Gobar on my mind.
The balcony has finally recovered from that delayed monsoon of last year. We lost a few plants – that is always hard. To see healthy living things wither away due to leaf burn and rotting roots. A few admittedly were bound for the compost heap even before the monsoon, due to my not so tender love and care. The bonsai comes to mind. A Fukien Tea tree (Carmona retusa), it came in an elegant oval pot, with a lovely S shaped trunk and delicate little leaves and white flowers. It brought us great joy for the few months it survived. But I shouldn’t have felt so elated. Bought online (first red flag), the soil it came potted in was super clayey (second red flag). It had a burst of flowers and then the leaves began to fall and the branches withered. I haven’t had the heart to throw away the dry sad stump. It is an accusation that sits there, reminding me that too much love will kill you, to paraphrase Mercury and May.
But still, most of the usual suspects made it through the onslaught of salty winds and ocean laden rains. Then there was a longer than usual lull between the end of the wet and the first flowers. I fretted until I remembered that the last two years had been much less polluted and the plants had made it through without some extra nourishment. This year was different. The smog has choked the city in a grey stranglehold. My plants were fighters and survivors but needed an extra burst of encouragement urgently.
And so yesterday was Spring Cleaning and Feast Day combined for my plants. Dung. Gobar. Wonderful stuff – ask any gardener. Two full sacks were lugged in. We mixed up dried and old soil with a healthy dose of the gobar, and tilled another lot of it into the pots. This was well balanced and aged gobar, with only a faint whiff of the nether regions. It was beautifully dry and crumbly, with a fine percentage of fibre running through its clumps. The prize for all the hard work was finding two hyacinth bulbs in a pot of dried soil. They both had little nubs of new growth, which just goes to show that neglect is not necessarily a bad thing on the balcony. We repotted them and hopefully, there will be hyacinths on the balcony this year. The orchids were the only plants left out of the gobar distribution. They don’t like anything soil like on their fleshy green roots, which look startlingly like unravelled human brains. One orchid is blooming abundantly but the others have entered their dormant phase.
But back to the gobar. I find the whole process delightful. Cow dung is much touted by pseudo science as a panacea for all ills, and I have no patience with these claims. But as a natural fertiliser, the gardener really can’t hope for better. Extrapolating from earthworms that eat and poop out better aerated soil, the cattle do much the same with grass and other vegetation. The dung is rich with the semi digested organic matter and beneficial bacteria. Gobar contains nitrogen phosphorus and potassium in the almost perfect NPK ratio of 3:2:1. It’s an unsung marvel, that’s what it is. And after yesterday’s application, I’m convinced my plants are already benefitting. Of course my imagination is running wild. It hasn’t been twenty four hours even, but the plants look greener and healthier to my eyes already. The white hibiscus bloomed this morning. It is a notorious diva, sometimes going months without a bud. So that gorgeous white flower was a very happy sight. The bonus is nine flowers on the local hibiscus, forming a perfect glowing backdrop for that pearly white bloom. The jalapeños are doing well, growing plump and glossy. My aunt gave me some seeds last year and I tossed them into a pot, ignoring the careful instructions on the packet. Now here they are, almost ready to harvest. The cherry tomato plants are reaching for the sun. A friend says to shake them gently to encourage flowers and fruit. I’ll wait until the fragile stems grow stronger and can withstand my vigorous enthusiasm. There is new growth on the Iris too, so I’m hopeful this may be the year it blooms again.
This season’s stars, though, are the limes. They had languished in one corner and in revenge for my neglect, had produced one single, solitary lime in the six or seven years they have lived on the balcony. A juicy, sour lime to be sure, but which took about eighteen months to ripen and fall – I kid you not. Last December, the spouse volunteered to move some pots around in order to catch the sun. My balcony is a series of sunny spots through the year and the sunlight – needy plants move from one sunny spot to the next. On impulse and serendipitiously, it turns out, I moved the limes to a new spot. What a transformation! The plants have produced dozens of the prettiest white flowers and later, plenty of tiny green fruit. I’m keeping a close eye on them because it will soon be time for the Common Mormon butterfly to lay its eggs. The gargoyle fifth instar and pre-pupa caterpillars are voracious and love citrus leaves above all else, though they will eat curry leaves too. In the past, as further proof of my neglect, I would allow them to strip the limes bare. Just leaves, I’d say, they’ll grow back. Not this year though. This year, I’ll pick the little monsters off my newly precious limes and deposit them on the curry patta plant, where they can chomp away to their green hearts’ content. My limes will thrive and I’ll have cool lime juice to drink on a sunny summer afternoon. Dream on, dream on, dream until your dreams come true, said Aerosmith.
It doesn’t take much to keep the plants happy – some cow waste, some sunshine, and a light hand with the water in this cool season. Happy plants means happy me. February starts tomorrow – my favourite month in Mumbai. Now if only the smog would lift. Blue sky, sunny but cool breezes and a balcony with a whiff of gobar. Perfect.
Hi… quite enjoyed reading that!!!