Sundaikkai/ Turkey Berry/ Pea Aubergine.........

What a delight it was to discover this lovely veggie - growing right under our noses (or rather right above our heads, since it is on our terrace), and that too just when Shirish was getting ready to chop it right off - why? ask him...some logic about, "we don't know what it is and it is unnecessarily occupying space". Thankfully, I intervened and requested an extension of time for a few more days - I wanted to photograph it and send it to a city farming group to ask if anyone knew why this particular brinjal plant was producing berries instead of brinjals.

This sunday we finally managed to take that pic and send it across - and before the day was over, we were overjoyed to find we were growing turkey berry. This is called Sundaikkai is Tamil and is an item found in its buttermilk-dipped sun-dried form (called vathal) in traditional households , which is then fried in ghee and had as a crunchy slightly bitter accompaniment to either curd rice or just the whole meal. We have been using the store-bought sun-dried version too for quite a while. However, this was the first time we have laid our eyes on the green berry, we sliced one open and found it is filled with tiny brinjal-like seeds underneath the thin outer skin.

Sundaikkai puli kootu

Pachai Sundaikkai mor kuzhambu

Soon we were cruising the web to download some of those delectable recipes using this berry (or should i say brinjal?) and needless to say enjoying them in mor kuzhambu (south indian form of kadhi) and kootu (wet subji with tamarind and lentils) forms in our next meal.



This berry supposedly has medicinal properties - helps with digestive disorders, keeps away coughs and colds etc...check out the wiki link for more info. I am hoping my tummy is magically set right after consuming all those sundaikkais. ;-)

I also found out that these brinjals are specifically used in Thai cuisine - esp. the characteristic green and yellow curries.

Characteristically they are supposed to be a bit bitter, however, we could hardly detect any bitterness in our berries. All the better for us, eh!

Look at how many we managed to collect from 2 such plants, in addition to the tomatoes and those 7 peas (he he!).

An interesting comment from the city farming group was "We have such amazing varieties of Brinjal with us and yet why are we running after the BT Brinjal!". Surely worth thinking about.

New look garden

Our terrace is a cleaner, more spacious space now, with our garden getting a new look thanks to the crates we got made. All our earlier beds (except one in the corner) have been shifted to the crates. And suddenly we realised that our garden had shrunk - maybe it would be more manageable now - we'll get to know soon.

In filling the crates, we have done a few things differently in the different crates.
In the first few that Shirish filled, he simply started filling it with some coarse matter like coconut shells, coconut fibre, sugarcane bagasse, twigs and the like followed by some dry leaves, some compost and then topped with the soil (actually composted veggie matter +soil) from our earlier beds on the floor. In some cases, there were plants growing well in the beds and so these had to be transplanted gingerly with as much of the root ball intact. A delicate task, done patiently by Shirish.

By the time we reached our 3rd, 4th crate, we realised that not lining the crates from inside with something non-permeable may result in a lot of soil and water waste - since there ware sufficient gaps between the planks in the crates. This would not serve one of our objectives of moving to the crates - which was to prevent soil loss during monsoons. Further, the crates would deteriorate faster, as they were in direct contact with the soil and the organisms in them. So now we started with a layer of old tarp or plastic sheets that we had lying around the house - these were not in pristine condition, but we figured that would help in drainage of excess water yet preventing too much soil loss. But we weren't extra careful about covering every inch of the crate and the sides - sometimes the plastic covered only the bottom, sometimes the bottom and the length sides but left out the width sides.

After 4-5 more crates were filled, we again stopped to think - we just don't seem to be able to think when we are 'doing' - they always seem to alternate :-). We observed that even the second method was resulting in lot of water and soil loss and though some parts of the crates were protected, there were others which were not. So now we decided to be more thorough and started overlapping sheets of used plastic (we still didn't go for brand-new store-bought thick tarpaulin sheets as suggested by Niranjan, as this just did not seem like an eco-friendly option) in a manner we thought was sufficient to minimise water and soil loss at the same time the overlaps will provide enough outlet for the excess water. This way the crate-beds would remain moist longer, reducing the need for watering too often.

