The monsoons are here...

The monsoons are here with a swoosh, bang and bucket-loads of water. And we were caught napping...with our eyes wide open. We had known all along that there was stuff that needed to be done before the monsoons - put away our cartons full of dry leaves, clear the drains, make a new bed with the amrit mitti, transplant the papaya plants, make new saplings of veggies we wanted to grow, clear the balcony of all the cardboard and other stuff that would get soggy and wet.....am sure I can think of a lot many other things, once I get down to it. But as always, our laziness and a convenient excuse of being occupied with family, made sure that we did none of these, inspite of regularly talking about it. And last week, as we sat down to enjoy the opening match of the FIFA world cup, the heavens opened up too. Our artificial indoor lights were put out so we could appreciate the live outdoor light(n)ing. The sound of the vuvuzelas was replaced by the clapping of the thunder-clouds. Strong winds brought cool weather along and then the downpour (more of all-sides-pour) began, literally filling our home with water - balcony by balcony. By the time we had finished celebrating the onset of the monsoons, we had 3 small swimming pools in each of our balconies, slowly beginning to overflow and encroach into our living and bed rooms. That was the end of our partying - now began the painful cleaning up - first declogging the drains, drainign the balconies, then the rooms - mop, squeeze, mop, squeeze, wipe....three times over!

The next morning was a typical 'after-the-storm' sight - wet cardboards soggily lying about, rubbish scattered about, mud oozing from the bottoms of our pots and smeared about the floor.....and this was just our balconies. With a lot of trepidation and dilly-dallying, we made our way to our terrace, holding our breaths for the sight we might be in store for....but were pleasantly surprised about the extent of damage or the lack of it - sure there were coconut shells all askew, a carton full of leaves blown away and upturned onto one of the beds, some plants almost horizontal while there were other plants which seemed happy to receive a new leash of life, a lot of new sprouts, our watermelon creeper beginning to bear 3 tiny fruits seemed suddenly to have grown by leaps overnight, our gawar plants bearing ready-to-pluck gawars, the cucumber plant is suddenly full of tiny yellow flowers, most of all our beds hadn't really got disturbed by the storm and not much mud/biomass seemed to have been carried away by the wind/ rains. We heaved a huge sigh of relief and set about putting some of the things back where they belonged. Shirish's bro had had a valuable suggestion to give after the last big pre-monsoon thunderstorm which he happened to witness - "why not put boras/ gunny sacks around the coconut shell boundaries of the beds to keep them in place" - we now humbly set about doing the same - it really didn't take much time to do this for all our beds, if only we had done this when he had told us the last time around. But never mind, all in good time....guess there's only so much one can change about one's nature - we 'corporate-mba-types' work only under pressure, deadlines and KITA (kick-in-the-ass for the uninitiated) ;-)

The last whole month has been bad for our rooftop garden....for one, the heat has taken a toll on the plants - the pumpkin creeper is almost burnt, the bittergourd creeper is half gone, the colocasia plants, I can't even remember where they were - they literally disappeared overnight, even some of the marigold plants are dead and gone; secondly, we have hardly helped things, since we were just too busy with household matters and barely managed to water the plants every day, thereby not being able to give our plants the timely attention they might have needed.

This has led us to think whether summer really is a time when we should be trying to grow things, or is this the time to let the soil recuperate, save water and also give oneself the break to do other things away from the sun. But then, how is it that traditionally the farmer always works hardest in summer, trying to prepare his lands for the oncoming monsoon...something doesn't gel. However, what might work for us is to take the break and maybe travel during summer and do other indoor projects and resume gardening a little before the monsoons.

Okay....okay...I'm not gonna whine all the way through this post - the positives now - we got a harvest of spinach, 2 harvests of the red amaranth and 1 of the green amaranth all of which made for a really tasty subji devoured by the extended family, 2-3 bhindis which was munched upon as soon as plucked - even our little year-and-a-half old niece munched on one and seemed to enjoy it. Our papayas are growing tall and strong - now we really need to give them a home of their own instead of having to share the shallow veggie beds. The poi-saag is growing well and begging to be eaten - we still haven't got around to it though. One plant that seems to be doing well is the yam or the suran (in hindi) - the shoot first pointedly grew above the soil and then slowly unfurled itself to reveal large beautiful leaves. We are hoping the development above ground has an equivalent development below ground too.

The 63rd day of greening of our amrit mitti patch went by and we plucked out all the green stuff that was growing on it and after drying for a day, laid them back on the heap. But from a quick plunge of the hand inside the heap, it seemed as if the dry leaves hadn't really changed form much -now we are wondering what really was meant to happen to them and whether our amrit mitti experiment has been a huge failure!

