Thought Craft

Renowned  Psychologist and Counselor  Shreshtha Dhar is now available for consultation in south Kolkata at Gariahat.

Container's Sizes and Spacing Between Plants

One of the  first thing, while starting container gardening started bothering me is what should be the size of the containers for each vegetable. What I found from different resources and self experience is .. Three things matter.  One is volume of the media and second is depth of the container.  Some plants do have deep roots and don't do well in shallow pots even if the volume is good. So when I will write about the container I will write about the required volume and depth . Yet again, The volume required  is really a relative thing. I used much smaller volume than required for some plants, they grew less, but fruits early. Positive stress, they are called. In other words, what I mean to say , if you find a container that is little smaller or, bigger  than the prescribed volume, you can safely go for that.

Another important and the third aspect one should not ignore is spacing of the plants. Overcrowding affects the health of the plants, more diseases, less growth and less crops. Don't be greedy, as I was! Maintain the recommended spacing . Below is a chart , which I gathered from the net plus own experience.

Vegetable	Suggested Minimum Pot Size	Spacing between plants
Beans, green	9-15 liters; 8-12 inches deep	2-3 inches (provide supports)
Beans, lima	9-15 liters; 8-12 inches deep	2-3 inches (provide supports)
Beets	1.5 to 9 liters; 8-12 inches deep	2-3 inches
Broccoli	12-15 liters	1 plant per container
Brussels Sprout	12-15 liters	1 plant per container
Cabbage	12-15 liters; 8-12 inches deep	12-18 inches between heads
Carrots	1 liters to 3 liters; 8-12 inches deep	2-3 inches
Chard, Swiss	1.5  liters; 8-12 inches deep	4-6 inches
Collards	12 inches deep	4-6 inches
Corn	21 inches wide, 12-14 inches deep	2-3 plants per container, 6 inches apart
Cucumbers	12-15 liters; 3-9 litres (dwarf)	14-18 inches (provide supports)
Eggplant	9-15 liters	1 plant per container
Horseradish	15 liters; 24-30 inches deep	1 plant per container
Kale	9-15 liters; 8 inches wide X 8 inches deep	4-6 inches
Leaf Lettuce	1 -9 liters; 4-6 inches deep	4-6 inches
Mustard Greens	9-15 liters; 8 inches wide X 8 inches deep	4-6 inches
Onions, green	1litre  to 9 liters	2-3 inches
Onions, yellow/sweet	15 liters	3-5 per container
Peas	12-15 liters; 12 inches deep	3-4 inches (provide supports)
Peppers	9-15 liters	1 plant per container
Potatoes	3-60 liters	space plants 6" apart
Pumpkins	12 inches deep, 4 foot wide	1 plant per container
Radishes	3-15 liters; 4-6 inches deep	2-3 inches
Spinach	9-15 liters; 8 inches wide X 8 inches deep	4-6 inches
Squash, summer	6-12 liters; 24 inches deep	1-3 plants per container
Squash, winter	9-15 liters; 24 inches deep	1 plant per container
Tomatoes, full-sized	12-15 liters	1 plant per container (support)
Tomatoes, cherry	5-15 liters	1 plant per container (support)
Turnips	1 to 9 liters; 10-12 inches deep	3-4 inches

Composting An Overview:

The age old organic manure, which are being used by the farmers, is compost. This we all know a decomposed organic matters and is very useful for the plants. It provides the major ingredients , which the plant need in organic form. the major difference of chemical  fertilizer and organic compost is the ingredients in the latter is not in raw form. Plants extract the required nutrients from the natural resource. It takes some time and you may not see the magic immediately but is healthy for the long run both for plants and environment and in turn for us.

Farmers usually dump their organic waste into a pit and let them decompose there for months and later dig it out to use for the farming. This method will not be possible for us, the apartment dwellers. Don't get disheartened. We can recycle our organic wastes too.

There are mainly three kinds of composting , which we can do at our home without much fuss. Aerobic composting, anaerobic followed by aerobic composting (Bokashi) and vermi composting.  The ultimate results of all these does not differ much as the raw materials are same. The time required for the process duffers and so is the method. I have personally done aerobic and Bokashi composting at my home . I will write the steps and details in my following posts.

Compost is the major ingredient for your garden, which is regularly required . It is always better to be self sufficient in this regard. You can buy compost regularly, but you can never be assured about their quality and ingredients . Your home made compost will be the best than any compost you buy from market.  More so, you will heal the nature's wound to some extent by this small yet useful  gesture. You cannot just imagine how much organic waste is burnt and creating pollution everyday in each urban town and city. Organic leftover should never be wasted.. they are wealth.....

Pests Diseases and Deficiencies - An overview

Problems in your plant can be classified. When classified , the understanding will be easy and so will be the management or, prevention.  The problem can be classified into two broad segments one is infestation by the live organisms and other is deficiency or, excess of some food ingredient.

