All gardeners love reading gardening story, It represents the connection and soul of a gardener. And such a beautiful connection with plants is reflected in this gardening story of Reena Sheth.
Either you are living in metropolitan city of a developing, or a developed country, we all remember the freshness of air in villages.
What so ever development may have occurred in big cities, the replacement of fresh and healthy environment found in villages is not easily possible in cities. Further many human beings are still busy in only destroying the nature.
All these combined effect will lead to nothing. But only destruction of the mankind and the environment. But we can take many small yet effective steps to reduce this process.
And one such step is gardening. It has been a beautiful process to make environment blissful. Gardening is not only a hobby. It is a process to create positive environment.
Adding plants in home made Reena’s life blissful. The journey started four years ago and it still continues. She is a mother of two beautiful daughters and is tied in the pure connection of marriage with a businessman.
I came to know about her on a group related to gardening. She shared a beautiful small story on that group. The story was related to gardening. I found it impressive and interesting.
Later on, she described more about her gardening journey and I feel that you should not miss reading out her story about gardening.
Reena’s Gardening Story
Myself Reena Sheth, working in an educational field past many years but here nature is my teacher. I am married to a businessman and blessed with 2 princess.
My journey started with plants 4 years ago. I had bought only 3 pots to keep it towards the end of my balcony as a guard/precaution so that my little one would not get a chance to cling over the glass railing.
But soon their blooms and smile started fascinating me to get a few more. Today I have varieties of plants with me that include flowering, foliage, vegetables, succulents and 2 to 3 odd cactus.
At the beginning, due to my busy schedule, I recruited a gardener too for few months. Though he used to come once in a week and take care by trimming, fertilizing…etc. But I was not getting that satisfaction.
I always used to feel that my plants my babies were seeking my attention, my care and my love. May be the situation was like my plants and myself needed each others.
Whenever I used to leave for work, I used to greet them goodbye in the similar way that I do to greet my family members, and a big hello too when I come back.
But as said earlier they wanted me and my time more. Indeed I used to sit and enjoy with them over the weekends but that didn’t seem to be enough.
There was a day when I did put my foot down and decided to take care of my plants myself. It was a question of spending only 1 hours extra on daily basis.
Steadily with many ups and downs, slowly they kept on increasing in numbers and growing healthy. Today the number including smallest i.e. 4 inches Howarthia to the biggest Ixora i.e. 2 and half feet is 140+.
Need of one time soon grew to a passion. Now no one is a born expert, So, I started surfing on various sites related to plants on ‘Google’ and soon joined various groups and pages on Facebook.
Did many experiments with few failures and many success. When I started caring for them, the biggest challenge for me was on how to fulfil its nutritional requirements?
Was not keen on market bought fertilizers, so one of the easy and common way I learnt was soaking onion peels and banana peels in water for few days and use it.
READ MORE: HOW TO MAKE AND USE BANANA PEEL FERTILIZERS
Tips from Reena Sheth
As learnt from net, people suggested that it is used only for all the hardy and flowering plants, but trust me, say it my experiment or my experience I started using its dilute water for each n every plant n they all are doing extremely good.
They all are very healthy. Finally with good nutrition they also got a Mother’s love to what they actually were seeking. The results of my blooms are great.
This is my blooms secret and they really relish on this nutritional water. I took some advices on using ginger, green, chillies and garlic peels for pesticides. And do follow that too.
At times specially with my hibiscus when they were attacked by white flies, aphids or mealy bugs, I soak a soft cotton cloth in dilute alcohol to wipe the infected stems and do the needful trimming.
At the same time growing few easy to go veggies was equally fascinating. Who wouldn’t love to have home grown organic kind of veggies. Friends I could really experience the difference in taste.
The next challenge was the climatic situation. Hot summers may burn a few, and monsoons are equally friends and foes for plants. They help few to grow to the fullest and poor few of them get highly infested by pest in the monsoons.
So it is equally important to keep a tab on your plants as per the change in weather. But at times you may have to bid goodbye to one or two of them.
But its a part and parcel of nature. My experience with them is like a few love to be a pampered child and few of them are like oh momma don’t worry I will always be your obedient child.
And few are like just don’t disturb me much, leave them alone with minimal attention and they grow the best. Today my family equally supports me for their care. I love being with them.
Message
I have started spending much of my free time with my plants and at times we sit in the balcony between our beloved plants n enjoy the special moments. I do also talk, sing and dance with my plants.
They have taught me to keep calm and have patience, spread more and more happiness. We have a feast every fortnight. I Love my plants to the core.
Reena Sheth, A gardener from Pune.
English 
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