A bit of Gardening...

Two months ago I got to attend Chennai Trekking Club 's Trek Polama event. This is a two day event which hosts one hour sessions by eminent people working in the field of nature, wild life, photography, et., la. One of the sessions was by Mr.Indrakumar Subramaniam on Terrace Gardening which had many interesting tid bits on how to do gardening in a structured way. The interesting thing that captivated me was the process called composting which is the foundation for every gardener. He told about Vegetable Waste Composting and Fish Waste Composting. For the past two years, I have been doing vegetable waste composting, which involves using the throw away waste of vegetables from our kitchen. I used to fill these wastes in an earthen pot. As months go by, the vegetable wastes turn into manure. Through this session, I got a tip on using dried cow dung. Just sprinkle a tea spoon of dried cow dung powder, for every four filling of vegetable waste. After attending Indrakumar's session, I improved my vegetable composting system by using dried cow dung powder. I got a more efficient manure than what I reaped so far for the past two years. Now the "Fish Waste Composting" is the next experiment to be tried. While we buy fish, a quarter part of the fish is discarded as waste. This waste is the raw material in this Fish Composting process. Just collect the waste discarded after cutting of fish, add equal weight of of jaggery (Vellam in tamil) and store in an air tight container. The container should have 25% free space. Open the container after 40 days. When we open it, it smells like fruit salad (Panjamirtham in Tamil). This process of fish composting was always ringing bell in me, ever since I came back from the Trek Polama event. During April month, I started off trying with collecting fish waste from the market, added equal weight of jaggery and finally starting off the process of composting. During this process, I clarified for each and every step, thorough phone with Mr.Indrakumar. Finally, the day arrived wherein I needed to open the container. Finally, the compost is now ready in my hand last week. The compost need to be diluted in water in 1:50 part of water. I applied this mix to my lovely jasmine creeper. After four days, that is today, I was spell bound on realizing the spurt in the growth of the jasmine creeper. Wow.  Do, from today, all other plants in my garden will get an additional boost. Meanwhile, another set of fish compost would be kick started in another weeks time. This time, I shall be photographing each and every step. Stay tuned.