Monsoon vegetables

We have been travelling a fair bit in the last few months. So the garden continued to grow behind our backs, without me being able to document its growth too much. Today I decided to document the state of the monsoon vegetables that we planned.

This planning started in early July, when I drew up this veggie patch map. We had seeds for all of them and planted them accordingly.

Veggie patch map

Three months later, here is what has grown from the seeds.

Pok Choy was a late starter, but has turned out quite well. We have never grown this before, so are looking forward to harvesting and eating it.

Pok Choy

Most of the rest of the vegetable seeds did not germinate, or died at the sapling stage itself. To the left of this picture, you can see a gourd. I'm unsure of which one it is, as it has not given any vegetables yet. And I'm not sure either whether it was something we planted or it is growing out of the compost! 

To the right of this picture is a Chilli plant we bought recently. 

Unknown Gourd and Chilli

We bought some Thai Basil to use for our Thai dishes. The leaves are amazingly aromatic!

Thai Basil

We've started eating Red and Yellow Capsicum in our weekly salad. I decided to save the seed and try to grow them. 

The plants have come up nicely. Let's see which colours they are.

You can also see a new Curry Leaf Plant that we bought. 

Capsicum

Our annual Tulsi or Holy Basil plant also thrives in the monsoon. You can see two types here. 

The front one is the Holy Basil, whole the one at the back is the Purple Basil given by Dad.

Tulsi

And finally, we have a lot of Gourds growing through the compost. This is one such gourd plant. I believe it is Sponge Gourd, but we'll have to wait and see.

Unknown Gourd

Refurbishing after a dreadful heatwave

This summer was the hottest on record so far (don't they say that every year?). And to make matters worse for our plants, we went on a long holiday. This subjected them to dry and hot winds, without receiving any water. Sadly, we lost about 50% of our plants.

Not wanting to cause further damager, we waited for the monsoon to arrive before we shopped for new plants. Yesterday was Plant Shopping Day!

We'd gone with a long list of pots to fill. And we've come back with a lot of plants! 

I'll let the pictures do the talking for this blog post.

Hibiscus

Pentas

Philondendron Xanadu

Crepe Myrtle

Lemonia

Plumbago

Texas Purple Sage

Ruellia and Evolvulus Blue Daze

Aralia, Golden Money Plant, Pearl & Jade Money Plant, Neon Money Plant, Aglaonema

Song of India and others

Croton and others

How we plan for new plants

Planning a garden is a lot of fun! We always start with a full layout our new garden and break it up into different zones. Then we go into detail for each zone to decide which plants would suit them best.

As our garden grows, we continue this planning. Sometimes we need to add more plants because we are filling gaps in the garden. At other times, it could be dictacted by the season when the dead plants need to be replaced. 

As the worst of the summer heat is expected to be over soon (Monsoon arrives in end June), we wanted to replace all the plants that sizzled in the summer heat. As we were away for a long holiday, we did lose a lot of plants. So this requires thought and a fair amount of work.

Step 1: Identify which spots in the garden need replenishing

Step 1

As I said, we had a lot of empty spots to fill! These were of different sizes, so the list had to reflect that. Also, some of these were indoor pots, so we had to know about those too. 

We also had some amount of material like soil and compost already. So we noted down those too.

Step 2: Identify the plants that would suit our needs

Step 2

The next step was to match each pot with the plant we wanted. This is where the size, material and the location of the pot became important. 

Step 3: Buy the plants!

And so, our plant list is ready! The next step is to buy them in the next couple of weeks.

Summer veggie seed sowing

It's been ages since we grew our own vegetables that reached the harvest stage! The last harvest was the monstrous Bhindi in Ahmedabad. But now that we have the sun back in our balcony, we decided it was time. 

I really wanted a proper veggie bed, not just individual pots. I had my eye on a fabric raised bed by AllThatGrows. Its light and can be assembled and dis-assembled easily. 

Fabric raised bed by AllThatGrows

For our vegetables, we wanted good-quality soil. Nothing better than IFFCO Urban Garden's soil mix!

