Seed saving story#3 : Ladies finger

Last time when I posted about Ladies finger harvest,I so wanted to post a picture of the okra flowers but somehow it got missed. Ladies finger flowers are so pretty that it felt such a disgrace not to have posted any. So here is a sample before I move on..

Overall we had a reasonable harvest from the five plants that were grown in the containers. The problem here is most of the ladies finger plants produce one pod per day so it is only when you accumulate at least 15-20 you can make use of it in the kitchen. This sort of scenario poses a question on the freshness of the home grown vegetables. So it is always ideal to plan your number of plants to be sown based on your home requirements.

What I actually wanted to register in this post is our Ladies finger seed saving efforts.When we sowed the seeds for this season we used all of our stock. The seeds we had were of a good quality and the plants went on to produce really long and firm pods. So we decided to leave one pod on the plant to produce seeds for the next season.Ladies finger pods are known to 'blast' open once mature. So it is really wise to tie them up when they are mature and green like here..

Slowly the mature pods turn yellow and then brown and slowly rips open across the edges. The technique is to let it be on the plant till the stack is completely dry and then cut the pod off.

We are planning to dry the pod in sunlight for some more days before opening it and for now it is happily resting near the seed cabinet.

Purple chillies - update

Well, here is the progress of the Bolivian purple chilly plant. I had hoped in my earlier post for the plants to put on good growth this year. Since the start, these chilly plants had borne numerous flowers but almost 80% of them had fallen without fruiting. But since my last post, things have changed drastically. Some blessed bee had done a fantastic job pollinating the flowers and now we have quite a number of purple fruits. It is certainly a pleasing sight to look at them gradually changing colors as they mature.. Have a glance!

We have still not used them in our cooking..there is a good chance that all of these fruits may be left for seed saving. I'll wait and see how it goes. 

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.