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Niro's Earth, Brampton, ON (2026)

08/14/2021

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/08/13/gardening-has-taught-me-not-to-fear-imperfection.html

12/01/2020

Making tea from mint that grew in my garden…

I have mint growing all over in my garden, blooming beautiful mauve color flowers in summer through to fall. They have a heady fragrance, a tingling flavor, and striking flowers that sprinkle never-ending color in my landscape. The bees and other pollinators love mint flowers and I truly believe that they keep the mosquitoes away, after I grew them around the deck, where my lounging area is set up in my backyard.

Every gardening season, I give out mint plants to anyone who shows and interest, with a list of health benefits, advise on “dos” and “don’ts” in growing them, and ways to include it in their diet. I have plenty to spare as they grow everywhere, taking over my flowerbeds, making their presence strongly felt…

I use mint in fresh salads, refreshing summer drinks, and in cooking sweet and savory dishes. Mostly, I dry them to make mint tea that I drink almost daily. Some of my friends regularly request for or come over to my garden to harvest a bunch for their mint tea.

When drying mint, I cut the whole plant about 6 inches above its root and dry them hanging upside down, dangling from my curtain rods around the house. When they are dried well, I grind the whole bunch with the flowers, leaves, stems and all. (I add dried lemon balm plants to the mint for a lemony taste.) By fall, I have a big container full of mint tea dust that last me through to the next harvest.

Mint tea is my favorite evening beverage, and I drink it with a piece of jaggery. When I make the tea, it is of a rich dark color, gives out a heavenly aroma, and leaves a lingering taste in the mouth. Research shows that mint has various health benefits to us, and by experience, I know that it helps me to sleep better and its effect on my digestive system is quite amazing.

11/24/2020

My first amaryllis...

My friend, Ann Marie got me an amaryllis for my birthday, this year. I have never owned one before but years ago, at one Canada Blooms show (a popular Canadian gardening show in Toronto), I came upon them for the first time in my life…

I was awestruck by their beauty; the long stalks of stunning bouquets, and I remember, adoring, exclaiming, and photographing every one of them exhibited in rows upon rows of heavenly display-stands.

When I got my first amaryllis bulb, already planted in a small container, looking at it, I wasn’t that impressed but within weeks, it produced 4 flowering stalks and one leafy stalk, those kept growing bigger and bigger.

I wasn’t sure whether it was going to bloom 4 flowers or 4 bunches of them, and posted a query on a page of a gardening group and learned that it was quite rare for one bulb to grow 4 flowering stalks. And what’s more, each one is going to produce at least 3 – 4 blooms. I was going to get a bouquet of stunning red blossoms!

One member of the group said that I was extremely lucky, and should consider entering my amaryllis for a contest. Another, called me a grandma to all the amaryllis babies about to pop. Many wanted to know where my friend has purchased the bulb from, so that they could get one. They predicted that it was of superior quality, and would have costed more than the usual store-bought bulbs.

I was pretty sure that it was not the price of the bulb that mattered, it was my friend’s trained eye as a seasoned gardener, painstakingly browsing through the entire rack, and her warm thoughtful nature in picking out the best bulb for me!

To my greatest surprise, I also learned that amaryllis bulbs live and flower for 75 whooping years! I have already picked out an “heir” for my amaryllis. It would be my first grand-baby!

Today, my beautiful amaryllis bloomed it’s first flower. It was the most graceful bloom, in a beautiful deep red, and as expected, the first stalk had 4 buds in it…

Can’t wait to see all 16 of them in bloom!

11/23/2020

Winter projects:
Making Potpourri with flowers from my garden…

I collect flower petals throughout summer to make potpourri when I find myself at a loss, at the end of every gardening season. It provides me with gardening-related project, and a prolonged memory of the colorful blooms, my garden has given me, during the barren cold months of winter. I make a new batch each year, and add the old to flowerbeds to be composted.

First, I prepare the flowers by removing individual petals before drying. As I have an abundance of varieties to choose from, I tend to collect my favorite colors and scents. Sometimes I use flower petals (roses) or the whole flower heads (lavender) when drying.

A mixture of full flowers, petals, and even leaves and stems gives the potpourri, more of a visual impact coupled with an exotic scent. We can add things like barks, pods, seeds, pine cones, peels, and even dried fruits. I usually stick to the petals, leaves, and stems that I find in my garden.

