Gardening Ecosystem

What is meant by ecosystem and why is it important?

Before you get you plant home you are already inspired by someone’s green thumb. Thinking you will also create your zen space, a nice corner with beautiful plants. 

Once you embark this journey , it is better to know and who is who in this world. Where can you get help and support and how to make the right choice in world with deceptive marketing and influencing social media trends. How to cut the noise and find the right cost-effective source.

Products: One of the crucial step in setting up your home plant/garden is to get the right product, once you have finalised what is the ideal plant for you (keeping season and growing conditions in mind). Next step is bring plants and other supplies home. Let look at what option we have to get supplies.

1. Plants : Gardening Journey starts with a Plant, you are lucky if are gifted a plant by loved ones. Else the first thing you would need to figure out is Plant itself, let look at various ways to get a plant.

Before I start I will share my personal opinion, Nature makes the most premium things for free- Water , light , air etc. Plant is no different one of most beautiful creation of nature. I do not find attaching financial value to plant very attractive. Plants are product of nature and everyone has right to get plants, unless they are very rare exotic variety and require special condition to be raised in your climate there is no logical way to charge premium (exorbitant amount). In my opinion one should try to the most cost-effective ways to get a plant.

Govt nurseries:

1. Borrow Cutting: the most efficient and easy way, you like a plant at friend’s or a hotel or resort you are visiting. Just ask politely for a cutting. All you need is some patience and basic skills, we will talk about it in detail during propagation.
2. Share/Exchange- You must have noticed a healthy plant quickly outgrow themselves with many baby plant seedlings that propagate in the same pot. To keep it nice and tidy a we all need to take separate baby plants from mother plant to give then enough room for growth. These seedling can be put up for exchange with friends and community who is looking for same plant, perfect match for demand and supply.

4. Shop
5. Govt Nurseries: If you are left with only option to buy, there are many government nurseries across the country that maintain and supply plant sapling at very economical price. Just google government plant nurseries around me. The variety of plants may not be that executive but they are not rip off in my honest opinion
6. Govt Research institute : If you plan to grow veggies or other plants from seeds, govt research ICAR (Institute by India Council of Agriculture Research) in your area can be a really good and cost effective option.
7. Local Nurseries/Plant vendors The traditional and most popular choice till date, I would suggest as last option. Advantage: You can see the plant and choose, you get to see lot many plants and it’s a pleasing experience. Biggest risk is mis selling, majority of the times plant nurseries either don’t have right information and push sell unwanted products at high price to increase profit.
8. Shop online: The most recent choice, If you are a serious plant lover you the price you are paying for the convenience is not worth. But they offer a good alternative for a rare variety of pant.

To me growing plant is also a contribution to better planet, so putting plant with paper based or plastic boxes much larger than plant, loading them in truck or cargo planes to delivery them in 2 -4 days, only to discard the packaging just doesn’t make sense. I am adding more CO2 in planet that I can ever remove with my life long gardening activity.  

2. Supplies: Products other than plants and seeds are collectively called gardening supplies.

Gardening Supplies are like sportsman’s kit bag, you require them to excel in your game.

And every stage of gardening there are tools to assist, important thing here is depending on what you are growing and what is your current gardening skill level is you need set of supplies to succeed. It becomes important to understand purpose and their usage : soil amendments, stakes, watering tools, hand tools , stands, mulches, humidifiers etc. we will understand about these in plant parent Hacks in detail.

To get you hands on perfect supplies once can use local nurseries or shop online with e.g. Our Gold Dust Gardening e-store offer everything you would require from basic to pro gardening level.

On supplies other than plants like garden care , pots, tools etc. I felt options were limited in plant nurseries and online stores offer wider options to choose.

Plant Wisdom/Gardening Knowledge:

In world of super-fast connectivity and instant search result there is no dearth of information you want to learn about plants. However, in my experience I noticed not every source of information that you stumble upon is not worthy, more so in plants health tips.

Since plant cannot talk to us, it is very important to be 100% sure of what we are doing to them be it watering, soil, fertilisation, light or simplest thing like cutting or pruning time.

