The rose gallery in March

This month special: Exclusively presenting the white and orange rose blooms from our garden.Enjoy!

Runner beans - Season finale

The runner beans harvests are over and the plants were taken down a couple of weeks back. I should say we had good harvests from them, though not plenty in quantity but good in quality. We had not intended to save any seeds (unlike what most gardeners do)since we had good number of seeds still left from the seed packet we had bought initially. But a branch that went unnoticed had these pods - well matured and already dried,perfect for seed saving. What a bounty from not looking carefully! 

Of course home produced seeds will be given the priority over store bought ones. We are planning to put these pods out in the sun for some more days to get them completely dried and then store the seeds.These will become useful when we start sowing again for runner beans during August. 

And also this the first time, I am witnessing the complete life cycle of the bean plants. Well, someone put it right when they said "In every gardener there is a child who believes in The Seed fairy".  Amen to that.

Chrysanthemums: An update

I had earlier written about how we had bought three chrysanthemum plants from the nearby plant nursery and the Sunday market.We intentionally bought three different colored varieties, a white, yellow and purple, with the hope of adding some colors to the garden when their blooming season arrives. The yellow one died sometime back in December. We suspect December's harsh cold climate at nights were to blame, if that is even possible in our part of the country. But yeah, it was colder than usual this winter. 

The real twist in the tale is that the one we bought as white variety turned out to be actually yellow and the purple variety looks like pale white when it is fully bloomed. So the gist is, we haven't obtained the aimed result in adding different colors with our chrysanthemums, but boy we ended up with loads of beautiful flowers during their first season at home.

Well, as the saying goes, pictures speak better than words.

Going green! Having fun!

These sure make lovely ingredients for a 'Green' Meal..

A big bowl full of Mint and few chillies to make chutney...

Drumsticks that are available at a yard's distance to make Sambar..

A bowl of tomatoes fresh for Rasam!

All from the garden. Going green! Having fun!

Bitter is our new favourite

I have heard that the plants that belong to the 'guard' families start producing soon. This turns out to be quite true. The bitter guard saplings that were transplanted in the first week of February have shown good progress and started producing too.

The saplings on 2nd February. The potting soil used was a mixture of red soil,sand and compost.

Below picture shows my amateur attempt at providing a trellis for the plants. The trellis was made with an used wire-rope which was cut into three pieces and inserted deep into the soil nearby each plant. The top portion of the pieces were then tied together. Though very simple to construct,it has proven to be very effective for the plants' growth.

During the flowering stage.

The fruits forming after hand pollination. Sadly the bees are not that many around here to rely on natural pollination.


Harvest done on 19th Mar 2015. I thought that this was very early of the plants to start producing fruits but later discovered that this is in the nature of the guard variety climbers.


Another mention in favor of Bitter guards is that the plants are seldom attacked by any pests. Maybe due to its strong flavor I guess.This is the very first harvest that we have done without tackling aphids,mealy bugs, ants or other such things that bother the health of the plants. Surely, this is one cool climber to grow.

Bird sighting: White throated Kingfisher

Recently I had the opportunity to photograph this Kingfisher bird in close proximity. Although the kingfisher birds are a plenty here, it is very hard to get a good shot of photograph of them. In fact our neighborhood hosts a good number of different types of birds.I have seen many varieties that are normally considered very rare to sight and that too in abundant quantities. But all of them are either perched in the electric lines far away or always on a flight mode making it difficult to shoot without a zooming lens.So imagine the joy I felt when I saw this Kingfisher perched in my neighbor's parapet looking at a possible prey in the ground.

He sat there for a long time as if waiting for me to run to my camera and try a good shot of him. I would have had a better angle from the far end of my compound but I was hesitant to go there and make it a chance for him to take off. This much proximity is in itself very rare to come by.

How much ever I tried I could not spot what exactly he was aiming to prey on. After several moments he took the plunge to the ground to perch on a dry leaf mound that was gathered nearby. Maybe the prey escaped or it was not up to his standard,he left it and took off to the sky and sat on the electric wire line just above our terrace. This is the maximum justice I could do on taking a snap from where I was standing.