Rose petals are always a favorite in my potpourris. After being a proud owner of a magenta pink bougainvillea for the past three years, I’ve been collecting them, for its brilliant color that stays unchanged, even after being dried for months. I have used chrysanthemums, lilies, hydrangeas, peonies, lilac, and dahlias in the past. This year, I dried out a batch of roses and bougainvillea for my potpourri.

Air drying is a natural method where the petals are turned regularly, ensuring that both sides are dried, during the drying process. I place the petals on a dry surface, spacing them out, leaving ample space in between if possible, and dry them indoors.

When the petals are ready to be packed into containers, I add in the scented essential oils. The scents I’ve used are rose, lavender, lemon, and mint and I found when they are mixed with dried flowers, leaves, or stems they produced the most long-lasting effect. Instead of essential oils, we can also add dried orange, lemon, mint, thyme, cinnamon, lavender, and catnip to scent the potpourris.

The scented potpourri will last for months. I freshen them up periodically, until I come up with a new batch the following year. To refresh the scent, I add in fresh drops of essential oil. I place these containers (vases, bowls or jars that you can find at any Dollar store) as scented home decor or they can be placed in small see-through sachets, to be used in clothing drawers, cupboards, or storage cabinets.

The pictures show the rose petals and bougainvillea flowers I’ve dried this year.

11/17/2020

Growing Hibiscus in winter...

After 5 years of growing my hibiscus bushes, alternating between indoor and outdoor gardening conditions as the seasons change, I think I’ve learned how to take care of them in Canada by trial and error (with less emphasis on error). None of them have died on me to date!

I treat them (Chinese hibiscus not the perennial hibiscus) as indoor plants that live outdoors in the summer or summer plants that spend their winter indoors. There’s no purpose in growing them strictly indoors as the plants become weak and their growth and flowering reflect it.

I used to plant them in the ground every summer and dig them out in fall but realized that it was too much work after a couple of years. Now I have planted them in plastic pots; those are hauled indoors in fall. I let them grow in larger pots every year. Sometimes I let them stay outdoors pretty late during fall. But it’s always advisable to take them in early before the temperatures dip too low.

Usually, my hibiscus bushes are still in bloom when they do the transition indoors, and I let them finish flowering in my kitchen, enjoying another month of their gorgeous flowers! I have two colors; four of them bloom red with single petals and two in apricot color with double petals.

I place them in my kitchen, near the door to the backyard, surrounded by multiple windows that provide them with ample sunlight. Every few months I prune them to a manageable size, cutting the branches by 1/3 of their length. That way the bushes can keep most of their leaves and bloom throughout winter.

If at all, I notice any signs of stress or disease during their stay indoors (and outdoors), I spray them with soapy water daily that usually clear out any infestation right away. (I make a home-made remedy with vegetable oil, hand soap, and water to spray on them.)

In late spring or early summer, when the nights are no longer freezing, I begin their acclimatization to outdoor conditions by placing them first in my patio for a few days, then a partial shade for longer, before placing them in the full sun where they will grow merrily, flowering throughout the gardening season.

What is your experience in growing hibiscus?

11/15/2020

Meet my gardening companion

Benji, my cat, patiently waiting for me to stop operating my gardening tools…

She usually crouches under an outdoors sofa or a chair, her green eyes bulged in terror, her body tensed up and ready for flight, any minute. She despises the sound of the leaf-blower, lawn-mower, and hedge-trimmer in equal measure. I may have played a big hand in her fears since I have chased her around the garden while manuring all three tools, just to watch her wild feline instinct at work! She looks like a dwarfed cheetah, sprinting away from a higher form of a predator then.

She said, “Stop making that god-awful noise!”
I said, “Stop being such a pussy!”.

We’ve had many spoken and unspoken conversations while she waited patiently for me to cease, put away my tools (weapons), and give her my undivided attention. We’ve become silent companions over the last six years that she belonged to me. She would stick by me whenever I am absorbed in my daily routines, be it an art and craft project or gardening that oftentimes ran into ungodly hours. Today I was operating the lawnmower until the darkness fell and the streetlights came on. She waited up for me from a safe distance…

Benji is an outdoors cat, and she loves to take a stroll in my garden every morning, just like me! The only time she meows, is to beg us to let her out. She’ll dash off, even before the door opens fully, as if she’s escaping from a maximum-security prison with a dozen guards on her tail! She does this many times a day! I always felt that she was too wild to be kept indoors. So, I let her come and go as she pleases from spring to fall. In winter, she is to become strictly an indoors cat whether she likes or not!

