Green Shoots!

Took stock of whats growing on our rooftop garden, this morning.

Mustard, Coriander, Tomato, Onion, Ambe-halad, pineapple, tomato (one marble sized fruit) and the unidentified plants are doing well. One of the unidentified ones is spinach-like... can't be sure even after tasting a leaf.

Some pudina (spearmint) that Vanaja had planted last week also seems to have taken root and survived.

And stuff that we did not plant - some gourd, some papaya, some more tomato and a radish-like plant, are all coming up on their own. This is thanks to all the seed-rich waste we've used.

Not much activity for the Methi, Safflower. The peppermint stalk that we'd planted also seems to drying up.

One issue we've debated a bit is... how much mulch is good? We're using straw (gifted to us by fruit sellers). One of the beds (Dhaniya-Safflower) has shown little activity... the shoots of Dhaniya are smaller than those of other stuff we planted at the same time. I wonder if its because the mulch layer was too thick (it cut off sunlight?) or if Dhaniya just takes more time to germinate. ???

Now our rooftop green garbage is also stacked in a more orderly fashion... I mean surrounded by low walls of granite rods thrown away by a marble-granite wallahs. And its covered by jute bags, so its not flying all over with the wind. I've also tied down the straw much with thin ropes. The wind is quite strong where we live.

This weekend, we're off to a 'All about Seed saving' workshop at Vanwadi near Karjat. I think its happening at the right time for us. Hmmm... a lot of things start happening at the right time. Automatically. Hmmm....

As we sow....

We had decided this morning that today it had to be done. For the past several days, we kept postponing the planting for some reason or the other - getting plastic sheet, weeding out bits of plastic/ polythene from the soil, getting seeds etc. As the day wore on, it seemed that we will face the same fate today as we were busy doing one chore or the other. However at 5p.m, I said, lets go to the terrace this moment and use the dusk hour to our advantage. So we both jumped up, dropped what each of us were doing and picked up the seed packets Shammi and Gloria had given us and bounded upstairs.

There again things started taking hold of us - we went from clearing the terrace to shifting one of the patches onto a wooden plank, rearranging its borders, watering the patches.....and suddenly we realised it was going to be dark soon and we still hadn't accomplished what we had come up for. Then Amma came upstairs to see if the planting was done....and that spurred us on. We finally took out our seeds and ....lo behold! we found that nature wasn't waiting for us - small green shoots had already started poking their heads out from some of the beds. Looks like our garbage is beginning to pay back.

Already feeling good, we then sowed seeds in 4 of the beds we had made. In the first bed went Methi and Mustard. In the second one went some unidentified seeds - it'll be fun to watch what comes out. In the third went a bulb of onion which had already sprouted a green shoot. The third bed also already had a pineapple head. In went some 'Mango Ginger' (also called Ambe-halad in Marathi) too to accompany the onion and pineapple. Finally the fourth bed received seeds of Safflower and Coriander.

We have now elevated one of the rectangular patches we had made earlier, onto an old wooden door that we had lying on our terrace. We want to use this bed for planting tree saplings- maybe papaya, jamun, mango, drumstick etc. So the wooden plank was to ensure that the roots don't damage the roof, as well as to give free way to the water to drain. (This bed was on the path of the drainpipes)

We are happy about what we have accomplished today. But, now the curiosity to see green shoots appear is very high. At least it will ensure we pay a visit to the terrace every day and water the patches regularly.

Another silver lining to the day was our third mushroom bag getting made, again, after many days of 'waiting in the wings'. So now we have stuff growing, that we are watching out for, both inside our home as well as on the rooftop. Has our 'Growing Journey' truly begun?