I've just published a book 'My Experience of Migration to Australia, How to Buy Your Way into Oz'

I've just published a book 'My Experience of Migration to Australia, How to Buy Your Way into Oz' and if you are interested in reading more details check it out on my website: Migration Experience Australia by Besko Halilovic

The book is written with the intention to help prospective migrants by sharing my experience of applying for both student and permanent resident visas and knowledge I've picked up in the seven years of looking for a way into and almost eleven years of living in Australia.

Follow the link above to my website or click here to see it directly on Amazon.

Yours truly,
Besko Halilovic

Tulsi pastime showing how remarkable she truly is

This pastime is so beautiful I had to share it.

Our Tulsi left us just over two years ago during the first winter in our new home. She was a six years old Tulsi and guess she couldn't stand less light and temperature fluctuations in our new home and during that winter she got spider mites and bacteria that I didn't manage to save her.

We didn't try growing a new one as soon after she left we found we were expecting a baby. Our baby is almost 16 months now and recently I had several questions to answer on this blog and started thinking it is time to sow Tulsi seeds again. It does not seem right for me to give advice on how to grow Tulsi at home unless I actually grow one at my home.
However, it is late to saw the seeds as the spring, as the best time to start a seedling, is long gone and winter is too close to have a chance of young seedling surviving the first winter in Melbourne as it would be too weak.

So last week our good friend calls me to say one of her friends who is leaving to India for a month or so needs someone to baby sit her Tulsi's while she is gone and she wouldn't go if she doesn't have someone to take care of her Tulsi's. As you might expect I was more than happy to take that service and she exchanged our numbers.

My wife was to pay her a visit and pick up Tulsi's during day and while chatting with her to organize pick up we found out she had two Tulsi's and one of them was torn apart by one of the boys living in the student home she lives at. One day she politely asked him not to smoke near Tulsi's as they are sacred plants and soon after he moved out of that student home and after moving all his possessions out he came back just to tore her Tulsi apart.

This was a surprising story to me. Why would you do this to any plant just to make someone feel bad escapes my understanding especially because the boy is from India and should know about the significance of Tulsi. Perhaps it was just a pastime to show the glory of Tulsi.

In the pot you can see the stem of original Tulsi

What the lady devotee of Tulsi then did is amazing. Being so attached to her Tulsi's she took every single part of Tulsi she found where he tore her apart and placed them into small glass water receptacles she bought for her as you can see in pictures and even tried transplanting the stem and roots of desecrated Tulsi into new pot in hope she might start to grow again.

Short time after she ended up with close to 50 Tulsi's growing roots in water waiting to be transplanted into soil which I am about to do in the morning and then add some pictures to illustrate what happened.

I explained her that she will have to give most of them away as she will otherwise in a year or so end up in a jungle of Tulsi's at her home and it might be almost impossible to take care of all of them in a small student room. You can see that even now they are taking one smaller kitchen table. I suggested she should start looking for devotees interested in taking care of Tulsi at home and this post might be helping her.

If you are reading this and you are in Melbourne and wanting Tulsi we might be helping her spread the glories of mother Tulsi and finding her new homes.

Roots out, ready for planting in a pot

Isn't it amazing how Tulsi in the same time defeated the purpose of this young boy by actually multiplying herself instead of dying and in the same time fulfilled my desire to be in our home again, not having to wait until next spring to plant her seeds and start a new seedling again.

It also feels so special to have a part of Tusli growing at your home that was so potent to go through this ordeal so gloriously.

Here is a couple of quotes:

"Every home with a Tulasi plant is a place of pilgrimage, and no diseases, messengers of Yama, the God of Death, can enter it."
Skandapurana 2, 4, 8, 13 Padmapurana Uttarakhanda

"Vishnu, the Lord of the Three Worlds, takes up abode in the village or the house where Tulasi is grown. In such a house no one suffers calamities like poverty, illness or separations from dear ones." Padmapurana, Uttarakhanda, 6-24-31-32

I've transplanted 13 of them that had roots

Soaking sun in a partial shade

All glories to mother Tulsi!

20140406 How to get rid of spider mites - Tulsi growing step by step

I was blessed not to have a visit from spider mites for a very long time.