She took her self-appointed job of safeguarding our “estate” from the raccoons, rabbits and squirrels very seriously. The birds and squirrels on treetops warn each other loudly, the moment she is seen outdoors, patrolling the grounds. As long as I can remember, I had the only garden in the entire neighborhood that rabbits do not dare munch on or squirrels do not dare dig in, despite an abundance of tasty treats, growing there. People used to ask me what my secret was, and I always pointed at my Benji, who to my greatest annoyance, never behaved like a hunter in front of people, instead rolled over and over on her belly begging for love…

This year, Benji has struck a friendship with the two rabbits living in my garden! She did let them munch on my beautiful lily trees that never made it to maturity. The entire garden season, she didn’t scare them, instead she sprawled on my garden beds in a sociable manner and watched the rabbits treat it like a salad bowl. I think she thinks they are her long-lost siblings! Once, I even caught her lounging in the same flowerbed with a rabbit!

Seeing Benji by my side in the garden once, my neighbor said that she was guarding me. I think, she thinks that she is a part of me like my sons did when they were babies. The difference is, my cat never grew up or developed a separate sense of identity as an adult, like my baby humans did. For her, she is me, and I am her. For me, she is the only wild-fur-ball in this entire planet that can make me smile from my spleen!

11/13/2020

For the last 4 days, when we got amazing weather in Brampton, ON, I put my dry leaves – diligently collected from my neighbors and from my garden beds– to good use! I mulched them spread on my cement walkway, running the lawnmower on top of them, and shredding them into tiny pieces. I prepared my own special triple mix with 1-part each of sheep manure, gardening soil, and leaf-mulch. The mixture was quite luxurious, felt light and airy in my hands, and even looked pretty with the colorful shredded leaves embedded in black soil. I used this mix to plant my lily trees (135), daffodils (120), and peonies (12). I have 70 more perennial tulips to go in the ground tomorrow and then, I’ll be done with fall planting! Wish me luck with good gardening weather and another beautiful day tomorrow!

11/09/2020

Fall is leaves heaven

I still remember my first fall in Canada… Kyle, my first born was a year old, and had just started walking after taking his own cool time, which had me fretting over for months! “What if he never walked or got teeth, even as an adult?” Sanath used to joke, sensing my concerns over his delayed milestones. But he did walk, during our first fall together – joyously crunching the dry leaves, under his wobbly baby feet, gripping my fingers for support, with a big ecstatic smile on his face,

Both of us learned to love fall together – our most beloved season of all! We loved the colorful fallen leaves… On our daily walks to High Park in Toronto, seeing leaves spread everywhere, carpeting the pathways, he would wiggle out of the stroller to jump in piles upon piles of leaves, screeching with excitement.

As a gardener, I began to love dry leaves for a different reason, other than the soft crunch on our walks that makes for an invigorating nature tune in my ears. I use them as mulch in my garden. In fall, I collect dry leaves in mounds from my garden and my neighbors to make leaf-mulch that nurtures and protects my flowerbeds in winter.

Today, I was in leaves heaven! I made a pile of leaf-mulch that was over 2 ft tall, 5 ft long, and 3 ft wide! Once I use a lawn mower to chop them into little pieces, they break down more quickly in the soil. They also can develop into partially decomposed leaf mold that can be easily worked into the soil.

The next time, before disposing your yard waste or dry leaves, think about why leaf-mulch is good for your plants.

How is leaf mulch good for plants?

• Helps to keep soil warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer
• Improves soil fertility
• Retains soil moisture
• Suppresses w**ds
• Reduces soil erosion

In fall, you will find me begging for dry leaves in my neighborhood. I don’t let a single fallen leaf in my vicinity go to waste. They all end up in the ground and come back to dazzle me all over again...