Oh! looks like I'm whining again...better stop now! will come back on another day, another mood, hopefully with better tidings. Ta da!

Thriving in the heat

The bamboo poles still lie on our terrace untouched - the heat has increased manifold and makes it just impossible for us to devote much time to our garden. Meanwhile other family commitments have come into play and we are barely managing to water our plants everyday and hoping they make it through the terrible heat alright too.

But to borrow liberally...one's poison is another's nectar - while we are dehydrated and zapped of energy by the heat, the very heat seems to be providing life to some of our plants. The karelas (bitter gourds) are doing exceptionally well - every day we go up to the terrace, we see they have grown a few inches and are looking for a support to cling onto - we did tie some with strings that they could climb on and they seem happy with that. Though I hate karela and have never eaten it of my own free will, I am still surprised to be so pleased at the plants growing so well - maybe growing it will finally make me eat it too, of course, I'll first have to learn how to cook it - lets wait and watch.

On the other hand, my favourite veggie, okra, is doing well too - and I just spotted my first okra today - what an absolute delight - I am already dreaming of a crunchy okra salad. Another bed in which I had planted more okra recently have also germinated generously and am looking forward to eating a lot of long slender 'ladies fingers' (as we like to call it in India) this season.



Meanwhile the papayas (a whole bunch of them) and the pineapples seem to be exhibiting good health and strong growth. The best part was, the papayas have grown from the seeds thrown after eating the fruits last season and the pineapples are the tops cut-off and planted from the juicy fruits being eaten this season. And we had heard that it could take upto a year before we see any signs of life in the pineapple - this really is a bonus - its been hardly 3 months since these were planted. It will soon be time to transplant the papayas and give them their own space to grow tall and produce fruits in. Apprehension: how many papaya plants will we end up killing in the process?

Another bunch of plants that came up quite gregariously and have so far looked healthy and happy are a variety of beans - now we are unsure which ones - frankly we thought we had planted chawli or black-eyed beans where these have grown, but a few people who have looked at it have declared it otherwise - but they do look like beans from the shape of their leaves - so if anyone knows better, do tell...we are curious to find out. If not, we will have to wait till they produce their fruits for the mystery to be solved.




A couple of weeks back we also enjoyed a small harvest of potatoes and a couple of spring onions. The potatoes were sweet and tasty and the spring onions perfect for a summer's night salad. Though the main ingredients of the salad did not come from our terrace, just the addition of a small bit of own-produce made all the difference to its taste and enjoyment - don't they say in Hindi "मेहनत का फल मीठा होता है|" :-)

Kitchen gardens a hit in city, professional help on offer

Kitchen gardens a hit in city, professional help on offer

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Baby carrots and other survivors

A few days back we decided to dig up our carrot plants and check what was happening below the ground. Considering our beds were not too deep (max about 6-8 inches), we were doubtful if anything much would have happened. We definitely weren't expecting full-grown carrots. So we were rather delighted to find baby carrots about 2 inches long and half as thick as one's little finger. We then decided to try out another experiment - we said let's transplant all these baby carrots (about 6-7 plants) into a deeper container where they could have a go at developing into full-sized carrots. We had got this basket lying outside our vegetable mandi and so we proceeded to fill it up with layers of straw, dry leaves, compost, bagasse and a layer of soil on top. We then transplanted all our carrots into this basket and we have shifted this to our living room balcony, so we can keep a closer watch and also to prevent the carrots from the excessive heat and direct strong sunlight in the terrace. It has been 4-5 days now and they seem fine in the basket. Our hopes are lifted.

We had planted some corn seeds given to us by our friend Shammi, a few weeks back. We had put them in the corners of the existing beds. The logic was that the corn will give support to any creeper plants that grow in the bed. We are how happy to see that the corns seem to be thriving and look really strong and healthy.

Another plant that really seem to have settled into its new home is a red stemmed plant called 'poi' or basella given to us by Divya. She had said that it would grow fast and climb over any support that you provide and would make for a delicious green-leafy vegetable (saag). When we got it from her, it was just about 6-inches high. Now, it has sprouted another branch and grown to about a foot and seems set to break all speed-records in plant growth. Can't wait to taste those lovely looking dark thick leaves. We will soon have to provide a structure upon which it can climb. We did drill a few holes and put in nails in them on the parapet wall of the terrace near where the basella is growing. So, we will now tie a few strings and create a nice mesh for the plant to hang onto.

