The jewels in my garden

Over to the flowers.. they speak for themselves..

Hibiscus, a recent addition to our garden

Chrysanthemum still going strong

I think the panneer rose is still shy in front of the camera :)

Love the layers

Its comparatively small but cute no less.

Recent vegetable harvests

Being a relatively new set up, our garden's vegetable harvests were very limited for the past months and comparatively minimal to the greens it had produced. Micro greens from my garden had been abundant in supply and very satisfactory. But most of our vegetable plants had been attacked by mealy bugs and continuous rains leaving us only with very little .. and sadly in few cases just one. But hey, I have to showcase my failures along with successes too..

So here is a series of pictures that has a sample of each of our vegetable harvests...

Ladys finger plants were graceful to us and grew plenty of pods.

Brinjals weren't so generous. Many plants bolted due to mealy bugs attack.. Just one survived and made it to the plate.

Many greens from Radish but only one swelled at the root

Within a month of planting ridge guard produced a healthy and plump guard. It is still growing strong despite some pest attacks.

We have flat beans and chillies in the flowering stage now.. They are very healthy thanks to the recent dash of compost tea.

Corn - Harvested!

It is a joy to announce that this time our corn plants performed very well. It germinated on time, flowered at the right moment and gave a good harvest.

Sowed on : Sep 1st week











Soil : We grew it in the ground, so no additional fertilizers added; watered it plenty.



















Flowered around Oct 2nd week:


































Here is our first corn for the season peaking out slowly.



Harvested on : Nov 3rd week.What it lacked in quantity, it made it up with quality and taste.

There are still some more baby corns left in the plants. We haven't decided whether to harvest them as it is or to let them grow into maturity. I will update soon.

Chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemum has always been one of my favorite flowers. They are a favorite for my mom and sister too. So of course our garden had to have them and we recently acquired three mums of different colors from the local nursery. Out of the three, the white colored chrysanthemum plant did not have any flowers nor buds when we bought it. Its been put in a new pot and hopefully they produce some new buds when spring arrives.

The below picture is of the traditional yellow one which costed around 25 rupees in the Sunday market. They had three flowers when we bought them and very recently it bloomed another single flower after it was put in the new pot. It still needs some more work to get it acclimated to the new soil.

Then here is the jackpot of chrysanthemums. Always wanted to own multi colored mums and again Sunday market had the answer to it. This one was purple & white colored and was priced about 50 rupees but I think it was well worth it. And I could see that the plants were in high demand too.

When I potted it, I was little careless and broke a side shoot from the plant. As per advice from mom, I planted this branch as well nearby the parent plant and it took life. Did not expect to have that quick a propagation from the mums.

Corn Surprise

They say 'a dash of color brings joy to life'. It felt so good to find out that, out of the 10 corn seeds that were planted one turned out to be pink corn :). A garden never seizes to surprise you.

P.S: This post participates in the Wordless Wednesday forum.

Spring Onion aka Shallots

A few days back, I was surprised to see a small spring onion lying in the backyard ground and overjoyed to see it had already sprung a bunch of leaves. I think it should have escaped my mom's hands when she was throwing the kitchen wastes in the compost bin and it ended up in the ground nearby. It must have been a week old but none of us noticed until then.

Its green foliage is so mesmerizing

On a closer look I could see a part of the onion was slightly wilt. Obviously it is due to this the onion had been discarded to the bin. There was good root development already and a tiny part of its root was into the soil when I found it.

I gently dug it out of the ground to give it a new home.I wanted to give it a nice container and see how it would prosper.So the plant was placed in a small used ice cream box filled with red soil+compost+sand and placed in a location where there is moderate sunlight with a little bit of fertilizer added.

I recall we had attempted to grow spring onion a couple of times before but every time the plant would wilt halfway thus giving no success to our efforts. So we had given up growing spring onion altogether.After seeing this volunteer's leaves I have some hope. Lets see how this goes.