Non Expert Advice: I noticed that most of easily available plant care tips or gardening gyan was comes from self-acclaimed experts on internet or social media, tip in majority of the cases were contradictory, confusing and partially correct and at times totally bogus.

On digging deeper I found the underlying cause

1. People share their experience in the form “TIP” thinking what worked for them always works, there are 4Lac+ variety of plants on this earth. And Plant growing condition in your house can be totally different from you your neighbour’s e.g. to potting soil and biological activity, plant species, insect and disease, light and temperature, fertiliser etc.
2. There is no formal certificate/License to validate of one’s knowledge on home gardening/plant parenting, any one who has bought a plant which survived a few weeks, becomes “Subject Matter Expert”.
3. In handful of cases we are made to believe in magical “man-made potions” what will make plant grow and bloom overnight. These are carefully crafted, fact twisting advertising copy with intent of selling you a product that you really don’t need. In my opinion biggest scam is in chemical fertiliser and pesticides for home garden. A HOME has NO PLACE for poison like, chemical fertiliser and pesticide. What’s the point of purifying air with plant that itself is laced with poisonous pesticide.

In my experience I have  found the product sold to us in the name of organic itself has dangerous chemical in it.

So it becomes extremely important that the sources you are learning from is qualified and trustworthy before you blindly start trusting them.  

Fortunately, there is how scientific study or practice of growing and management of flowers, fruit and vegetables called as Horticulture.

Study of Horticulture formally started in 1820 and ironically we are using 30 second reels to learn 200 year old rich art.

We understood that new age plant parent rely on unconventional source in gardening because horticulture is vast, too complex and requires certain level of qualification in Botonny (study of plant).

One of the key reason for us to start this initiative was to provide simple, science backed trust worthy information to plant parent.

Books: Additionally, I found Books on gardening fairly accurate and not spreading confusion so if you do have to take any “TIP”, refer to books and please don’t listen to plant infulencers, new-age self-acclaimed plant gods on Social Media.

Blogs/Portals: There are some really extensive detailed 10+ years old blogs portal on internet, who do a fair job barring few exceptions here and there. The flip side of these good books and blogs are they are written by foreign authors keeping their climatic conditions in mind. So one needs to be careful while implementing their learning in Indian context.

Community:

The final pillar of plant parenting ecosystem is your fellow plant lovers. Plant parenting is community activity, you can unlock the true potential of you gardening journey if you have people to share your experiences, wins and fails and celebrate gardening. Being part of plant lovers tribe, makes the whole journey easy, rewarding and hassle free.

In my case, I always been part of such groups offline/online to connect with people who care about plants just as me. There are various ways you can find plant lovers around you

Offline Meetup: Where group of plant lovers meet physically on a agreed location to share their plant journey.  You also can participate in different flower shows and plant swap meet ups if your city has one. These events are perfect weekend activity to relax and rejoice nature and learn, if you have young kids in the family it always a good idea to have them visit these shows and enjoy nature.

Swap don’t Shop: Best part you get to exchange/swap plants in these meet ups. This is one of the most important things. Let me explain my view on this, plants are the best gift nature has given to us for free. Unfortunately, in highly capitalist world we are doing business over product that nature has given as it is. It is funny Plant are being branded as if they are engineered to be different than others brands, even if they are, truth is the best plant is the one grown “without human intervention”. However, I am not against business of plant selling my I just find them expensive when you have alternatives like swap. But my stress on swapping has more deep rooted concern when you look at bigger picture. I will always suggest try adopting a plant or swapping a plant as much as you can instead of buying

1. It helps you get access to plant for free when you get a cutting/seedling from friends. Instead of buying it from expensive shop.
2. Plants, over period crowd the small area and need to be trimmed/pruned so all the cuttings are anyway going to be thrown out at your plant lender friend’s garden.
3. Most importantly, in the larger schema if you are a plant lover you know you will grow thousands of plant in life time. You fill have many failure and plants will die, then plants to have a life cycle and sometimes you will shift city or new home and start plants collection from scratch. One of the core benefits of growing plant is aiding to nature, fresher air, environmental benefit. However, when you buy a plant online plant is packed with lot many tapes then put on a courier aircraft and then to a truck and finally to small van or bike for last mile delivery. So if you look at entire carbon footprint small plant purchase, this small plant in its lifetime won’t be able to offset the CO2 emission caused by it in order to reach your home. Once aware, a true plant lover would never be happy with this fact.

