A pair of used, heavy-duty gardening gloves and three terracotta composters... apart from the Monsoon, which has kicked off here in Delhi with a deluge that flooded our office and soaked our tribal kilim rugs... I've come home from a month's holiday to gifts only a gardener could love.
These wonderful, stacking compost bins - complete with muck! - came courtesy a departing friend. She and her husband couldn't quite believe I wanted, of all things, their compost!! But having discovered the satisfaction of producing black gold, I got greedy.
The cast-off gloves were most generously provided by a friend in England who makes me green with envy with her incredible kitchen garden, complete with ripening strawberries under a diy cage; prolific asparagus bed, orchard and copious cottage flowers including some exquisite miniature roses!
Together, the gloves and the muck have helped my little tropical terrace garden thrive. No longer are the sad plants clinging on against pests and roaring sun.
Here are my plants pre-homemade compost (notice the lifeless, pale soil):
Now they are lush in leaf, dark in soil, not a pest to be seen, everything in the pink (or green) of health! And just look at that rich, black earth! That's the end result of kilos of vegetable peelings, shredded paper (a brilliant idea!), mango pits, and cardboard all chewed to bits by wormy things whilst baking in the Indian sun, watered by the monsoon, and lovingly turned over now and again.
It
was overcast when I went up to the roof to turn the compost. But with
temperatures of 100F, by the end, I emerged as if from a Swedish sauna,
covered from my scalp downwards in sweat. Oh the things we do
for compost!
The composters are available here. The gloves? Sadly, there isn't much of a market in India for gardeners, so any comfy tools or accoutrements have to be bought elsewhere.
Muck, thankfully, is universal!
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