Murungaikai Flowers galore

We recently harvested a bunch of the murungaikai flowers from the trees. This murungaikai flower harvesting happens mostly only once per year or none at all, since most of the days we leave the flowers to fruit and harvest only the matured fruit pods.

I was there at home when mom did the harvest and had a good feast of this rare treat. Alongside happened to take a lot of pictures of the pretty flowers. Some over here..

Zinnia - the latest arrival

We recently bought a zinnia plant from the Sunday market.The zinnia plant that I had blogged about in a previous post died soon after when the pot that hosted it fell from the fence. Maybe I spoke too soon, but hey, accidents like that cant be avoided in the gardening world.

The main reason we bought Zinnia is to attract bees. Bees that are critical for flower pollination are very less in number nearby our garden; sometimes their absence raise a question whether they exist at all in my area. So as a proactive approach for the upcoming season, we have planned to add as many flower bushes as possible to our garden to attract bees..you know like Marigold, Sunflower etc. So the first step has been accomplished in that matter by buying this Zinnia for handsome price of Rs.20.

There was only a single color variety sold in the market at that time, so we had to end up with a orange colored one. Since Zinnia love shades, we planted it right underneath the big guava tree.

Soon after planting, the plant started producing new leaves and buds. The blooms were not that bright compared to the pink colored ones but maybe the color will improve later on when the plant get adjusted to the new soil.

The beauty of Zinnia is that it self propagates via the seeds from the dried up flowers. A small plant has already taken life from one of the self propagated seeds. 

Oh, what a welcome sight!

Cleaning,Pruning and weeding out

"To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves." 

Mahatma Gandhi

Last month got a chance to clean one corner patch in our garden. This corner hosted one lone chilli plant that had come on its own and even gave 4-5 chillies. There were a couple of volunteer manathakali(black nightshade berries) plants too nearby it.But the residing ant colony in this corner never let the plants be at peace. And later on it became like this..

It was high time this corner get cleaned and prepared for the upcoming season.When I started cleaning it, I found this Veli mul(Prosopis juliflora) which is the most-hated weed on my list. In my opinion, this weed should be removed from all of our lands.It is very invasive and drinks water aplenty and does nothing good for the prosperity of the land. And so it was vengefully pulled up from the ground.

Then there was this good fortune of finding dried seed pods from the plants that you have grown. Than the seeds bought from the shop, the seeds obtained in this natural way is more effective and leads to good growth.

The seed pods that I found was completely dried and so they were duly collected and preserved straight away.

I will soon show a picture of what the cleaned up corner is currently hosting. Await this space.

On the other end, the December flower (Barleria) bush has stopped flowering by May and so they were trimmed and bound together neatly.

Since they are hedge plants they would survive well when tied together. Upcoming months will be used up by the plant to put in good growth and sturdy stems to start flowering in the winter.

A glimpse of the beetroots

Its actually more like a glimpse of the beetroot foliage to be honest. One of our favorite vegetable to eat is beetroot and more than the roots I like the leaves. The beet leaves taste delicious when they are made into a stir fry. 

Our first attempt to grow beetroots from the seeds bought from the Sunday market resulted in a naught. Not one seed germinated despite waiting almost for a month. Beetroots have the reputation of slow germination rate but a month is the maximum time to expect them to germinate.

Then we resorted to the brand company seeds and within five days all the seeds sprouted. But I made a big mistake of transplanting a few saplings when they were almost a month old. This decision to transplant was taken due to over crowding of the saplings in the pot but the transplantation was not a success.

Most of the transplanted saplings died or the ones that survived stayed the same size even after many days. Lesson learned and will be carried on to the next seasons.


The ones that were not transplanted are healthy and going strong.

The roots are beginning to form.









It is not yet time to pull the roots, but I am eager to harvest the leaves to make the stir fry.