Now is the time to prepare for colourful winter flowers and organic rooftop vegetables, says the lifestyle page of Kolkata's Ei Samay. First-time rooftop gardeners are advised to start with a few plants rather than many.
Leafy greens such as red amaranth, spinach and water spinach can be grown. Pots can take aubergine, tomato, okra, radish, carrot, beetroot, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, capsicum and lettuce, while beans, bottle gourd and yardlong beans suit as climbers.
Vegetables can grow in 12- to 15-inch pots, buckets or grow bags, in a mix of equal parts loam, organic manure and sandy soil. The plants need a spot with at least 5-6 hours of direct sun a day.
Winter is the best season for flowers: chrysanthemum, cosmos, zinnia, dahlia, sunflower, petunia, dianthus, balsam, gerbera and aster, from nursery seedlings or from seed. For flowers the paper recommends 50 percent loam, 30 percent compost and 20 percent cocopeat, dried well in the sun before planting.
Water flowering plants two or three times a week in the morning, but only when the soil has dried. Regular organic fertiliser from 10 days after planting will fill the plants with flowers, the article says.
Reporting: Megha Mondal, Ei Samay.
Photo: Alvesgaspar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Ei Samay
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