11/08/2020

The Joy of planting fall bulbs…

I am not ready to put away my shovel and gardening gloves just yet! Fall is my favorite time of the year to dig in the garden with the colorful trees swaying in the wind, rustling up an orchestra, playing soothing nature tunes in my ear. It is a joy to be in the garden, when the days are cooling, and fall happens to be the ideal time to plant spring bulbs.

Here’s a list of bulbs that I planted this fall that will give any garden, the first burst of color in spring.
Alliums
Tulips
Peonies
Lilies
Daffodils
Irises

This year, I got shipment of 322 bulbs in time for fall planting… The scent of the lily tree bulbs fills me up when I walk into our family room and find them neatly stacked on the coffee table. These days, I am a self-driven and undefeated one-woman team, on a crazy marathon to put them all in the ground before the weather turns again.

Today, I planted 50 lily trees! I have four more days of good weather coming up and I will be prancing around in my garden for the next few days, as happy as I could ever be…

11/06/2020

Overwintering Gladiolas in Fall

Yesterday, I dug out the last of the gladiolus to be over-wintered before it gets too cold to work outdoors. After flowering in long heavenly stalks, I let the plants mature while the bulbs store the maximum energy that will get them going strong the next season. Most of the bulbs seemed to have fattened up beautifully and gorged up the nutrients and the sun. I was extremely happy with my harvest.

Decades ago, I discovered how easy it was to overwinter gladiolus. Usually, I wait until the frost blackened the foliage but this year, I wanted to save the leaves, those will be dried up and used for my winter art and craft projects. I dug them out, still in their healthy sheen, cut out the clumps of leaves, and piled them into an empty wide-mouthed container to be dried in the sun.

I have planted the gladiolus in the ground and in planters this year. First, I recovered the ones scattered around the garden, and yesterday, I dug out the ones in the planters. When digging from the ground, I usually use a shovel (called a “drainage shovel”) with a long blade, inserting it deep, and lifting up the soil gently, avoiding causing damage to the bulbs. The ones in the containers, I took out with a hand shovel that did an excellent job, considering the lack of legroom and how sturdy the plants were embedded deep in the small containers.

I cut back the stems and foliage at a length of about 4’ inches remaining attached to the bulbs. The old bulb, (usually brown in color, shriveled, and spent) that is still attached to the new bulb, can be removed after being dried out for a couple of days. If it doesn’t come off easily, I just leave it be, to be dealt with when I am planting them indoors nearing next spring.

I let them dry out for a couple of days before storing them in cardboard containers. On days that weather cooperated, I have even let them dry outdoors with a mesh cover protecting them from the impish squirrels those often dig in my planters, searching for any hidden nuts or bulbs.

I had several cardboard boxes that I got shipments from Vessey’s (an online garden store in Canada) and they were perfect for my storing purposes. I use rabbit bedding to separate bulbs so that they lay in rows without touching each other. This is a precaution I take to discourage disease spreading to the whole batch, if one or two bulbs end up getting rotten. I laid the first layer of bedding, and packed the bulbs in two rows before covering it with another layer. Then I continued until I had 36 bulbs in total per box, separated by 3 layers. I store them in a cool place during winter.

Now I have over 100 healthy gladiolus bulbs, ready to be planted next year!

11/05/2020

Winterizing Purple Fountain Grass

Purple fountain grass is a beautiful ornamental plant variety that provides dark purple stalks of grass flowers, adding spectacular movement and texture to a landscape. This year, I bought 13 plants from Lowe’s for a $1 each on clearance.

I planted them in two rows, bordering one side of our driveway, those grew into healthy bushes in brilliant wine color, against the yellow black-eyed suzans and bee balm in brilliant red. They maintained the biggest showpiece of a border in my garden this year!

Purple fountain grass is a warm season grass, and will only grow as an annual in Canada. I’ve decided to take care of them indoors during winter months. I intend to enjoy their whimsical, playful, and striking colors of purple fountain foliage for years to come!

This ornamental grass has amazing flowerings, a close look-alike to the many squirrels residing in my garden with their bushy squirrel tales. The foliage in grassy blades, sway in the wind glistening in a dark reddish purple color. I grew them in the ground and as well as in containers and noticed that they grew healthier and more colorful in the ground.

They grew quickly over 3 feet tall and over a foot-wide in clumps. The arching leaves that shoot outwards from the center represent a water fountain, hence the name it earned. The first glimpse of my garden in the morning and the last thing at night, my eyes particularly linger on this wonderful sight of a grass border.

