Jasmines

One advantage of the hot summer are the jasmines. They love hot and humid days and start flowering early May. In our garden too, they have started to bloom but since the plants are very small we have only a few flowers every day. Some blooms captured in the camera are here below..

Greens from the garden

It is such a joy to harvest green leaves from the garden and cooking it immediately and eating it fresh.Apart from the freshness, you also know for sure that absolutely no pesticides were used to grow them. 

We have that joy once in a fortnight alteast when we harvest our Manathakkali/black nightshade berry plant's leaves(and the mint leaves which comes into the kitchen atleast once a week).Nowadays the produce from a single manathakkali plant is enough to make a good tasty thuvaiyal and serve the entire family. 

Occasionally we do have amaranthus harvests from the plants that grow hither and thither in the ground garden. One such plant turned out very huge that we used its stem to make sambar. It was a very satisfactory meal and a harvest. 

With such a hot summer, we are eternally grateful for all the harvests we get from the garden however small they are!

Garden update

Let me show some of the veggies currently growing in the garden,not many in this hot summer and I have already shared the progress on the bitter guard plant that is thriving.So off to some slow ones ...

Ginger slowly starting..It has given four more leaves since this photo was taken and a new sideshoot has come up..

Purple chillies which are gradually becoming omnipresent in the ground garden .

I know this is not a vegetable but let me show it anyway --Sugarcane plants that are slowly progressing.The stumps from the Pongal Sugarcane purchase were buried half inch in the ground around January end. This is the progress for four months..We do have another plant growing that is nearly 3 feet tall but I forgot to take pictures of it.

Ladies finger in the container garden..We had only very less produce from the five plants.So they were taken out around June start.Pictures taken in May end

We have one more ladies finger plant that is growing in the ground garden and doing well for now even in this hot horrid summer.Thank Goodness!

Bitter and Better

The bitter guards are here again! My parents procured long variety seeds from their native place and we sowed a few seeds in the ground garden in late March. All three seeds took off but only one survived. One died when I stomped on it by mistake while watering and another gave in when we went for a four day vacation. The only one survived made up for the others and giving us a good harvest.The bitter guards from this plant are not very long as the one from our native place but still longer than whatever we have grown in the past.

So now we are having bitter guard curries and poriyal often thanks to this lone survivor. Some pictures here below...

The beginning

  

Color threads tied to identify the guards easily

One day's harvest

Aerial view of the vine spread

Harvests gathered over a few days

Avarakai - End of season review

I am very hesitant to write this post since I think,as much I try, would not be able to convey exactly the great time we had while growing avarakai this year and the abundant harvests the plants produced for us.In 2014 we grew the kolikal avarai(a type of runner beans) in a container and we got around 2 kilograms of pods over a period of a month and the plant rested after that. In my mind I felt that was awesome.. but my mom kept saying that runner beans usually produce profusely and that 2 kg is nothing compared to a plant that is grown in the ground. I never thought I would see the proof of her statement in just within a year.

The purple and green avarakai plant seeds were sowed on March 2015 way early due to my ignorance of the plant's season and life cycle.We had much trouble in protecting the plant until they got to the flowering stage.Watering regularly and wading off the pests took forever till we came to November when the plants started producing flowers. Then there was December's heavy rains and along with it came a swarm of caterpillars.Wading off and protecting the plant against the caterpillar attacks was the most difficult task we ever encountered while growing this plant.I recall a particular morning where mom and I were in the terrace fully drenched in the rain showers but trying to cut off the old leaves off the creeper to avoid further caterpillar infestation.We weren't bothered by the rain as we knew that if we leave the old leaves on the infestation might grow and then the plant might succumb.

Early days and pest attacks in December

Thankfully January arrived and the harvests started. And there was no stopping until very late April.We had harvested over 35-40 kilograms of pods. We could use only so much in our kitchen and we gladly gifted most of them to our neighbors and dear friends. A unanimous feedback we heard was how delicious the pods and beans tasted.

Just a sample of the harvest

Ready for a curry

The last days

This was a growing experience that I had not expected when I sowed the seeds and I am eternally grateful for the bountiful harvests.It certainly motivates a home gardener to step in further and grow more. And what more, as a family we had great fun growing this climber and we were really proud for hosting them in the garden.