Two weeks ago they showed up in full invasion of our two smaller Tulsi plants that are gracefully accepting to be filmed for my blog posts.

For this particular blog post I've actually used a video recording that will be posted on youtube as it was easier to simply make a video of the procedure I'm doing to remove spider mites than trying to explain it in writing.

I've done it in three parts so here they are:

Part 1 - Tulsi under spider mites invasion

Part 2 -  What you need

Part 3 - How you get them off

I hope you will find these videos helpful. If you have any questions please leave a comment.

Good luck with getting rid of them.

20131021 After winter transplanting and look after challenging winter

I apologize for not posting for long time. All I had time to do is reply to posts as soon as I was able to.

We moved house and everything in our life had to be reshuffled in a way. 

My service to Tulsi was challenged too and I have to admit I haven't given her as much time as I used to. 

I regret that and unfortunately it wasn't the first time.

Somehow or another these challenges come from time to time and we have to hold on not to let our Tulsi's leave us.

One lady told me her Tulsi left her body when she got her baby. She couldn't give her enough attention and she simply left over Winter.

I'm quite happy and humbled that our Tulsi stayed, otherwise this blog will be a bad example :(

That is partly the purpose I started this blog. To write about the good and the bad times in our service to her.

So from practical perspective here is what I've done.

Last Monday I've transplanted two of our smaller Tulsi'a in a slightly larger pot. So I went from 15cm to 18cm pot.

As you can see the pot size is just a size bigger.


This time I bought self watering pot as this way she partly regulates the watering her self a lot and looks better.

I've also given them a nice shower and I hope they would soon start budding with new force. 

As you can see they look a bit bushy. What I realized I was doing this winter is over watering.

I was doing the same thing I'm advising others not to do!

In the same time this advice is easy and not so easy. It all depends on the time spent with her. How connected and how attentive you are to changes your Tulsi undergoes and since I didn't have enough time for her I wasn't in sync with her enough and I gave them more than they needed.

Partly the reason is change of position to the sun and the fact they are now almost directly over the hot air outlet from our heating.

That means in the night there are fluctuations in temperature especially during winter time. It gets cold and than the heating system kicks in and splashes them with nice hot air and all night like that.  Temperature going up and down.

I've done what I could for the moment, transplanted them, given them a little bit of a liquid sea weed manure and I'm trying to give them as much attention as I can to avoid further over watering.

This time I've used our own organic soil from our garden. It's fresh, only a few months old and I hope it has a lot of nutrients in it.

Let's see how they will be growing.

Happy Tulsi growing.

This is how you hold Tulsi when you are transplanting her

Holding Tulsi while transplanting

All done. Tulsi's in their new pots.

About manjaris (flowers & seeds) Tulsi produces

Just to write a few words about manjaris (flowers).

Tulsi tends to give manjaris during summer hot season and at this moment in Australia she is profusely providing them. It is a way to give us plenty seeds to continue growing her and sharing her presence with our friends.

Although she is beautiful with them you need to bear in mind the production of seeds diminishes her life energy. My mentor always says 'if you let her produce seeds she will produce less leaves' and the greener she is the healthier she is.

As simple as that.

So, you will need to remove all excess manjaris and offer them to Krishna.

The whole of last season I've allowed only about four strongest manjaris to go into seeds and when the seeds turned brown I've used one of those transparent zip lock small sandwich bags to cover them, so they wont fall off if you accidentally shake the manjari. I've then left them there until they dried out making the seeds of good quality.

The reason for this bag is that the seed that falls off from manjari grows into small Tulsi withing the pot of mother Tulsi and this will mean you need to damage their roots to transplant them. Mother will surely survive but baby might struggle so I prefer that not to happen.

If you don't have a mini zip lock bag u can use bigger one by cutting it with scissors and making a small one using clear tape. Try to leave a small hole in one of the corners to keep the air coming to seeds. I didn't have time to do it this year and I still have seeds from last season but I'll try to do this in next few weeks and produce some pictures to give you an idea of what I was doing.