Going the organic way!

When we started to set-up the garden,we wanted it to be an organic one.Home made compost was our first choice of organic fertilizer. We had been composting our kitchen wastes for a year now but the wastes were dumped in a pit in the ground and covered. Sadly that has also invited lots of ants and sometimes rodents too and young saplings had only a slim chance of surviving them when planted in the ground.

So we decided to set-up some plants in the pots and started composting the kitchen wastes in small buckets, covering them tightly and leaving them in a corner. Compost made in such small batches will be ready in 2 months to use in the pots.

Again 2 months seemed a long period to wait to start gardening. So to enrich the soil soon enough, we tried the below little experiment. Planting Green gram seeds in the soil.

Green gram seeds sprouting in soil( coconut husks added to retain water)

Green gram has a quick germination rate and they germinated the immediate next day. By the third day the plants had grown at least 6 centimeters in length.We could literally see the new leaves springing.

Third day progress

We let it grow another couple of inches, and cut them off to ground level, leaving the roots in place.The root nodules would have retained nitrogen from the soil and can be used further as nitrogen enriched soil which is crucial for leafy plants to grow.

I was glad to know this concept and amazed to see how quickly the process had completed giving us results in just 5-6 days. A quick trick that will come handy anytime in gardening.

Monsoon Mushroom

P.S : This post participates in the "Wordless Wednesday" forum.

Edible Mushrooms

The first few days when we were setting up the garden I was pestering my mom by repeatedly asking one single question .. 'will there be mushrooms growing in the garden"?. I became a wild mushroom fanatic ever since I tasted a wild mushroom curry in my native village when I was very little. Our neighbors over there had foraged the nearby woods to collect a basket full of edible mushrooms and me and my siblings had a go at the curry for free.

Ever since then I wanted to do my own foraging for wild mushrooms,especially mushrooms with caps(I dislike all other forms of fungi).Sadly I never had a chance since there are no woods or fields nearby my hometown. And I am also aware of the risks in mushroom foraging. It is very hard to identify the edible ones without an expert on this field. My parents knew a few but with no wilderness around I have no chance at foraging mushrooms.

A few mushrooms that sprang here and there in our garden turned out to be non-edible ones

So I was hoping that with all the greens around the house we can expect edible mushrooms to grow. Mom and Dad constantly reminded me that woods are the best friends for mushrooms and edible ones do not grow in home gardens just like that.

I am very happy to share that the rarity happened last week after the heavy rains.My long lasting wish fulfilled.

Presenting edible mushroom from our garden

A few days back when I went for my regular stroll through the garden I was stumped to see some mushrooms growing and which closely resembled the ones my mom had described as edible.

What a lovely cap.

I immediately took some photos and called the entire house and proudly showed them.

My mom holding the picked ones. They are a little smaller in size compared to the shop sold ones

 Then I spent hours on the net and found that this mushroom type is called as "Termitomyces Clypeatus" .. Boy,it took ages to find that name.

There are only a very few that is springing so no chance for a good wild mushroom curry. These mushrooms shrink gradually if not used soon. But I am happy that they are there.

A close up

This is rainy season here, so hopefully I could witness some more of these mushrooms this year.

The flower parade

These days the flora in our garden have started flowering ..

Peral white 'Mullai' ..

Three roses :)

The color of this rose is actually blood red. Its slightly having a lighter shade in pictures

Dont you feel so refreshing when you see them the first thing in the morning?

Our new addition to the garden .. mesmerizing orange

My favorite snap of this post

Add caption

Very happy that our mornings have become so lovely and joyful.

P.S: This post participates in the Wordless Wednesday  forum.

Our Rose saying hello!

This is our Panneer Rose's second flower which bloomed a while back..
but the interesting thing to note is that it looked like as if it is saying a HI first ..

.. and then opening fully to be a wonderful treat to the eyes...

What have we sown - Part 1

There is new life bursting everywhere in our garden and is quickly getting thickened up with green.

