But I did not give up

It has been a while, since I did my garden journal post. I was waiting to post about a new experiment - growing my own bacteria for my trees - preparing Jeevamrutha - on my first attempt I failed, but I did not give up. I consulted @prabalmallick - my inspiration for organic gardening to understand about the failure. And the next attempt was a success. Truly failure is the pillar to success.

Jeevamrutha has lost its glory because of all the fake marketing of chemical fertilizers, but recently my elder brother started preparing it and I borrowed some from him and applied on my plants - the result was amazing. So that inspired me to prepare it myself. The process is pretty simple - you just need to have interest to try it out. All it needs is 1kg cow dung, 1 liter cow urine, gram flour (50gms), jaggery (50gms) - getting them was the hard part, but I have now found out a permanent place. Sometimes back, @prabalmallick published a book on organic gardening and gifted me a copy because of my donation for his crowd funding. In that book, it was mentioned, jaggery can be replaced with ripen bananas. So at first I thought, I would use bananas instead of jaggery. But then I decided to use both and not use gram flour.

Mix the jaggery well in water.

Then its all about mixing them slowly - crushing the ripen bananas.

Once mixed well, add 10 liters of water and keep in a shady place - I found the place below the big water tank suitable. They were supposed to be ready in 3 days if proper fermentation happened. And every day we need to stir it very gently once or twice.

The next day when I opened it, I was shocked to see fungi instead of fermentation. That is when I called @prabalmallick seeking some help to understand the cause. And he diagnosed it well - I should not have used the banana peel - that creates the fungi. He advised to get the fungi out from the top and add some more jaggery and gram flour - just to try out, in case it works.

But seems the fungi were already all over. The condition worsened and this is how it appeared next day - Experiment failed. One other very important input I got is that, the cow dung from a milking cow may not be the best - instead get it from a cow which is not milking - that will have more bacteria.

I was not willing to give up, so I started exploring to find out another place that would get me better cow dung and I was able to find out it quickly. And this time no bananas 🙃 And added some soils collected from that milk man's house.

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Then mixed them really well and left for fermentation.

The next day brought real excitement - beautifully fermented.

Stirred it very gently - 10 times clockwise and 10 times anti-clockwise and kept it back. Here is how it looked at day 2.

Stirred it again and kept it back.

And then day 3 the fermentation slowed - it was ready to be used - adding 10 times water.

@prabalmallick guided me all along - I sent him these pics and he confirmed it looked good this time. He also advised to get rid of the sediments - I could not understand from chat, so I called him and he clarified. I was very happy with the outcome this time - one who has done experiments can understand my feelings.

100 liters of natural fertilizer was more than enough for me - so I asked another lady growing plants on the roof top if she wants to use and she happily agreed. These natural fertilizers are the most cost effective way to raise some happy plants - unfortunately over time, people have forgot this very old method. But hey, old is gold - what used to be natural 25 years back now comes labelled as organic with a premium price. Our elder generation were definitely eating better than us - that is why we still see people more than 90 years old being active. I doubt, we will be like them but growing organic food in cost effective way is the only way to bring back the trend. And now look at my plants - the impact of Jeevamrutha that I borrowed from my native - plants that were almost dead started smiling again.

And even though I know the season of Chrysanthemums is almost ending, looking at the growth of plant by using the Jeevamrutha , I planted some new hopes. Have a look at how they have grown over just couple of weeks.

I think, I am going to get one last joy of this winter from these trees - I can see some new buds. And now look at the basil plant, this was almost a dead plant and now smiling.

I was planning to wrap this big project to a small one by end of this winter but honestly now I feel I should plant some ladies fingers in the summer - it's hard to sacrifice the love. I had some other task of replacing some old plants and I hired a person to do the heavy lifting - better for my back pain. These people do not have the same dedication like me, so I planted the trees. My mom says, trees won't grow by everyone's hand. So I keep it to myself.

I promised someone to do a post on Aloe vera juice - got an opportunity now - planted only two small ones after taking the big ones out. They grow so fast. You will soon see a post on Aloe vera juice - I am enjoying it daily.

Before wrapping up, I would like to give you a view of my garden now, we have got enough flowers for our need - even others are enjoying this - this has become a selfie spot in our apartment - I came to know yesterday. One lady was very specific about the Chrysanthemums - I told her you will get one last wish of this season fulfilled soon.

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