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.

The first post

Hi

This blog is mainly opened for the small garden that we have set up at our home very recently. The Tamil month Aadi is a favorable month for growing vegetables and that is when we started the garden in full flow.The blog is named 'Our edible Garden' and it needs a small clarification at this moment. It is aptly named 'our' because the garden is being maintained by everyone at home including the four and a half year old kinder-gardener. But the 'edible' part notates to only 90% of the garden as we wanted grow a set of ornamental flowering plants as well.. Will a garden be complete without a few rose plants? Absolutely not..in our opinion.

I think gardening skills runs in our family through many generations. My great grand relatives were mostly farmers in trade and many lived very close to the farm fields and vegetable plots. And then even after moving to a work trade of the modern world, my father and mother maintained a garden and that too an edible one whenever it was possible. This was modestly helped by the company provided quarters residence system which comes with a small plot in the front or backyard for default. I can go on describing each of those gardens maintained by them but I think I want to save a few for the later posts.

So from now on occasionally we shall put some information on our method of gardening and the produce we had obtained. I will end this post with a picture of our yellow rose that I plan to call as 'Quick Bloomer'.Since it is the first one to produce a basal cane and bloom a flower among a set a four store bought rose plants.

The Quick Bloomer's first flower.