In the past week, we have also managed to create some pockets of shade over some of the beds, by opening up and stitching together some of the jute sacks that we had with us. We were initially facing a problem of not being able to dig in sticks into the beds for lack of sufficient depth. On the raised bed, we got over this by nailing some plastic electrical casing (that we had found discarded) onto the wooden door that forms the base of this bed. For the other beds, we simply drove in nails onto our parapet wall at regular intervals and tied strings from there and sort of suspended the sacks over the beds which needed to be shaded. The only drawback of this has been that there are parts of the terrace which are now criss-crossed with ropes and we have to duck, bend and use our flexibility to get around these.

The other day, Anita, our friend who had come over to start our small local film club, mentioned that she noticed a construction site nearby which had a pile of bamboos lying there. She suggested going and asking if they would let us have a few. So we walked back with her and asked the caretaker family living on the site. The lady there was very sweet - she heard us out and said she would have to check once with the supervisor before she can give away any material. The next day we went back and were rewarded with 2 pieces of 7ft. long bamboos. Now our next project is ready for us to work on - fixing the bamboos and putting up a shade on it.

Flowers in our garden

After so many years of trying to grow plants in houses which didn't get enough sunlight, We are thrilled to be able to have so many plants in our house now, especially plants that give us a pleasant surprise with their beautiful blooms.

The first one to light up our eyes was the bougainvillea plant which we had planted by getting a cutting from a friend's place in Satara. The cutting seemed to adopt us quickly enough and also started putting forth bursts of white-pink flowers, which delighted us.

Another plant that has grown steadily and stable-ly is the Adenium, which came to us from Lucknow, propagated through a cutting by Baba (Shirish's dad). We have potted this in a Bonsai tray and it seems to have taken to its home rather well, twisting and turning to find a comfortable position. Some of our friends recently raised questions about the 'humane-ness' of growing Bonsais - essentially a practice of providing lesser space for the plant to grow, in essence, making it stunted and contorted. Though we don't resort to such measures as pruning the roots/ branches etc. and continue to give it lots of love, we have so far not moved it to a spacious home yet. Neither have we concluded whether what we are doing is right or wrong and hence if we should be doing something different. However, going by the constant blooms that it sports, it seems to be rather happy...and so we are happy too.

Do also notice the lovely yellow rose peeking into the picture above - this is a rose plant we bought soon after we moved into this house and have been waiting for it to bloom to see what colour would the roses be. I was only overjoyed to find a yellow rose greeting me one morning - since that happens to be my favourite colour. Here's another close-up of it. Don't you love the slight orange-ish outline of the petals?

Two other plants that are recent additions to our garden are from the Dianthus family - both were flowering profusely when we got them from the botanical garden and continue to delight us with their white and pink flowers that look like pencil shavings.

A blue beauty has in the meanwhile silently appeared and disappeared on many days - we had got this plant from a nursery and knew that this was a creeper and so had provided ample support and access for it to climb and spread. But we had forgotten that it would also bear these lovely conch shell shaped flowers - called Gokarna in marathi and Shankhapushpam in tamil, these are wispy flowers that bloom in the morning and wilt by next morning.

Now that summer is upon us, summer's friend jasmine (mogra in hindi, malligai in tamil) too is paying us a regular visit - this reminds me of my uncle's place in chennai, where they had a 4 ft. high jasmine shrub which seemed to always have ready flowers that the devout used to pluck on their way to the temple. I can still remember their sweet smell in my uncle's front yard.

                                                             

A recent addition to our garden, which came to us with a profusion of its lovely bright pink flowers, is the boungainvillea shrub gifted to us by our friend Divya. This shrub has nice hardy branches, tiny bright-green leaves interspersed with the pink of the flowers. Though the shrub is yet to receive a permanent home to rest and grow in, it right now occupies one of our buckets and seems to be happy in it. Just yesterday we have got a few old tyres, with which to make a home for this plant that has brought joy to our hearts. We hope to soon have this shrub well settled and adorning the balcony outside our living room in its new home.

The most surprisingly wonderful bloom, however, has been the Gerbera. Surprise, because, we did not know that we had a Gerbera plant in our house. A few months back we saw a few saplings lying downstairs in polythene bags - the kind you get saplings from nurseries in. When we asked our watchman, he told us that one of the guys from a nursery, who comes often to sell plants, had left this and a few other plants, apparently abandoned. When we asked if we could take it up and adopt it as our own, he gladly gave it to us. So we got it, potted it, watered it and waited to find out what kind of a plant it was. Yeah, we could probably have gone online and checked it out or asked someone else, but we just decided to let the plant let us know about itself. And it sure has been worth the wait. A week back we saw the bud appear and then we knew, but we were still curious to see if we would actually get a flower like the ones we see at the florist and what colour it would be. See for yourself what a lovely gift it has been. We are overjoyed and eager to share our happiness with everyone.