IFFCO Urban Garden's Magic Soil

After prepping, we sowed seeds of Rocket, Basil, Lettuce and Baingan (Eggplant). We've also sowed more vegetable seeds in other pots. And we've sowed flower seeds in a shallow tray, to be transplanted later.

Our summer vegetable sowing plan

Seed sowing in tray

A few weeks later, we're starting to see small vegetable saplings!

Baingan (eggplant) saplings

More winter plants!

After the success of the winter annuals we bought in November, we were looking for more plants. We went with an open mind to buy anything that looked nice. And we picked up quite a haul!

The first one was Salvia. I've seen them growing in public places (which is generally a criteria for me to NOT buy them for our garden), but they look lovely. So we picked up two plants.

Salvia

Another interesting purchase were Stocks. Incidentally, this flower is part of a Hercule Poirot murder short story! Anyway, the flowers have a delicate smell and came in multiple colours. We picked up white and purple.

Stocks

One of my favourite flower is Carnation. We saw these pretty variety of Carnation at the nursery, which smell like cloves. 

Carnation

Our next purchase was Ranunculus. I've seen this beautiful flower in many gardening magazines and always wanted to own one. These grow from tubers and will come back again next winter. They will flower through spring. Lets wait and see what they are like!

Ranunculus

Our final purchase were African Daisy! We had them in three colours in Australia and they flowered beautifully from spring to autumn. I'm looking forward to them putting on a show here too.

African Daisy

Winter flowers and fruits

We've always had very few seasonal flowers. Our past focus was on perennials that flowered, so that we didn't have to keep putting in and digging out plants at the turn of the season. With a balcony garden, this is much easier to do. So we decided to get some winter annuals. We're hoping that they brighten up the dreary winter!

Our regular nursery doesn't stock many flowers, he's also a perennial type of person I guess! But the nursery next to his had lots of flowers. We picked up Petunia, Calendula and Chrysanthemum.

Calendula

Petunia

Chrysanthemum

We also got a Strawberry plant. In Melbourne, we were losing all of them to the Possums. Hopefully no one steals them here! 

Strawberry

While we got these plants, we also re-did our vertical garden. We planted seeds of Coriander, Methi, Spinach, Kale and Chives. Except for the Chives, all of the others have started to grow nicely.

Adding new plants

After settling our balcony layout, we were keen to add more plants. 

We had a huge box of seeds that are definitely expired by now! Even so, we sowed them in seed trays to see if something would germinate. My MIL would look at it closely every morning when drinking her tea and would give us the report of the germination. So far the germination rate is 0% 😂 So we have decided to get new plants.

This nursery trip was for the functional plants. We wanted to get plants to screen our balcony from our neighbour's (they will move in a few months). We also wanted some plants for the pot next to the grass patch, to shield it from view. 

Our first purchase were 3 plants of Bamboo. We've never owned bamboo before (unless you count the Chinese bamboo that people have gifted us), but we know about the plant. It is a vigorous grower and is best contained in pots. Its also great for windy locations as it does not break. Ours look a bit straggely, but we hope they will grow out soon.

We also picked up a few plants of Marigold to underplant with the Bamboo.

Bamboo

Bamboo with Marigolds

Next up were the screening plants for the pot near the grass patch. We wanted Tecoma, but the nursery did not have any. They did have an unusual burgundy coloured plant, whose leaves and flowers were both burgundy. Turns out it is a plant called Cranberry Hibiscus. Its very tall and was growing quite wildly in the nursery. We decided to pick those up for our balcony.

Cranberry Hibiscus

Cranberry Hibiscus plants

We planted Marigolds under the Cranberry Hibiscus as well. The last few times we have planted Marigold (in Ahmedabad and Melbourne), they have not lasted beyond the first flush of flowers. They always seem to wither from the bottom up and slowly die. Lets see whether these survive.

Marigold

Deciding the layout of our balcony

After moving into our new apartment (with the really loooooong balcony, if you remember!), we have been sorting through all the plants, pots and garden supplies we have. Most of the balcony gets full sunlight throughout the day. During the summer, the full sunlight is restricted to the first foot of the balcony from the railing. During the winter, we expect the sunlight to reach inside the rooms, as the sun will be lower in the sky.