I think we are happy with the last few crates filled and are waiting for the next chance to rectify the mistakes in the first few crates.  (Since there are things growing in them, we will wait before the next planting season, just before the monsoons, to effect the changes). We have infact planted veggie seeds in almost all the crates now and are beginning to see things sprout.

In over a month of use, we have also seen the wood of the crates warp due to sun and water exposure, thus increasing the gaps all over. The moveability and the lightness is a definite advantage, but we continue to ponder about better/ cheaper and at the same time eco-friendly options (these crates cost us about Rs. 1200 each, which does seem on the higher side). All suggestions welcome....

Winter cool...a cool winter

The winter has been nice and cool this time around - and for a change we are not envying our brethren in the north of the country. Now even we got to flaunt our woollies.

The cool winter seems to have agreed with the plants too. Of course, it was a good time to be doing changes - shifting the beds into our new crates and transplanting all the growing stuff into their new homes - 'cos the weather must have lessened the shock on the plants. We even transplanted some plants bearing fruits, and even they did not protest too much.


Its definitely been the fruiting season - all our tomato plants have been loaded with beautiful round darlings - lots of green tomatoes for our favourite 'rasavangy' subji - we even took a bunch to chennai and made Amma do the honours to them. A yummy tasty meal for 4. And then we came back after 10 days to find a whole lot of red ripe tomatoes - juicy and attractive - we are still feasting on soups, rasams and tomato-gravies. There were atleast 3 different kinds of tomatoes at one point - the slightly oval (longish) ones you normally find in the market these days, the round but squat ones a.k.a 'naattu-thakkali' which are really tart and great for rasams and finally the small round cherry tomatoes.

The green tomatoes along with the chopped sponge gourds and the laal maath/ lal bhaji

And then there was that lone cabbage sapling, which survived beyond all odds and finally developed a nice little cabbage after being transplanted into a crate.

One of our older vines finally showed its true colors and produced 4 cute little sponge gourds - promptly turned into tasty 'thuvaiyal' to go with hot rice. After a rather long wait, our brinjal plant produced a purple-and-white-striped beauty - and a double conjoined one at that - this one made a great 'thaan' in the sambar.

The sponge gourds on the vine

Double Delight

Our baby papaya tree is a baby no-more - it is already producing baby papayas - we are so looking forward to these :-))

The bumper harvest of this winter, however, has undoubtedly been the mango-ginger - almost 2 kgs - here are the pics of shirish harvesting them - behold and feel the thrill of this harvest - its just beyond words.























For a while, our terrace garden got really populated, as we had to move all our pots from our balconies to the terrace too. This was because we were going to be away for almost 2 weeks and this way we could ask our watchman to water all our babies. See how lovely they look close to each other and sharing the warmth and happiness - i wonder if they also compare notes on their lives, health and well-being like long lost relatives meeting at a wedding (wink!).

The crates finally get their due...

This is a long overdue post, thanks totally to my laziness explained as being too busy to get time to do a spot of writing. Busy doing what, u might want to ask - that's harder to explain than trying to even remember what other things were occupying my attention. Life has this strange way of taking over, nah!

So, yeah, the seasons have changed since the last post and so has our garden drastically. The monsoon finally ended in november and gave way to a nice and cold winter. Just around the time the seasons were changing, we decided to do a face-lift to our garden too. So far our garden had been directly on the floor tiles,  but combined with the extended monsoon this time, it led to increased seepage downstairs in our home. A friend Niranjan came to our rescue when we were wondering what to do. He along with his partner, George had designed a crate from packing wood to be used as a planter. We quickly seized on this opportunity and asked Niranjan if he could design and make many such crates for us as per our requirements. He readily agreed and even offered us the use of one of the crates already lying with him. (pic in the last post). After trying it out for a short while, we could come up with the improvements we would need - like wheels at the base to make the whole thing movable and poles on the sides for creepers to climb on. Soon enough, he had 10 more crates ready and that too a ckd (completely knock down, for those averse to abbreviations) version.

