Sunny side up

There is this saying which goes as " When was the last time you did something for the first time.."

Ever since I came across this saying I had been trying to do something different every now and then from my routine life. Gardening happened as one of my first try-outs and in the world of gardening, there are limitless things to try for the first time. Thus we had our first Sunflower last month.

The Sunflower seeds were more of an impulse buy when we were shopping for seeds and we never really expected anything out of it when we first sowed them. For a mere five rupees we had around 100+ seeds and so we were throwing the seeds here and there. Absolutely no extra care was given as we did not know much about Sunflower growing methods. Only thing we did was to check for mealy bugs but then these are kind of trap crops to check the bug infestation.

Around 10 plants took life and within a month we had the first bloom. We were in for a surprise as this is the first time I am getting a close up look at a Sunflower. The flower anatomy is so complex yet so beautifully pattered with such vibrant colors. I am very glad we took the risk of growing them.

The blooms are not very big compared to commercial cropping but the flowers' size suits our small garden very much. 

We were happily exclaiming how the center part of the flower resemble one of our kolam(rangoli) design. 

But not all of the blooms were perfect. Some are like this.. I could not seriously guess what made it go this way..

The first flower stayed for a week or so in good condition and then slowly started withering and became like this:

There are some more buds developing in the plants and so the garden is going to be colorful for the sometime now.

The Ladies have arrived

Last year when I thought growing Vendaikkai/Ladies finger is such easy task I was in for a surprise. When the plants were right about ready to fruit, there was mealy bug infestation. And we did not have a clue what they were or how to control them. We had one or two harvests but then forced to take down the plants that time. 

This year we were a bit equipped and experienced how to prevent/control the white bugs and so this Aadi month we sowed the Vendaikkai seeds for this year in containers.The containers were kept in sight always monitored very carefully. Mealy bugs are usually present in the underside of the leaves. So you can predict how tedious this monitoring task could be. Hence we did not sow very big and had just 4-5 plants. This is kind of a trial run for us to check how experienced are we in controlling the mealy bug attack. 

After three months,looks like we passed. There was NIL attack by the bugs(Touchwood) and the plants were healthy and happy and started producing good quality fruits. Here is a round up..

Sowed on : Last week of July

First harvest on : Third week of September - to get good healthy plants we had plucked out the first few flower buds.

Just Hatched :D

First true leaves

A good drench of rain giving them a boost

Almost 2' now

Buds forming

Impressive

:)

After this success, we have planted some more plants (around 10) in the ground and they are progressing slowly. Now fingers crossed!