We have sectioned the balcony in specific areas. The eastern side is the domestic side. It has the grass patch for the dogs, a vertical planter (from our Melbourne garden), a new Daily Dump composter (our previous one broke in the storage) and the veggie plants. We're also using this area to store other items for now that will be processed later.

East-facing side of the balcony

The alcove outside the drawing room is for the creepers. This pot contains plants that like partial shade. This area is also collecting the waste water from the office AC. 

Alcove outside the drawing room

The second part of the alcove is where we have our outdoor seating. We use it a lot for our meals and evening coffees. Next to us is the doggie hut (that we had in our Melbourne home). The dogs actively use it to catch an outdoor snooze during the day. 

This section is visible directly from the drawing room. So we've got all our flowering and feature plants here. This is also the side of the balcony that has the water outlet that we pulled from our kitchen. 

West-facing side of the balcony

Building a new garden in a new home

It's here! Finally our new home is getting ready for us to move in. With a 30ft balcony and full sunshine, we are looking forward to building a fully-functional garden.

The first thing on our list was to get a lawn for the doggies. It was most convenient in our Ahmedabad home and not difficult to look after. We already have a lawn mower and shears to cut the grass. In any case, we prefer the Nilgiri grass, which does not grow very fast (except in monsoon).

Lawn at one end of the balcony

This time we also decided to get a few plants and planters as a package deal along with the grass. We picked out the plants we wanted and gave the contract to a landscaper. This helped us get to a green state much faster! We have picked Boungainvillea, Ruellia (pink and white) and Thunbergia Erecta Blue for the cermaic pots.

Our new plant collection

Another thing we wanted to add was a feature tree. The choice was between Crepe Myrtle or Frangipani. Finally we went with Frangipani because of the fragrance. This went into a large cement pot, along with Jasmine Rex for underplanting.

Frangipani in a pot

Finally, we wanted a pot with support for creepers. This is to be placed outside the drawing room door, which is a shady area. We picked Paan and Sweet Potato Vine for the climbers. This has been underplanted by Variegated Money Plant.

Creeper planter

So this is how our balcony looks now!

View 1

View 2

The rest of 2022

2022 has been a dull year for gardening. 

It's not like we did not try to garden when we can. But we were not happy with how our plants grow because there is no sun. Many plants that we bought died in a very short time. The lack of any sun made them weaker and prone to diseases. In addition, all our tools are in storage, so we were not looking after them with enthusiasm either. 

Here's a picture of a plant haul that we did. Sadly, not one of them survived.

Plant haul in May'22

Winter bulbs

I've had very little experience with growing plants from bulbs. But the one experience that I had, was totaly worth it!

In our Melbourne garden, we planted bulbs of Jonquil early in our gardening days. They flowered every winter and multiplied over time. They were the only flowers that were flowering through the cold months and could be seen from the kitchen window. In addition to looking pretty, they had a heavenly scent. I loved them. 

This winter we decided to bring in some bulbs for our pots. We had less expectations from them because we don't get any sunlight, but were pleasently surprised.

The first bulb we bought were Muscari or Grape Hycianth. We've had Hycianths before in Melbourne. They smelled lovely too, but did not grow very well. In subsequent years they stopped growing. 

I used the IFFCO soil to grow these bulbs as I wanted them to get a good start.

Planting in Dec'21

The Muscari is a very small plant. This flower was smaller than my palm. Here I've grown it into a small container that was used to serve takeaway fries. Despite the small size, it had a lovely scent.

Muscari

Another bulb we got were Lily. We've never grown lillies because of the dogs (they are poisonous to them), but now they are old enough to avoid plants that are not good for them. We bought yellow Lily, which is looking spectacular when blooming!

Yellow Lily

Amongst other plants, we did get a Strawberry plant too. It managed to give one fruit before realising that there is no sun to support it's growth!

Strawberry

Finally, we did buy bulbs of Narciss too. But they did not flower due to the lack of sun. Hopefully they will flower when we move to our new home!