Plants were dug up a couple of days ago when Brampton weather turned spooky and sprinkled some snow during the Halloween week. I saved their foliage that will be dried out and painted for interior decorating projects. I planted them in pots slightly wider than the root base and watered well after taking them in.

Taking care of fountain grass indoors is easy, keeping in mind not to over-water them. It can die easily from drying out; therefore, the roots have to be kept moist. I clipped the foliage down to about 3 inches and stored them in a sunny place. It will bare green foliage during winter but once planted outdoors in the sun, will go back to its former glory!

Purple fountain grass survives indoors, in a basement, garage or any other place with moderate light. When gradually acclimated to a warmer climate by putting the pots outdoors for longer days at a time over a couple of weeks, they will grow into healthy bushes again. I intend to divide each one of them and get double the plants next spring, and plant them in borders for a spectacular display! I can’t wait…

11/05/2020

Propagating Angel's Trumpet

The trumpet-shaped, breathtaking and incomparable flowers of angel's trumpet were a showstopper in my garden this summer! One of my friends had three of them in three colors, growing majestically in her garden, and by fall, as all Canadian annuals do, they were headed for the garbage.

I rescued and gave them a warm home during the winter months. By spring they have already started sprouting branches every which way and growing taller, and by the end of the gardening season, each one of them have reached up to my shoulder!

Angel’s trumpet is a delightful addition for any garden. Last year, in Sri Lanka, I found them growing as trees in the shade, flowering in hundreds in Victoria Park, Nuwara Eliya. It can be grown either as a woody shrub or small tree even in Canada, judging by the growth-spur they showed within a year.

It is a tropical plant, grown as a container plant in plastic pots that can be hauled indoors when the weather gets colder. Although all my Angel’s trumpets bloomed in pink, I couldn’t have enough of them. The 20cm flowers produce a strong, fragrant scent, specially at night.

These plants, if stored in a cool, dark, frost-free place, can survive all winter and regrow the following spring. I had them by the window where it got enough sunlight. Although after a while they tend to shed the leaves, the shrubs remained alive and gave me hundreds of flowers in summer through to fall. (They are still flowering in my kitchen!)

Angel's trumpet prefers a shady location although it does fine in the full sun in my garden. It grows best in acidic soil. I have used a mixture of common gardening soil and clay soil found in abundance in my garden and it did pretty well in it. It is safe to say that they survive in any kind of soil that is rich in nutrients.

Angel’s trumpet needs to be watered often as it is one of the thirstiest plants I’ve come across. I had to always make sure the soil stayed moist. The moment it becomes thirsty the long colossal leaves start drooping but I noticed that just minutes after watering, they come back to life as good as new! Also, over-watering can result in root rots.

The most exciting thing about growing Angel’s trumpet this year was how I was able to propagate them through the cuttings! It was the easiest propagation I’ve pulled-off to-date! I just clipped three young branches and dipped them in a plastic container of soggy soil. My reasoning was, as they prefer water, they will root well in moist soil. And they did! Not only all three branches rooted and produced three little plants, within a couple of months they started blooming too… They are still blooming indoors!

So as a rule of thumb, young cuttings will root, if placed in potting soil and kept moist. A few weeks in the shade, they develop good root systems and can be planted in the garden or in bigger pots.

11/05/2020

Pickled cherry tomatoes

A store-bought jar of eggplant-pickles inspired me to try pickling my cherry tomatoes this year!

It's a joy to pluck my own tomatoes and put together a garden-fresh salad any day! This year, I ate from my garden, well into fall. I was late in getting the tomato plants in the ground this summer, and as a result, I had them bulging with young tomatoes by fall, when the freezing started a couple of days ago. (We are back to double digits and today it's a whopping 18 c. Yeah!)

There was no option of waiting for them to ripen indoors since they have gone soft in the freezing. If you are looking for a quick way to preserve cherry tomatoes, pickling is a way to put them to good use. The pickled tomatoes can be easily used in cooking or you can snack on them as you please!

The results from my efforts were amazing! I’ve been eating pickled tomatoes whenever I open the fridge and see them swimming temptingly in their containers.

Following is a list of ingredients I used. Add suitable quantities as you please. Eye-balling is a special skill used in recipes, loosely put together such as this!

