Technically its not my aangan, its just the deck of my townhouse and its not exactly tulsi either … its Italian basil…but hey this is our first attempt at gardening. Now that we had our own house with a big deck and some land around it, we deciced to try our hands at gardening. Like all Indian families, the first thing we planted was the “kadipattaâ€. It’s a tough plant to grow, for it requires tender care and grown agonizingly slowly which does not exactly maintain the interest in gardening for an amateur gardener. However for people used to 2 rupye ka kadipatta, to buy a bunch at 3$ seems like a wasteful extravaganza. So we planted the kadipatta , watered it regularly , fed it fish emulsion and waited for it to grow.
In the meantime, we planted Italian basil, tomatoes,
cucumber, mint and green chillies. The mint grew like a wildfire, the Italian basil in spurts, the tomato was a late bloomer but now we officially have 7 baby tomatoes on it. The cucumber died while getting repotted and the chillies threatened to grow but don’t seem very eager to do so.
But enthusiastic beginners that we are, we water them regularly, feed it the appropriate plant foods, examine every leaf every day and even remark on the growth to each other. “Look, the kadipatta has a new leafâ€