Radishes growing steadily. Although we don't see the bulbs forming yet, we are confident that they will show up soon. If not,there is this little consolation of the fact that we will atleast get good greens to eat.They are 30 days old now.

We had added a dash of plant nutrients to radish just this week so hopefully we get good results soon.

There are around 10 brinjal(aubergine) plants in our garden now and they are slowly progressing to grow. One particular plant is already in the flowering phase.Its first flower has not yet opened but may happen in a couple of days.

Lady's finger (okra) plants are a month old now and we can see the tiny flowers and pod formation in all of them.

We do have a little concern on a few of okra plants as their leaves are curling up and losing color but hope they put up a fight and thrive well with the new plant nutrients we have added.

We have also planted corn,tomatoes,chilies and beans too. I will add a part 2 to this post shortly.

A round-up on Roses

We have a total of 5 rose plants currently in our garden. With a dab of Panchagavyam and epsom salt they are growing very healthy and producing lots of flowers. This is a great news for us because in the previous years, our roses bloomed only 2-3 flowers per year.  But that is not going to be the story any more :).

Panneer Rose's first flower from a new branch that developed after bringing it to organic route

During the previous years of gardening we used to just buy the rose plant and pot it in a big terracotta pot and then leave it.We used to water the plants daily and due to the high quality of the soil the plants will start blooming even without any extra boost .. but our current residence does not have good quality soil.

Same story here..

So nowadays along with buying plants, we go for collecting red soil from the road nearby the railway track as well. The potting mix used this time was red soil+manure+plenty of sand.

Raindrops on Roses :)

It took some time for us to get the plants to change from the chemical fertilizers to our organic feed but I must say the plants responded quicker.There are lots of bud and basal canes in our roses now.

Waiting to bloom

Herb Harvest

The very first thing we did while starting the garden was to plant some herbs. Herbs are very easy to grow and requires only very less space and minimal maintenance effort. We had grown புதினா (Pudina) called as Mint in English for many years now.Our source for growing Mint was from the Mint stem cuttings that were bought from market for cooking. Of course only the stems were planted after the leaves were removed for making chutney.

Mint plants in the ground

Some months back,while in need to make the soil more fertile we cleared the mint bushes and left only the roots behind. My parents told that the plants will regrow from these roots with the help of rain. But we did not have to wait until the rainy season.

Ready for the Pudina Chutney

The mint roots took life just from the continuous watering and we had harvested 2-3 batches of mint leaves in the last month alone.Now Mint is growing in three areas in our garden now.

Next is our recent favorite Fenugreek Leaves called as 'வெந்தயம் (Vendhayam)' in Tamil and 'Methi' in Hindi. The process of growing Fenugreek is very simple. We just have to plant the Fenugreek seeds just a few millimeters into the soil(any type of soil) and then to make sure the planted seeds were watered well.

Fenugreek just two days after germination. Fennel plant in the front.

Fenugreek leaves will be ready to harvest in just two weeks and if we leave the plant further I think we may get the flowers and seeds in another couple of weeks. But we never go to the second stage.

Fenugreek when two weeks old

On the counter, ready to be cooked

We are now hooked on to the tastes of Fenugreek leaves and so far we had tried it with Potatoes (the dish is called Aloo Methi) and with Toor Dhal (this dish is called Dhal Methi) both very tasteful and healthy indeed.

The second batch of Fenugreek leaves plucked fresh from earth

The next harvest was the Amaranths leaves (called as 'முளை  கீரை ' Mulai Keerai in Tamil). We had planted plenty of Amaranths seeds in a separate pot but they are very slow to grow. For reasons unknown it has been 30 days since planting and still the growth is just about 50%.But a very few seeds that were thrown into the rose plant's pot grew well and already harvested and eaten too :).

Amaranths in the pot

Just a few but very satisfactory harvest

Thats about the harvest for now.One final picture of the fenugreek plants .. A personal favorite snap.