Cherry tomatoes
Garlic
Ginger
Cloves
Cardamoms
Cinnamon
Black pepper
Chilli powder
Apple cider vinegar (or any vinegar)
Water
Salt
Sugar (optional)
Things we need:
Skewer/ toothpicks
Oven safe flat container with a lid
Storing jars

This is how I pickled my young cherry tomatoes:

Wash and dry the tomatoes. Use a skewer/ toothpick to poke a hole in the tomatoes. (I didn’t since the tomatoes were already soft from the freezing.)

Place the tomatoes with the spices (cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, pepper) in an oven-safe flat container.

Make the pickling brine with vinegar, water (half the amount of vinegar), salt, and sugar in a saucepan over high heat. Bring it to a boil while stirring. Pour the brine over the tomatoes, submerging them completely, and close the lid.

Place the tomatoes in jars. Add the brine until the jar fills almost to the top. Tighten the lid and store in fridge after the jars cool down.

The pickles absorb their flavor as they age in jars. I started eating them the very next day!

11/05/2020

Why I garden:

I have an innate desire to create beauty around me. I love renovating and interior designing projects. I design semi-precious stone jewellery. I paint landscapes, bottles, vases, pots, furniture, and basically anything that is paintable. I sew. I quilt. And I garden. My garden, hands down, is one of the best life-long projects that I have undertaken!

I am the most powerful being when I wear my gardening hat! I turn seeds into beautiful flowering bushes of holly hocks. I turn bulbs into gorgeous bouquets of tree lilies. I turn roots into the most fragrant blooms of peonies. I become God when I garden!

It is an art that I create with flowers, bushes, and trees. Unlike in a finished canvas, I can always go back and recreate my landscape to make it more attractive! In fact, that’s what I love most about gardening – being able to create different designs, every gardening season. I never run out of things to do in my garden…

Gardening turns me into a risk-taking, gambling, and experimenting magician, and over the years, I have diligently learned and mastered a bulging bag of tricks that had turned me into a seasoned gardener.

I am a mother to all my plants and trees – even the wildlife that comes with it! I talk to my plants, encourage their efforts, and feel proud of them just like a proper parent. Gardening makes me a lifelong nurturer, and its my most cherished self-identification.

Gardening is my favorite means of being physically active. It helps me to stay in the “now” and breathe deep, just like how yoga does it for me. It gives me plenty fresh-air, and exhaust my pent-up energy on a daily basis. After a day spent in my garden, the wholesome rest I get at night and the quality of sleep that comes with it, is incomparable!

Not only gardening builds my stamina, it teaches me valuable lessons in work ethics, patience, and thrift. In a garden, you learn daily, similar lessons that you come across in any given society.

It gives me the opportunity to bury myself in soil! I love soil! I love its rich color, texture, and smell so much so that it’s engraved in my soul. In spring, I wait for my triple mix soil to be delivered with the same enthusiasm, another would for attaining riches.

I love my fellow work colleagues; bees, worms, butterflies, lady bugs, humming birds, and even snails. It’s the best team I’ve worked with being synergistic and all, in every sense.

Gardening is a way of separating the fake from real attitude. I’ve yet to meet a wishy-washy personality in a gardener! It is definitely not for the faint-of-hearts as you cannot fake the hard work that it requires to become a gardener. It’s not for the shade-lovers. It’s certainly not for the dilly-dalliers.

My garden is where I enter into a meditative state when my mind stills and observes my interactions with plants. The human world disappears when I am among my trees and the plant world takes over, serenading me with peace.

Gardening replicates how things work in our universe. When a plant grows and attains maturity through flowering, seeding, and propagating, it represents the cycle of life from birth to enlightenment to death.

Gardening teaches me how things can come back more beautifully in their rebirth. It shows me how nothing goes to waste and everything has a purpose in life. It teaches me Buddha’s truth, and that my despair over impermanence is a futile endeavor.

Gardening helps me to practice gratitude, embrace humility, and choose hope. I am eternally grateful for the sunshine, rain, and microscopic beings, enriching my garden. I am humbled by the splendor of seasons that color my life. I have hope for humanity when I witness the abundance of our world in a garden.

Most of all, I garden, simply because it makes me the happiest! How about you?