Green Thumb

I was taken for as ride; not just figuratively, but literally!

Here I am hopping from my car every now and then, parking it in front of residence gates and absorbing their rude remarks all because of my fascination for creating a wonderful terrace garden which will be the envy of my neighbor.

As the King in Alice in Wonderland says, let me begin at the beginning.

Lots of people told me that it would be difficult for me to grow plants as I don’t have the ‘proverbial green thumb’. Though I had grown few flower bearing plants et all on my terrace garden by buying readymade plants, most of them used to die or wont bear flowers, no matter what care I took or put all kinds of organic compost - the expensive variety.

I was told by a friend – who did not practice but only saw – that YouTube contained several wonderful videos in educating how to populate all kinds of plants and trees.

So, I spent a good part of the day browsing through some of the fascinating videos one could ever watch on YouTube.

Some of them showed a very simple and most importantly quickest way to populate almost all kinds of plants from seeds, cuttings, leaves, fruits oh, virtually every part of the plant; the video suggested, if fallowed properly, one can easily create new and thriving plants.

The video amply demonstrated how by using household items as rooting homes and no need to spend money on expensive rooting powders sold at premium. online.

After going through several videos, I decided that I must put those lessons to practice.

Since there were so many ideas to implement, I thought it best to download the videos and then collect all the ingredients suggested by the videos and go full blast.

I even started imagining my terrace brimming with so much of green, I could even see in mind’s eye, my neighbor turning green, literally.

Coming to present, here I am running from shop to shop to collect, few fruits, small pots, plastic covers, small glass cups etc.

I carefully saw the downloaded videos, took notes and listed the steps to be followed and I assembled everything neatly on my terrace, instructed my wife not to disturb me at least for the next couple of hours and set out to experiment of propagating plants, the YouTube way.

I used the existing rose cuttings, stole a mango branch from my neighbor’s tree, opened the bag containing seedless grapes, took out an orange, two raw bananas, guava, few freshly cut aloe vera and of course, a box of toothpick; of course, I also filled couple of pots with garden soil and last, but not the least, filled glasses with tap water (I was warned, not to use filter water).

I surveyed all the assembled items and cross checked with the notes I had made from the You tube videos to ensure that I did not leave anything out.

Satisfied that everything was exactly as suggested, I went ahead and completed the crucial next steps.

Took an orange removed (carefully) small opening at the top and pierced it with the small cutting of mango branch (carefully shaving the edge with a clean knife) put the orange in a glass filled with water in such way that half the orange was in water and of course, covered it with a plastic bag and secured it.

Took 6 inches long freshly cut rose branch and carefully smeared onion juice on the places where I had removed the outer skin and took two more small onions and pierced it on both the sides and planted in a pot filled with garden soil and some compost, put some water and covered it with plastic cover as suggested by the video.

Now, the next was using banana as a rooting agent to grow guava tree in less than fifteen days and harvest it in less than 90 days!

I took out the green guava I had purchased from market made hole in it, pierced the banana after carefully cutting raw banana stem with a fresh blade and of course, covered it with garden soil after putting them in another plant not to forget, watering them amply and covering it, you guessed it, with a plastic bag.

Next it was the turn of grapes!

As suggested by the video, took water in a glass cup, pierced the grapes exactly in the middle with toothpick and immersed the grapes in such a way that they were half submerged in water and needless to say, covered it with a plastic bag!

I put all the above items in shade, as suggested and for good measure, put a label and wrote today’s date and ETA, or expected time of arrival as per the notes I had made from the You tube videos.

All I had to do now was wait for a specific time for each of the fruits or the rose cutting to start growing wonderful green leaves as well as thick white root (as shown in the video)

More of less, I found out, that the dates on all the plastic covered pots and jars were more or less same.

So, on the D-day for which I had been waiting, arrived and I set down all the plastic covered pots and glasses and jars and set them carefully on the table in my terrace.

It was a question of time before I proved all my friends who were chiding me about not having the ‘proverbial green thumb’ wrong, I carefully inspected the items arranged on the table, without removing the plastic cover.

First, it was the glass jar containing orange and mango tree cutting.

The stench that came, once I removed the plastic cover, was unbearable.

The orange was virtually unrecognizable and needless to say, the mango tree branch was black and was covered with fungus!

But, in You tube video, I vividly remembered that orange looked fresh while the cutting sported green leaves above and a thick white beard like roots below!

Unhappy about the first result, I next went to the pot and removed the plastic cover containing banana and guava.

Fortunately, there was no smell.

The banana almost got merged with the soil and guava was not to be seen at all, leave alone the green leaves and roots!

Story about the next experiment was more or less same; the glass filled with water and pierced grapes were all covered in white fungus!

I almost threw it on my neighbor’s balcony in disgust.

Dejected at my bad experiment costing money and time, I looked at the last item; it was rose cutting using onion for propagating the rose plant.

My heart skipped a beat or two and I almost jumped from my terrace with joy!

I could see green coloured fresh sprouts through the plastic covering!

Finally, I succeeded, I thought and slowly, so that I don’t spoil the freshly grown rose plant from the experiment, I removed the plastic cover.

Indeed, there were fresh sprout of green almost six inches long.

The rose cutting had turned black and dead.

The green sprouts, in fact came from the onion which I had put on either side of the rose cutting!