Using waste bottles as planters is her hobby

PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, May 4

The lockdown period last year kindled an interest within Harjinder Kaur who used every waste plastic bottle in her household as a planter.

She used that lockdown period to hone her skills in gardening by watching different gardening channels on YouTube. “My husband says I have green fingers and I can grow anything,” she quipped.

Though I wanted to do gardening since my childhood days, I could not spare much time due to household chores. Earlier, I did not have pots and started growing small plants in pots made from waste plastic bottles. When I succeeded in doing so, my husband Kulwinder Singh bought around 50 pots and soil for me so that I could take on gardening as a hobby. Now I have a good collection of plants. Besides, I also grow vegetables on our terrace.

She believed that every person should do gardening even if they had small spaces in their houses. “We should grow maximum trees in view of losing the green cover to the fast growing concrete jungle around us,” she pointed out.

“I bought some fruit and vegetable crates for growing vegetables,” she said, adding that she grew cauliflower, tomato, parsley, potato and capsicum. She also has dracaena, spider plant, croton, coleus, marigold, syngonium, baby sun rose, etc.

I love all kind of plants. I even grew many plants by rooting stem cuttings. I never hesitated in cutting shoots of plants on road dividers and roadsides during my morning walk and fortunately 90 per cent of them grew.

“I used only organic fertilisers for my plants. I would dry the green kitchen waste and then mix it in soil for making a potting mix,” she said. She also made liquid fertilisers from fruit peels which gave a boost to flowering in the plants.

She gave her husband Kulwinder Singh, who runs a tent house, credit for her gardening skills. He, along with children, encouraged me to do gardening, she said.