Sadly the same plant was lying there ignored in your neighbours balcony and you bought the same plant online 1000 km away from Floriculturist sitting in Kolkata or Pune.

Even you had to commute to nursery which is generally at outskirt of your city, trip back and forth in AC car will not make much of difference either.  

Some may argue this hold true for any product shopped online, for most of the product other than plants there exists a level of design, craftmanship or quality difference between brand to brand that you not be able to find anywhere else. For example if I need to shop clothes or wallet or beautiful pot or watering can may not find same quality and design in shop nearby as quality and craftmanship may not be same as well known brand. But a money plant (pathos) bought from local nursery or online brand sitting 1200Kms away or borrowed from friend’s garden are exactly same if they are same variety.

Online Communities: There are some Facebook Pages/WhatsApp group at city  or society level. However, do not take any expert advice from any group member on plant care tip, do your homework. What you can learn from these pages is idea on different way and kind of plant people are growing in the area sometimes recommendation on best offline or online brands to shop from.

1. Find or Start with local circle of plant lovers in building/society and slowly extend this to neighbourhood. This However this is slow and time consuming and requires some members to proactively organise connects/.

Let me share how these connects help me maximise your journey

1. I started with a few plants bought from local nursery and borrowed some easy to propagate cuttings from my friends, hotels I stayed in, relative I visited over time.
2. As my plant collection grew in size I had more and more side propagation, excess growth to share with others. Soon I had friends and family asking for specific plant like and I offered them cuttings/seedlings as and when I could.
3. At some point I realised I had a sprawling collection of over 118+ variety of plants at my home with not more 20-30 purchased plant ever. I saved lot of money and helped other save it too!
4. If you look closely most of the houses have same set of plants as house houseplants e.g. Areca palm, rubber plant, pathos, snake air plant, 5-10 seasonal flowers etc. there are some 30-40 variety of plants popularly grown in Indian households, and even the most of the plant shops are focused on same set of plants. Now we either buy plants because we want to grow our collection or for any reason our existing plant died, I have been buying plants from shops 5 to 1000 km (nurseries to online) while the same plant was waiting for me to pick it up from neighbour 1 floor below my apartment. Phewww so much CO2 released for no reason let alone be my 500 Rupees!

Hence I urge you all – SHARE DON’T SHOP PLANTS

Should you have Mali/gardener?

I get to ask this question a lot. Answer to this question is simple if you are just starting or mid journey of plant parenting you should have a gardener. For two simple reasons

1. A ritual or reminder once in a week that you plants need some love.
2. When starting up, presence of gardener may help you avoid some mistakes depending on how much experience (not knowledge) he has. E.g. handing root when repotting,

However, I must warn you be careful when they are suggesting a fertilizer or pesticide or any remedial add-ons to your home plants. Even if they claim it be organic just don’t, do you research find your product and insist on using them only.

Reason I insist it is from my interaction with various gardeners I found most of the time these recommendations are based on

1. Misinformation they are passed on by trader/nurseries selling these sub-standard and even harmful chemical mixed low-quality compost and manure in the name of organic fertiliser.
2. Heavy incentives provided by marketing companies to push their product at exorbitant price to unaware customer

So in my opinion as long as you are sticking to

1. Getting the right plant
2. Putting them in right place
3. Watering
4. Regular Care and Fertiliser
5. Pest and Disease Protection
6. General Care : Cutting/Pruning Staking etc.
7. Managing Seasonal Plants:
8. Planning Home Garden:

Let’s get few facts right, In generally mail’s visit your home once in 7 or 15 days, many plants specially during summer time require daily to alternate watering. So, there is no way all you plants will survive the ignorance of 7 to 14 days, you will either have to water them yourselves or find some solution.

Cutting pruning removing dead flower and leaf’s etc.