Here are the pics of the assembly team in process:

The 'Bluewiss' DIY manual - really neat stuff

The disassembled crate -this is just the base and the sides
on the width side - the rest is neatly tucked on top of the base

Now u see the sides have gone up becoming a
nice 1.5ft. deep box - the right depth for veggies

Here u see the poles going up

Close-up of the joint-neat hinges and screw-based
stuff - no nasty rusty nails sticking out

3 of the final assembled crates - don't they look cool!

                                            

So now it was upto us to do some serious hard work and shift all our beds into the crates - that was really gonna require us to get off our back sides - you'll see how that went! :-)

Monsoon-the season of bounties

It really has been a looooooooong while without any updates. Ill-health and domestic concerns have prevented much attention to the garden, except to keep it barely alive. Notwithstanding our neglect, the garden has continued to surprise and delight us with its bounties.

The green patch in the foreground is the moong
and chawli patch atop a composting heap

Firstly, the compost pile that we had created and sprinkled with sprouted pulses, grew to become thick and long creepers of beans. We identified moong early with the help of our neighbour. As we started harvesting the moong periodically, the creeper kept bursting forth with more and more pods. It was almost endless. After a while, we also found some drier creamish coloured pods and wondered if it was just the moong which had become mature. So harvested these too along with the moong and as we started shelling the pods, we discovered that these were 'chawli' or 'lobhia' or black-eyed beans. We were thrilled. We now remembered forgotten dishes that used 'chawli' and thoroughly enjoyed cooking and eating them. This pile kept giving us moong and chawli for quite some time till last week we finally found most of the plants dried up. So we uprooted them all and are preparing to use this compost in our newer beds.

We also created another narrow bed near the entry to the terrace with the extra garbage we had managed to collect and planted some saplings of 'heirloom' tomatoes. We grew these from the seeds given by Deepika of Auroville during her earlier workshop. These plants have come up very well and are now laden with green tomatoes, that too shaped like the traditional tomatoes (a little squat and round, rather than oblong like an egg like the ones we generally find in the market these days). My mom was thrilled and decided to pluck a few green ones for a tasty 'rasavangy' (that's a traditional south indian subji and tastes nice and tart - great with rice and as we found also great with bhakris).

A small Almond tree

We also discovered after a few days that there was a 'badam' tree growing in this bed. So far we have let it be. Though we are now seeing that some of the leaves are being eaten away rather quickly. Maybe we will have to transplant it downstairs soon.

Bhindis going to seed

Our bhindis yielded quite a bit too - of course, never enough for a complete veggie dish in a meal, but if we plucked and saved them over a week, we would have enough to make a 'raita' or use them in 'sambhar' or 'avial' or whichever dish called for a few pieces. But now their lives are over and we have uprooted them and removed that bed and used it to fill our new crates. Of course, we have managed to save quite a few seeds out of this lot and are looking forward to planting and enjoying a good harvest from them next year.



The surprise delight among the bhindis was the red bhindi (again from Deepika's seeds) - we had planted quite a few seeds, but got about 3 plants, of which 2 yielded some bhindis. Not a great yield - the plants did not look very strong and very soon the leaves were eaten by insects. But we got a handful of red bhindis over a few weeks - the only unfortunate thing was that we did not get to make more seeds of this. Looks like we will have to knock on Deepika's door for more seeds of the same for the next season.

This plant is now bereft of any leaves
but is continually putting out fruits

Another late blooming variety of bhindi that we got was a fat light green coloured one, with a lot of tiny prickly things on it. For quite sometime we observed these plants exhibiting only vegetative growth, these plants grew really tall with no signs of a flower or a fruit. At one point, we almost uprooted them, but let them be just because of laziness. Maybe the plants read our thoughts, 'cos soon after they started producing the big fat bhindis. Though a bit irritating to handle (they just prick you all over the hand and keep itching for a while), once cooked, they were fine. This time, we are making sure we leave a few of them on the plant for seed-making.

