How organic...

... we are willing to be while gardening ? 

Well here is an instance where we indulged in a fun and useful activity to create wood ash for the plants. Wood ash is rich in potash and also acts as a natural pesticide against most insects and ants and really a very rare thing to come by if you ask any gardener.And to add the fact that I love playing with fire, I pestered my mom and dad for DIY wood ash session.

So we fetched the mud stove that we take out only during Pongal celebrations and gathered some coconut shells and had a gala time making wood ash. My dad assisted me during the whole time helping me not to put out the fire(which was a humongous task I should say) and me & mom sat and chatted and enjoyed the warmth while the shells burnt thoroughly to give the ashes.

We used the ash only after a day's cooling , so the actual application of ash on the plants were not recorded. Anyhow, I am planning to do this set-up often, so I will take some photos during those times.

The volunteer Pumpkin

A couple of months back, this little fella was found in one of the containers. It's seed was just sprouting and the cotyledons were not even out. 

Pumpkins seeds are so unique and easy to identify.Since that container was already crowded I decided to give him a new home and tried to pull him out.Whoa.. that is when he revealed such a long root which I did not expect for a seed that is only half sprouted. I took me a minute to pull the root out without any damage.

Pumpkins are not suitable for container gardening. They need a free reign and a large plot which will be soon conquered by them.They are prolific growers. But we did not have the ground ready for planting yet, so he was put in a spare container and watered well.. 

Soon he has put up good growth. It is yet to be seen whether he will like this cramped space and give out fruits or decide to call it quits as the container is so small. 

But a trellis has been added for his convenience and I hope he chooses to flourish.

Amaranths

When we really try hard to grow Amaranths and sow seeds they do not survive and soon bolt just after germination. But when we care less and throw some seeds around, they grow lush and gives us some decent harvests. The Amaranth variety I am going to show here is a strong stemmed one called as 'thandu keerai' in Tamil.  In this variety, along with the leaves, the stem can also be used  in cooking - in a stir fry or in a sambar. I feel this variety is tastier compared to the normal Amaranth varieties. 

This one was around a foot tall

The flower head is starting to form

A look at the sturdy stem..it is best to give a support to the plant

This one was left to flower and seed to help our seed saving practice

A close up of the flower

As said, the plants shown above are kind of volunteer plants .ie. grown when the seeds were randomly thrown around the garden. I also prepared one small container and sowed a few seeds just to see whether it works atleast this time. As predicted, only very few survived and they too very much show all the signs of bolting.. Ah, the mystery thickens further in gardening Amaranths successfully.

The next batch.

A surprise addition to the garden

When I went home a couple of weeks ago, there was a surprise waiting for me. It is the sight of three small ginger plants growing up in a cozy corner nearby the curry leaves plant and hibiscus tree. I had to clear my doubt immediately and ran to my mom and confirmed that gingers just don't rise all on its own. My father had indeed planted(threw to be precise) some (quite old) ginger bulbs that he found in the kitchen. 

Little did they know that I had a plant wishlist and ginger is one that I had longed to have in the garden. I even tried cutting some bulbs from the store brought ginger and inducing it to put on a shoot by placing it in sandy soil but it had never worked for me. My father sure has a green thumb. 

In case you are wondering, yes the big rocky thing is the seed ginger

I, on my part, added a nice little fence around the growing bulbs using a small plastic carton. I removed the base using a hot knife and filled the set-up with compost+red soil+sand mixture. Looks like the plant loved the set-up as it had given few more new shoots. 

Nice lush growth already

Third ginger plant a little far away from the above two

It is a long wait now.. as ginger takes around eight months to mature for a harvest but heard that it's foliage adds an ornamental value to the garden on it own. So thats an added bonus in the process.

A couple of show-offs

I am calling them show-offs because that is what they are - to show-off that we too grew brinjals in the garden though they were not much useful in the kitchen.Six plants that were transplanted on February went on to produce (literally) hundreds of flowers but just two brinjals. 

Flowers shrinking due to lack of pollination

I am certain of the reason for this harvest failure.. Lack of any pollinating agents.Hand pollination rarely works in the Brinjal plants and even these two fruits formed only after many hand pollination failures. 

Finally one that decided to peak out

It would have grown a little longer if left, but we plucked it at this stage

The other one in the adjacent plant

Surprisingly this time we did not have any pest menace(touchwood). The first attempt went down the drains due to mealy bugs attack.And yet, still the second attempt at growing brinjal has also not worked out for us. And frankly we are very hesitant to try growing Brinjal in this Aadi season. Maybe we both are mutually exclusive gardening vise.