, clay dumpings and so on, is actually an ancient technique to keep the seeds safe until conditions are favourable for germination and also they are a very convenient seed dispersal mechanism to plant trees everywhere – that’s called guirella gardening. Usually they are thrown along side the road soil to grow trees for greenery and protect our mother earth.
2. What is the composition of Seed Ball?
A seed ball is usually a mixture of clay and compost, and then dried, ofcourse with a seed preplanted into it. Cotton-fibres are sometimes mixed into the clay to make it more strong specially when you throw them harshly.
3. How many seeds to be included in one Seed Ball?
Generally one or two are sufficient, the second seed is just a back up if incase the first fails to germinate. On the other hand a seed bomb contains many seeds for dispersal but adding too many seeds into one seed ball may result in over crowding and failure to thrive and the resulting plants may not do well. Some times these seed bombs are used for aerial reforestation techniques.
4. What is the size of a seed ball?
Nothing fixed but generally they can be between 10mm to 80 mm depending on the size and number of of the seeds.
5. DIY Seed Balls:
You can make your own DIY seed balls or seed bombs. It’s a great fun activity for kids. They will really enjoy this on a Sunday in a park or on a picnic. You can also explain them the importance of trees and oxygen plus the environmental and the health benefits of gardening.
Just carry some clayey soil from your garden mixed with some vermicompost and ofcourse some seeds. Any seeds will do. If you have special seeds of some larger trees, thats really good. Take this mixture of soil and compost in your hand and sprinkle some water and roll it into a ball or carefull add water into the whole container and make it like a dough and then roll into a ball and then insert a seed into it by making a depression and then roll it back into a ball .Optionally wrap this with a thin layer of toilet paper and keep it for drying.
6. Ready to Purchase Seed Balls:
https://amzn.to/2NIoVXe
These are some ready made seed balls available online. These are for larger trees. Make sure you do not throw these on some useful farming or agricultural lands. Choose a right spot, where you think a tree is required, like for example alongside the road where there are not enough trees. Or on a large open no mans land or even a play ground specially around the boundaries if there are no trees around.
7. What is the right time or season to use these seed balls.
Though best time is early spring, you can disperse them in any season including winter. Better avoid in hot summer.
]]>Do Plants Feel Pain?
Can Artificial LED grow lights help the plant in flowering and growth?
Can I use Coffee as an effective pesticide on plants and how?
Plus a nice funny question at the end.
So Lets begin!
There are many studies and researches conducted on this topic. Plants lack a nervous system – that is a brain and other neurological structures like nerves and pain receptors, so they should not feel pain, unlike in humans and animals where we have specialised pain receptors.
But according to some researches, “Plant can know of themselves being eaten” because studies have shown plants release defence chemicals in response to caterpillars munching on them.
Other points include: Plants fight for territory, seek out food, evade predators and trap prey like what your see in carnivorous plants like the venus fly trap. They are as alive like any animal, and – like animals – they exhibit behaviour.
Yes! Some, but not all plants can be propagated from just a leaf or a section of a leaf. Leaf cuttings of most plants will not generate a new plant; they usually produce only a few roots or just decay. There are many ways you can grow leaves into a new plant, like 1. from a leaf petiole, 2. by dividing a leaf into multiple pieces for example fleshy succulent plants like sanseviera or the snake plant and other succulents. Other methods of propagation like cane or stub cuttings, root cuttings, leaf bud cuttings and so on. I will try to prepare a detailed episode on this topic when I get a chance.
Yes you can.
In fact, good quality LED grow lights are highly efficient, because they provide the exact spectrum of light your plants need. But, Remember one thing: sunlight is free, while good quality LED lights are quite expensive.
You can make a Caffeine Spray. Many research studies have shown
that caffeine combined with other insecticides increases their killing
power. In one test, a small dose of caffine increased a known pesticide’s
potency by ten times.
So how do I make a Caffiene Spray. Its simple. You just have to make a cocktail
solution. I always prefer organic mixes. You can use any recipe of your organic
pesticide like neem oil, clove oil or whatever, and add one or two tablesspoons
of used coffee grounds or 1 or 2 teaspoons of fresh coffee if you like to use
it for your plants. Mix well and let it
marinate for about 24 hours and then strain it and spray it once a while with
your regular pesticide. That’s it. You can watch a detailed video on a Cocktail
mixed organic pesticide recipe.
Now lastly a Funny Question!