The heat is on

Its been a chaotic few days...lots of green garbage, coconut shells, sugarcane bagasse etc. accumulating on our terrace and literally raising up a stink, but somehow we were just unable to spend time and put them to good use. The planning was all perfect - we now had enough dry leaves too to be able to create a layered compost heap. However, we have found that there's many a slip betwixt planning and execution. We had a  packed weekend where we were out of the home most of the time, visiting people, running other errands and also collecting garbage, which didn't leave us time to get the garbage into a compost heap. Monday morning dawned with the breeze bringing in the stench of rotting vegetables from the rooftop - now we had to get to action - there was no more postponing.

A friend, Shivram and his wife, Rujuta came over for tea on our invitation to them to come see our garden. Rujuta barely could stand up there for a few minutes and looking at her we sensed her discomfort and quickly came downstairs for some green tea and conversations. This made us realise that maybe we had just gotten too used to handling and being around rotting veggies, so the smell did not disturb us much; however, it wasn't fair nor hygienic to expose other people to it. We will be more sensitive in future.

Tuesday dawned really early (even before the sun's rays could kiss our bedroom window) and today we didn't lose any time. The composting heap was completed on priority with dry leaves, green veggie waste and a sprinkled layer of soil alternating till we got a 3 ft. high heap. While handling the green waste, we found a garlic clove and a few spring onions and so these were planted in our existing beds too - we wonder what will happen to the spring onions - will they sprout new leaves, will they grow into full onions? Another thing to wait and watch. We had also got a few mango crates - so we prepared one of them to be able to plant some root vegetables like radish and beetroot, which need more depth than our existing beds.

Our Amrit Mitti has progressed too. After seven days of preparing the Amrit Mitti heap, we checked it and found the humidity levels just perfect - not soggy, not dry, just moist. So we decided to skip the 'turning' step and go right ahead with 'greening'. We got a mix of seeds lying with us and in our kitchen - jowar, chillies, mustard, methi, saunf, kalonji, sprouted channa, immersed them in amrit pani for 8 hours and sprinkled them on the amrit mitti heap. We also uprooted a few 'subabool' plants that had taken root in some of our beds and planted them on the amrit mitti heap. We are hoping the heap turns green soon. After about 6 days, there are signs of things sprouting, however now we feel it is very scanty - maybe we will scatter a few more seeds in the next few days. We are even toying with the idea of making another round of Amrit Pani to use for sprinkling on all our beds.

We are also seeing overwhelming acts of generosity from people - some whom we know and some whom we don't, but are getting to. Divya gave us a lovely bougainvillea shrub, which has temporarily found a home in one of our buckets till we manage to find a drum big enough for it. Urmila posted our request for old drums etc. to her contacts to which Peter (the person behind the innovative drum circle sessions in Pune) responded. So last saturday saw us landing up eagerly for a round of drumming on african djembes with Peter and a few other first-time drummers like us. This was a unique experience and we thoroughly enjoyed it, not withstanding the swollen fingers we had at the end of the energetic session. After the session, Peter took us to his factory and gave us a nice and large drum which we may plant a tree in. Kaveritai, came home on sunday and gave us a few tips on growing things useful at home - how to plant, where to keep which plant etc. She also got along a sack full of compost from her yard. Geetha called us and told us about a nursery where we could get good vegetable seeds - we visited this the very next day and have got a few things to plant for this season.

Meanwhile, we were very pleased to see pictures of our garden and read our names in the newspaper and we enthusiastically shared this with family and friends. It really motivates us to work harder on our garden.

Some things that concern us these days, which we are trying to find a solution to is the extreme heat on our terrace and what it is doing to our plants. The pumpkins, especially, droop by 12 noon and do not recover till we water them in the evening.  Meanwhile Shivram had also raised another pertinent question - rather reminded us of our plans to put up a shade (about a week back), and wondered how come we hadn't done that yet. This made us realise that we were focusing on the 'urgent' at the cost of the 'Important'. We had tried putting up a temporary shade in the form of a jute sack spread on top of sticks held in place between four bottles tied together. However, the wind played spoilsport and brought the whole thing down within minutes. So now we are back to square one and wondering what else we can do. However, now we have deiced to focus on this as an 'Important' cum 'Urgent' item and de-prioritise other things till we get this done. We are thinking of looking for bamboo/ tall sticks that we can attach to our walls and tie wires at their top ends, to criss-cross over the vegetable beds. We could then put either jute sacks stitched together or old bedsheets over these to create some kind of shade from the direct sun. So we now begin to look for things that we may be able to get from people who now no longer have use for those items - like old torn bedsheets/ curtains, sticks/ bamboos/ pvc pipes to use as poles, wire, more buckets/ drums/ large containers for planting some fruit trees. We hope to be able to provide our plants some respite from the heat, in the next week.