Due to the corona epidemic, there has been a lot of awareness among people about their health and immunity. Because of which people are becoming very cautious about their food and drink. For this reason people have started planting plants with medicinal properties in their homes. These include medicinal plants such as aloe vera, basil, mint, fenugreek, coriander, ashwagandha, cardamom, amla, gilloy, neem, lemon grass, cinnamon, betel leaf, black pepper, turmeric, ginger, garlic, curry leaves. Let us know how to grow these medicinal plants.
Shirish Sharma, who has been doing horticulture in Bhopal for many years, is today telling us about some medicinal plants, which you can plant in the roof or balcony of your house. Talking to The Better India, he said, “While planting medicinal plants or herbs, you should keep a few things in mind. There are many plants, which grow and become big and dense trees. You should plant these plants according to the available space in your house. You may not be able to apply cinnamon, neem, etc. on the terrace or balcony or in pots. But other plants like Tulsi, Aloe vera, Giloy, Paan and ginger and turmeric etc. can be easily planted in pots. ”
If you want to plant medicinal plants in your home, then you can start with plants like mint, coriander, basil and aloe vera. If you already have these medicinal plants, then you can try to grow other medicinal plants. This season is perfect for planting these medicinal plants. Apart from this, you can plant these plants even before the monsoon. Shirish says that some medicinal plants can be planted with seeds and some can be planted with ‘cuttings’.
1. Ashwagandha:
Ashwagandha has antioxidant and antiinflammatory properties, due to which it is used in prevention of heart disease, diabetes, anemia to cancer. If you buy Ashwagandha from the market, you will find it quite expensive. But, if you do gardening, you can also grow it at home. He says that you can easily buy Ashwagandha seeds from the market and plant them in your home.
How to Grow up:
- First of all, you should prepare small plants from Ashwagandha seeds.
- For this, you take the potting mix in a small pot or seeding tray and sow the seeds.
- You have to make a potting mix in which there is no water. To make this potting mix, you mix sand and compost in normal soil.
- Seeds will begin to germinate after a week of sowing.
- Always water only according to the need in the plants.
- In about a month, your plants will be able to be planted in large pots.
- Now you can plant Ashwagandha plants in big pots.
- Fill potting mix in pot and put Ashwagandha plant in it.
- Plant only two plants in a pot and keep some distance between the two.
- Now keep the pot for about three days in a place where there is no direct sunlight.
- After this you can keep the plant in the sun.
- Water the ashwagandha plant as per the requirement. Never add too much water because, it makes the plant wither.
- In between, it can nourish cow dung or earthworm manure.
- Ashwagandha plants may take five to six months to grow.
2. Lemon Grass
Lemon grass is used extensively in making ‘herbal tea’. Due to its medicinal properties and increasing demand, many farmers are also cultivating it. The best thing is that you can easily grow it in your house, in pots. If you have lemon grass in a pot too, then you can take advantage of it year after year. You can also apply lemon grass purchased from the market in your home easily.
- First, take some stalk of lemon grass purchased from the market.
- Now fill water in a glass of glass and place these stalks in it. Keep in mind that these stalks will not be soaked in water completely.
- You have to keep them in water for about a week and keep changing the glass water regularly.
- Throughout the week, you will see that the roots have started coming down in these stalks.
- Now you can apply them in pots.
- Loam soil is suitable for lemon grass. For this, you mix sand and compost in normal garden soil.
- Fill the potting mix in a big pot.
- Apply lemon grass plants in that pot and water it from above.
- Water the lemon grass plant regularly and in between, you can nourish it with organic manure.
- Your plant will be usable in four to five months.
3. Page Key bell:
Shirish says that many varieties of betel are found in India, including Banarasi, Bangla, Deshwari, and Sweet Leaf etc. It is very easy to apply paan at home. Paan is a vine that you can apply with cuttings. You can take cuttings from a betel vine near you, in the house of a knowledgeable person, and if this is not possible, then you can also bring a small plant from the nursery.
- To apply betel leaf, prepare a potting mix which is full of nutrition and which has moisture for a long time.
- To make a potting mix, you mix manure, cocoapeat and sand in normal garden soil. You can also add bonmeal and neemkhali on top of it.
- For this, you take a big pot of soil, under which there is a hole in the bottom of the water. Put a lamp or stone on this hole.
- Now fill the potting mix in this pot.
- To support the vine, put a four feet long wood or ‘moss stick’ in the middle of the pot.
- Now in this pot you can put betel cuttings or small vine.
- Keep watering the plant regularly and you will see that the vine will grow in two to three weeks.
- The pan vine needs a shady and moist place to grow. However, shady does not mean that it is an indoor plant. Keep the pot in a place where there is no direct sunlight.
- You can give dung manure, neemkhali or mustard cake twice a month to nourish betel leaf.
- Within three months this vine will grow very well and you can use its leaves.
Shirish says that apart from these plants, you can also plant other medicinal plants like ginger, amla, black pepper in this month. All these plants are full of medicinal properties.
So what is the delay, prepare to plant medicinal plants in your home today. To see Shirish’s gardening video, you can watch his YouTube channel.
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