Some might think of installing a burglar alarm or fencing it well or locking their gardens. But I suggest one simple remedy to this problem. First of all, interact with them and make friends with them even if you do not like them. Talk about exchanging your plants, seeds or cuttings. You take the first step and present them some of your good plants or cuttings. That is all!
RELATED VIDEOS AND LINKS:
Full Q and A Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Uyvjf8gv4k&list=PLvE-WOB38X7bcd6kFShVvq0zyxLPD5ymQ
GARDEN SECRETS All VIDEOS Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDIYZci5w2k&list=PLvE-WOB38X7YSKfmaBQc3cDNkvrnDGTyJ
Increase Flowering: https://youtu.be/FDIYZci5w2k
Air Pruning for Fast Growth: https://youtu.be/hkUOB1bHi2M
EASY PLANT CLONING IN WATER: https://youtu.be/lLvgE6ouNBA
Please LIKE, SHARE AND COMMENT on the video. Consider subscribing if you are new to this gardening channel.
Happy Gardening!
Purchase Gardening Stuff: http://www.gkvk.net/links
]]>If you are interested in learning gardening stuff, please subscribe to my channel HERE.
Pruning means cutting or trimming the plant organs like branches, stems or even leaves for the sake of your plants health and sometimes to maintain plant shape and form. It is a very important task in gardening specially if you want your plants to perform well like to promote growth and flowering or fruiting. Another advantage of pruning is it allows you to remove the damaged or infected branches and leaves which can further spread and cause more damage.
In this Article, we will precisely look into many questions about plant pruning like:
a) When to prune which plants.
b) Types of Pruning
c) How to Prune and Why?
d) Pruning Tools
e) And many other concepts and tips on pruning.
PLANT SURGERY COMPARISON:
Before we proceed with these topics, first of all its important to know that pruning or cutting is actually wounding your plant. So doing it properly is really important. Pruning is actually a Plant Surgery similar to human or animal surgery, done either to save a plant from disease and also to make it look neat and good. Like the surgical wound, pruning also induces a wound or injury at the point of incision and this wound has to heal properly.
So Lets begin:
1. When to prune which plants? Let me start with a comparison. The best time to perform a surgery on a person is when they are in sleep, that’s during anaesthesia. This is the same for plants as well. As a general rule for most plants including flowering and fruiting plants they need to be pruned, specially hard pruning to be done while they are in a period of dormancy (that’s when they are asleep or inactive). This usually falls in late winter through early spring like in the month of January depending on your climatic zone. Another reason to perform this surgery in winter is the healing of wound is better in this cold season due to scientific reasons.
But some other plants need to be continuously pruned or trimmed I mean deadheaded or soft pruned, to maintain growth and flowering. We shall discuss this shortly.
Also remember to disinfect the cutting tools before your start snipping your plants. You can wipe the blades with any household disinfectant or you can also use hydrogen peroxide 3 or 6 percent and this is easily available at your local medical store.
2. Types of Pruning for house plants? Here we will learn Hard Pruning, Soft Pruning, Rejuvenation Pruning, Dead Heading and many other useful tips.
First we will start with:
Hard Pruning and Soft Pruning:Hard pruning or Annual Pruning as I discussed earlier is done in the dormant or inactive growth period of a plant during the late winter or early spring. In hard pruning, we cut off most of the plant stems and branches, atleast 50 percent to promote all new productive plant growth in the growing season.
Where as Soft Pruning can be performed any time of the year. Here we just trim the plant to onethird to half, the best example is pruning roses. This also includes dead heading. Deadheading means removal of dead or dried flowers from a plant which has just flowered. Sometimes it has to be a constant process and this diverts the plant energy into new growth and more flowering rather than drying up and consuming this energy into the seed formation process.
3. How to Prune? And Types of Pruning Cuts?
We will learn two important cuts here: Heading and Thinning Cuts:
Heading is the process of cutting or trimming branch tips, The cut is made anywhere on the branch or stem just half an inch above a node where it produces multiple branching usually two branches and this process makes your plant more bushy in the long run.One very important tip here:The cut is to be made at an angle of 45 degrees to allow water to run off. Because if a flat cut is made, water can stay on top of the wound which increases the chances of fungal or bacterial infection. Its also a good idea to Seal the wound with some stuff like wax or an antifungal powder or anything – even some recommend fevicol paste. If you can buy a tree paint or any commercially available pruning sealer, that’s still better. Some experts say its better to leave it open and let the plant heal itself specially for larger trees.