As you will see each manjari produces almost a hundred seeds if it is a big one as each manjari is made of maybe twenty or more mini flowers each having four seeds inside.

I gave some seeds to our friends and they all got Tulsi plants growing out of them.

The famous Tulsi that has the pictures in 'Growing Tulsi step by step' series on this blog is one of them.

So, even if you don't do 'the baging of seeds' thing just take care to remove all but one of two most beautiful manjaris in a season and your Tulsi is going to be growing greener and healthier.

Manjaris to be cut and offered

Fully grown manjari

Where to cut (under the first set of leaves)

 If you look at the picture on the left and one below you will see two mini manjaris growing just above the two top leaves. This is the reason we have to cut manjari under the two top leaves or better to say with the two top leaves.

Fully grown Tulsi gives a lot of manjaris

Manjaris ready for offer. When we have this much I usually share them with friends who have Deities at home for their offers and Tulsi appreciates and provides more and more ;)










Happy Tulsi, happy home!

20130223 - third cutting - Tulsi growing step by step

Haribol,

Here she is, our beautiful and most auspicious guest.

She is growing fast as it is summer time in Australia and conditions couldn't be any better. It's sunny, warm, humid, she is close to window and we keep the window open so she has plenty of fresh air.

Since I was removing the manjaris from her mother I also tipped off our baby Tulsi as she has been ready for this even last week but I didn't manage to do it.

It is important to keep in mind when you cut tips, manjaris or leaves to do it before noon. This gives her time to recover during day and it is recommended in scriptures.

As you can see in pictures she now has four tips to cut. From two leaves below each cutting we make she produces two new stems and next time you will cut twice as many tips. So first time we have cut one tip, second time two tips and third time we have for tips to cut. Next time it will be eight and so on ;)

Also, this gentle way of helping her to spread the twigs wider is the reason you need to be careful not to damage the leaves under the cut. If you do so by for example, being impatient and trying to cut the tip when she doesn't yet have enough length for you to safely do it, she will not produce the new stem from damaged bud at the the top end of leave stem so please be careful.

First tip coming off

As you can see, I'm following that simple rule I've been writing about several times. Three sets of leaves and you then cut the rest above.

Don't cut too close to leaves because of previously mentioned reason. Cut about 5 mm above leaves.

As you can see from the rip above I should have cut these last week but didn't have time to do it so I've done it today. The tips are still very young and it doesn't hurt her more than it should last week as you can see the stem is young, green and soft.

Caring for Tulsi requires a bit of logic, following your heart and just regular care for her.

Second tip coming off

Third tip coming off

 Same thing, count one, two, three (pairs of leaves on stem) and cut above.

Fourth tip coming off

That's it for this report.


Take care of your Tulsi and she will take care of you ;)

 

20130112 - 4 months later - Second cutting - Tulsi growing step by step

Hare Krishna,

Its now been four months and since the first cutting Tulsi has grown enough to make the second cutting.

As you can see from the point of last cutoff she has grown two stems that now have 3 fully grown pairs of leaves and another two just starting to grow.
















This is the perfect time for cutting again. With cutting the rule is as follows 1, 2, 3 cut off. You always cut above three fully grown pairs of leaves.

If you didn't have time to cut her and she grows so fast that it has done 5 fully grown sets then cut after the fourth. You have to be sensible and not give her too much pain.

So here it is, on the right you can see I'm holding the third set of leaves above which I will cut the tip and offer it to Krsna.

About to cut it now.

Here she is. The tops are cut off and she will from this point make another branch out.

If you wander why is the rule 1, 2, 3 cut off it's simple.

If you look at the way pairs of leaves grow you will notice that each pair of leaves grows vertical from the previous pair (90 degrees difference).

Making next cut after the 3rd pair will make branch to spread vertically to the previous cut making Tulsi spreading her branches in beautiful symmetrical pattern.

Please note how her stem between the leaves is not perfectly straight. It is because I'm turning her around every day because in house she has light only from the window and at the end of the day her tops are always turned towards window.

If you forget to turn her she will grow only to one side and will be hard to straighten her after some time.

You can fix this only by transplanting her to new pot with adjustment of the soil to make her grow straight again.


Happy Tulsi growing!