Meanwhile, our castor plant has gone to seed too. 

The Basella vine has spread its arms and climbed over the parapet and now hangs down atop our bedroom window. We are pleased to see this from downstairs on our way back from our morning walk and imagine being able to pluck the basella leaves from our bedroom window in a few days.

Garlic chives flower

Our garlic chives plant in a small pot on a windowsill also suddenly sprouted a long green stalk on which a beautiful wispy flower soon bloomed. It really is the season of 'seeds'.

Root of Mango-ginger showing
the tubers forming

Mango-Ginger plant

The 'ambehalad'/ mango-ginger has come up very well too. There is a cluster of these plants, standing strong and the leaves just beginning to turn brown. We just uprooted one plant and got a few mango-ginger pieces which were quickly converted into a tasty chutney by amma. However, the size of the mango-ginger pieces led us to believe that maybe we should wait a little more for the others to mature more before harvesting. So we shall hold on and be patient.

Another big (literally) bonanza was a nice big pumpkin that we got, plucked when still a bit green, left in the kitchen to ripen further and finally devoured in 4-5 instalments in various forms like soup, pudding, subji etc.

Marigolds flourished during the rains and bloomed a lot - giving us enough decorative material for Ganesh Chaturthi as well as Krishna Jayanti festivals, even extending upto Dasshera. But then they just withered and died. I wonder if this is how marigolds work. Need to look it up. (Another of those to-dos that I never seem to be able to get to). Am waiting to see if new plants come up from the seeds of the dried flowers, 'cos that was how the plants came up in the first place - from a dry flower I had picked up somewhere and scattered the seeds of.

Aren't we all smiles!

A pink sweet potato
against a pink sky

An undergrowth had slowly come up in three of our beds. But nobody could identify for sure what it was - someone thought it was grass, others said it was 'matkee', a kind of lentil. We were beginning to think it was another weed that had taken root during the monsoon. In fact the last time we had similarly uprooted it, while clearing a bed and then had doubts if it was something useful. So this time we decided to let it be and see what came up. Looks like the wait was worth it. This week, we uprooted one of it and what do we get - a whole bunch of beautiful pink tubers - yes, big fat sweet potatoes. Some of them were immediately popped in the oven and then mashed with some condiments for a 'chaat' dinner. Some are still lying in the kitchen shelf biding their time. We also read on some website that most tubers are better when kept for a while after being harvested - they are more digestible that way and sweet potatoes are even supposed to get sweeter with time. We shall test that theory too.

Brinjal flowers

Some stragglers have been showing some signs of revival too. The lone Brinjal plant that survived from the 5-6 that we planted, and has now grown nice and tall, is finally blooming flowers. This week I also noticed a few small green berries, where the flowers were earlier. Am hoping they do get to develop into proper brinjals.

Our first crate lined with plastic -
suran, onion and cabbage transplanted here

Another one is the cabbage, which again was the only one that survived from the saplings planted. But this one too has been languishing, probably for lack of nutrients. So the first thing we did on getting our new crate and filling it up with compost and soil was to transplant this cabbage plant into it. And soon it has started showing signs of revival. It definitely has sprouted new leaves and we are watching it eagerly to see where it goes.

Suran (right) before it got into the crate
being cowded by the 'Vaaluk' (left with yellow flowers)

We have already seen the benefit of the first crate. Look at the pic alongside - here's our pet turtle - nah! - yeah, it does look perfectly like a turtle what with 4 legs and a head, but it is our very own home-grown tiny 'suran' or yam. If you recall from an earlier post, the suran first started growing in a mango-crate. But when we got our new crate, we decided to transplant it here, to provide it better depth and growing space to develop. And here's the output. Pretty cool, huh!