Our first harvest...and many more seeds to sow

Last few days have been rewarding every time we went up to our terrace. We saw steady growth of our plants. We also managed to identify some of the plants that were growing - thanks to the lady who collects garbage in our building. She seemed happy to see our garden and the fact that we were reusing garbage to generate edible stuff. She happily identified the red pumpkin, the bottle gourd, the tiny leaves of the carrot and even a watermelon plant, all of which seem to have come up on their own from the kitchen waste. Carrot, probably was the only one planted by us, though we hadn't known when planting, that the seeds where those of the carrot. She also readily offered to give us the 'wet' garbage that she collects and segregates from our building. We had been thinking of asking her to do this, for a while now. But we hadn't done it, thinking, it might be a complex affair, especially if people did not segregate their waste properly; and wondering if the lady collecting the garbage would think it trouble to do the extra bit. However, we were happy to see how this also has happened very naturally and organically, just as everything else so far.

We had also started wondering when would be the right time to harvest the amaranth leaves for a 'saag'. And then yesterday we went up to find some of the amaranth plants sprouting flowers...so nature had given us an indication - if w wanted to eat the leaves, we will have to harvest now, else wait for the plant to reproduce and get seeds/ 'rajgira' grains. We needed no further convincing and we got our first bunch of green leaves to eat. Along with it, we also noticed some of the spinach leaves, which seemed ready to eat. A 15 minute job of plucking the leaves and the ingredients for our lunch were ready. Amma (Vanaja's mom, Sukeshini) then skillfully turned out a lovely 'keerai kootu' with the amaranth leaves and moong dal with the least spices (salt, green chillies, jeera) so as to bring out the true taste of the saag. The Palak was transformed into a beautiful salad along with some corn and beetroot. Needless to say, it was a yummy lunch, more so since half the stuff came out of our terrace as a result of the energy we put in all these days.

Last weekend, we attended the seed saving and home-gardening workshop at Van Vadi and came back so much richer....all the lovely people we met and interacted with, hearing people's experiences with farming especially in the city on their terraces and the success and happiness they have derived from it, all the knowledge about different plants and their behaviour/lifecycle etc., the pictures of the 'exotic' varieties of vegetables grown by Deepika (red & double-colored bhindi, white brinjal, purple tomatoes, black chillies etc.), the struggle against the GM-invasion, propogation thru' seed-saving, need for a community to work with each other and share knowledge, saplings, seeds and other resources.....and not to forget all the lovely 'exotic' seeds we got from Deepika and from Bua's family at Van Vadi.

We are now determined to start making Amrit Mitti. We will start looking for cow dung and cow urine to kickstart the amrit paani. In the meanwhile we will collect dry leaves for the amrit mitti. We have now paused our collections of 'green garbage' and coconut shells, which we had started using to make the border for our newer beds as they were natural, light and available in plenty (as against granite pieces). However, we are now noticing that some of our beds have too much 'green' waste as against dry waste, thus rotting and attracting maggots. Deepika and Preeti's words come handy here - "the proportion of wet and dry waste has to be right in order to ensure good composting and to prevent rotting". This being the season when most trees are shedding their foliage, it seems like the right time to amass this 'dry leaf' wealth, so we can provide them in the right form to our plants at the right time.

We are swamped with all the things we need to do in our garden and need to now seriously allocate time everyday to planning, collecting materials and doing. It is now time to also sit and plan some time-lines, if we need to be able to use this monsoon effectively for planting. No wonder, farmers are always so busy...