The living organisms can be bacteria, virus, fungus and many kinds of insects. Bacterial infection, probably does not occur in plants. at least, so far I have not read anywhere.

Deficiency or, excess can be of any of the ingredients including light and water.

If one study carefully, in course of time it is fairly easy to detect most of the problems and one also learn to prevent such occurrences.  Plants are very forgiving and in most of the time you will get enough time to cure the plant.

The most important thing , which I learnt is to watch carefully. Plants do communicate. They will tell you their problem by their gestures, only thing you have to develop your eye and other senses to listen those. Happy gardening friends...

Fertilizer an Overview

Plants feed on light, water,Carbon Di Oxide and Oxygen of the air and NPK . NPK means Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potassium. These are macro nutrients. Though there are plenty of nitrogen in the air plant cannot use that nitrogen. Along with these some trace minerals like Cu, Mg, Zn, Boron etc are also required. They are micro nutrients and required in very small quantity

Cocopeat and other amending agents don't have any nutrients. Soil may have some left over organic matter in it but soil is a good source of other minerals and micro-nutrients and ingredients like humic acid etc.

So, while planting we need to add fertilizer, which are required by the plants. It is also required to replenish the exhausted fertilizer regularly.  This can be very complicated issue for optimum output of the crops, since different plants have different requirements. But for us, the home gardener, particularly those who are starting, keeping things simple does not matter much. I personally , till now use almost same for all kind of plants.

I just keep few simple things in mind. Nitrogen helps growing the leaves and potassium is important for fruits. If nitrogen is excess, the plant will look beautiful with plenty of leaves, but fruits will be less. Another thing I keep handy is a picture set of leaves, with the signs of deficiency. I will post it in the blog when I will write about deficiency management.  You can get this type of images in the web easily.

Fertilizers can be added to the soil and some of them can also  be used as foliar spray. You can use organic fertilizer and if you wish , may choose inorganic salts too. I personally use inorganic salt only to combat any particular deficiency as supplement. I get most of my NPK requirement from my home composting. Another fertilizer I use and love is Panchagavya or PG in short form . The details of composting and PG will be here very soon... Keep reading.

Choice of Media Contd...

As written in my earlier post I was little disappointed with cow dung manure and realized that little soil is required, reason mentioned there, I replaced the cow dung manure with the soil. With this amount of soil I can get the benefit of both the world. The media does not form hard cakes. It remains nicely granular, fairly light weight and retains moisture.

Along with this I have tried some soil amending agent. So many soil amendment agents are used. They are mainly used to aerate  the soil. They are Perlite, a volcanic amorphous material has water retaining capacity. These granules are extremely light weight.  vermiculite, a hydrous polysilicate material serves the same purpose. Coarse sand also aerate soil and facilitates drainage.

Perlite and vermiculite are relatively costly. I used in some containers , but did not find any difference with those where I didn't add, so now I don't use that. I, of course use sand in those plants, who does not like wet feet, like papaya. Another amender I use is Neem cake dust. Neem has some nutritional value and keep the pests at bay.

Regarding source of the cocopeat , Kolkata is not a good place. Many nurseries has not yet heard about this, so no question of selling.

Choice Of Media

I love gardening but could never manage it properly since long. It was very difficult for me to work with soil. They are heavy, forms hard cake and so difficult to break them down at times. If wet, I have to tackle the mud. After the job is done, the cleaning part is really horrible. I was searching for a long time for an alternative.

What does the soil do? They are mainly the anchoring media. One has to add fertilizer to the soil, be it in any form, which the plants use and thrive. I read about hydroponics. My experience with planted aquarium also helped. I started to think about soil less media. It will be light and easy to handle.

 The first ingredient required is cocopeat. It is the coconut waste compressed into blocks of different sizes from 600 grams to 6 kgs.  When you add water to this it swells up at least 5 to 6 times and it is an excellent media and I should say the primary media. It is light weight, remains useful for at least 5 – 6 years, retain moisture for long time and porous.  I need to add necessary fertilizer to get started.

 I started with 40% cocopeat, 30% cow dung manure and 30% vermicompost. It became very light mix and plants were doing really really well with this mix. After this season, I found some problem with this mix.

1. The cow dung manure, though good and relatively cheap usually have many weed seeds and some insects, I really don’t know whether they are good for the plants or not!

2. Soil less media tend to have air gaps unless they are compressed very hard. The roots in this air gap don’t get nutrients and it actually harms.

3. Some micro nutrients in the soil, like humic acid, required for root growth, I was missing. There may be many more such ingredients!

4. Anchoring in this loose media is troublesome for the plants. They cannot withstand strong winds. I had to give support to each and every plants, those otherwise don’t need support.

My inference therefore soilless is good for some fancy indoor plants but for veggies I need to change the ratio and ingredients. I my next post I will write what changes I have done.