Here is a tidbit. These kingfishers belong to the category that are found only in India and the nearby countries.They are called White-throated Kingfishers owing to the distinct whitish patch near its neck and are very different from their counterparts found in the western countries. Its feathers are colorful with at least two shades of blue.The exuberant feathers are in full display when they take off and it is a sight to be cherished. You can read more about it here.

It was one of my wishes to photograph the birds in my neighborhood and I used to try whenever I see them frolicking around. So all in all a good day for me in the garden.

A lovely garland

Here is a look at a single day's yield from the floral department in our garden.

Most of the flowers in display are well known to everyone. So skipping them, I will come straight to the saffron/orange colored ones called 'Kanakambaram' in my mother tongue and referred as 'Firecracker' flower in English. These flowers look best when strung together in a stranded fashion.

As wiki points out, kanakambaram is an evergreen shrub which flowers all through the year and propagates via the seeds that form once the flower stalk dries. The seeds explode from the pod (thus getting its English name ) and grow into shrubs when they land in the soil. This is why,if you plant one single firecracker shrub and leave them be,you are sure to find them taking over the entire area to themselves.

Luckily for us, we have a patch of land in the west side of our property which is not easily accessible and quite narrow to work up anything in that area.We planted one single kanakambaram shrub there but it quickly died after producing just about a dozen flowers. We grieved over its death but did not replace it as we felt that the soil is the main culprit for the plant's death. Its just been a year since then and now to our surprise we have at least 12 kanakambaram shrubs growing in that area. All seeded from that one single shrub we had planted. They have started producing flowers profusely.We would be happy even if they take up the entire area in the west as we quite like these flowers and looks like they dont demand too much in terms of nutrients too. We have a couple of jasmine plants as well, so come summer,imagine how lovely these two would look together when strung into a strand. 

Bean fever!

Okay, officially I am on a bean sowing spree now. I had earlier mentioned how easy it is to grow french bush beans(dwarf variety) at home and that currently there is a container full of bean plants growing in the garden.This set of plants are nearing the flowering stage with tiny white(ish) buds appearing here and there.

But having seen how easy the task is, I did not want to stop with just one container. So with my niece's help I prepared another container and sowed another set of seven seeds.

Of course, that is not going to satisfy my eagerness. So I sowed a third set of bean seeds in the backyard,marking our first try to grow them in the soil directly. Here the seedlings growing in a straight line(around eight of them)are of the double beans variety. The ones growing in a semi-circle kind-of shape(in total nine plants)are the french bush beans.

Each of the sets have an interval of two weeks between them,so that the harvests extend over a set of months at least. In total we now have around 7+7+9 = 23 french bean plants and around 15 broad bean plants growing in the garden.

I could have ended the post with just the above,had I not discovered a fact about the state of the seeds that are currently available in the market. See, I had one packet of french bean seeds that lasted only for the first two sets of sowing.The seeds from this packet were of light brown color.The refill seeds that I bought recently from the Sunday market had a mix of pink and light brown color seeds with pink being the majority. I was joyed to see this, as I had heard that the pink seeds give good healthy plants and they tend to be more bushier. But my mom had a doubt whether the pink ones are actually kidney beans(what we call as Soya/Rajma in the local language) since the pink shade was more pronounced and almost close to being called red. We were in a dilemma but still went ahead and sowed the pink ones. Later when I wanted to sow the fourth set (yes, I sowed another set :), I called on my mom again to ask what to do if they turn out to be Rajma. We do not eat that bean variety that much and they sometimes taste bland in our opinion. Somewhere during the conversation, we decided to soak the seeds and check out the color, and lo behold, once I put them in the water,it turned out that the pink ones are not actually pink.



They are indeed the same light brown colored bean seeds but just had a coat of pink painting on them. I was shocked to see this and could not opine anything on this cheap trick that the seller had resorted to in order to sell them. Or..are they really cheap tricks or is any kind of adulteration being done even in the seed market.?

Anyway they all went into the ground as my fourth set of sowing.We will keep an eye on this batch to determine the actual difference in harvests between the normal and the 'colored' ones.