Thinning is the process of removing entire branches from a main stem by making a cut at its collar or just outside of the collar. Collar is the area where the branch connects with its main stem. Thinning helps sunlight to penetrate to interior foliage and promotes good air circulation and thus avoids fungus and bacterial growth.
If you are not sure how to and when to prune a particular plant, I still suggest you to atleast perform soft pruning atleast once in its growth cycle.
Regarding Choosing the right Pruning Tools, You can check that HERE.
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Let me start with the 3 P’s of Successful Gardening.
1. Planning your Garden
2. Potting Mix Preparation and
3. Planting
So, Today we will discuss on the second P of gardening, that’s Preparing the best potting Mix for your plants based on some useful scientific concepts. Please watch the video till the end. First we will discuss the Criteria for the best potting soil for your plants and then the formula or the recipe for the best all-purpose universal potting mixture for your gardening.
Well, You need to Understand this Point: Why cant I just dig up the ground and use this soil for my plants? This is because we have two major limitations of this:
1. Compaction or hardening of soil – mainly with clayey soil which can suffocate the roots.
2. Lack of Nutrients in the soil- that’s the Major NPK elements (Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium) and also the minor trace elements.
Hence, the need to prepare your own potting soil arises.
Hold on friends, some more important concepts to learn before I disclose my recipe. A few criteria you should be taking care while preparing your potting mix.
1. DRAINAGE: We all know, too much water can rot your plants. So a well draining soil that quickly drains out water within a particular duration of time is important for all plants. This is the most important criteria for growing succulents and based on this you adjust the proportions of stuff like sand, perlite and other stuff.
2. WATER RETAINING CAPACITY: This is quite opposite of the first factor. So we have to add materials in such a way that the water should neither drain out too quickly nor it should stagnate in the container.
3. NUTRIENTS: This is a very important criteria in container gardening. We have to add certain nutrients into the potting mix so that your plant can produce flowering or fruiting at right time and grows in a healthy manner.
Having said that, Now Lets Start making our Potting Mix with the best and easily available ingredients.
I am showing you two formulae, One you can use purely for teres gardening which is very light weight and will not have any compaction. This can also be an ideal seed starting mix so that the seeds can push the light weight ingredients in its germination process and also to some extent sterile.
And the second one is our all purpose mix for most of our plants. You can change the proportions as per your requirement, but generally this mix will be useful for any plant. So the formula is:
1. Good quality Garden Soil about 40 percent (by good quality I mean, it should not have large stones or other large sized stuff in it).
2. Cocopeat or Peat Moss: 30 percent. If you do not have this, you can use about 10 to 20 percent River Sand. Adding more sand may result in too fast drainage which might be useful for succulents and cacti.
3. 20 to 30 percent Compost like decomposed cowdung powder or Vermicompost or leaf compost or a mix of these. These first 3 ingredients should be the minimum for your plants.
4. You can further fortify this with 5 percent of any of these or a combination of these, that is Bone Meal powder for flowering and fruiting + Neem Cake or Any oil cake Powder for anti microbial and antifungal effect for root protection.
5. Then you can also add Trichoderma or pseudomonas powder and also some beneficial fungi called Mycorrhizae. You can watch a detailed video on these useful soil fungi from a link at top right corner of this video and also in the description.
The Second Formula of Potting Mix is a light weight mix suitable for roof top gardening and also as a great seed starting mix. Here you do not use garden soil, but only
1. Cocopeat or peat moss (50 percent)
2. Compost like decomposed cowdung powder or vermicompost (30 percent)
3. Perlite or Vermiculite about 20 percent (You can check out my detailed video on the differences and benefits of Perlite and Vermiculite from a card link at top right and also from description.
4. You can optionally add the same 5 percent ingredients like bone meal, neem mix, mycorrhizae etc as discussed earlier.
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For Beginners Root Crops or Root Vegetables are underground plant parts that are harvested and eaten by humans as food. These can be roots, bulbs, rhizomes or tubers. We will not go into the botanical details of these terms for now.
The Commonly grown root vegetables include Carrots, Raddish, Beets, Onions, Potatoes and many many more. It’s a big list and a big classification.
Now, we will quickly look into certain signs and tips which are really useful for everyone who grow vegetables in pots or ground at home.
So, there we have it folks, that was a short Article on the tips or the signs and symptoms that indicate your root veggies are ready to harvest. Happy Gardening.
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