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

Planting new seeds

This post covers two seed planting campaigns - one in early Apr'20 and one in late May'20. Since India has been in lockdown since 24th Mar, we have been able to spend more time around the house. We decided to take this opportunity to grow vegetables. Growing something from seed requires more care in the initial phase. We were not in the habit of working in our garden in India yet, though we had developed that habit in Australia. Hence, this was a good time to start. 

Apr'20 seed planting campaign

I had a bunch of seed packets that I had saved or bought in the past year. From those, I planted the following:

• Coriander
• Chilli
• Basil
• Brinjal
• Melon
• Unknown black seeds 1

Out of these, only Brinjal sprouted plants. Two of the seeds germinated and look healthy. By the way, the very cool and eco-friendly plant marker is from a meal takeaway.

Brinjal sapling

Brinjal plant with flower

May'20 seed planting drive

In the second drive, we planted the following:

• Coriander (again!)
• Chilli (again!)
• Bhindi
• Lime
• Sponge gourd
• Sunflower
• Pumpkin
• Unknown black seeds 2

The Unknown black seeds 2 sprouted, but we still had no idea what it was! The Bhindi seeds also germinated very quickly and gave us many saplings. Among the others, only Pumpkin sprouted.

Unknown black seed 2

Bhindi saplings

Pumpkin

Time to watch them grow!

Summer progress

We are well and truly into summer now. All the plants suddenly start growing at a ferocious pace!

The vegetable patch is not much to talk about. The Lettuce saplings have started to give us leaves. I hope to harvest many before it becomes too hot.

Lettuce

I mentioned in a previous post about using Tibouchina pruning as stakes for Peas. The Peas did not survive, but just look at how well the Tibouchina has settled in! Their flowers will look lovely in the vegetable patch.

Tibouchina

I caught a glimpse of a Broccoli on one day. The next morning the plant was destroyed.

Broccoli

The Virginian stock are looking lovely! I now know what a field of flowers looks like. I see lots of bees hovering, so hopefully that is great news for the fruit flowers.

Virginian Stock

Speaking of which, the Pomegranate had a million flowers this spring. Some even dropped their petals and went on to pretend that they would become fruits. But, day by day, I see them falling. We will be lucky to get even one this season.

Pomegranate

However, the Guava is showing potential with eight buds. The tree is still quite short, only 4 feet tall. Fingers crossed!

Guava

Last year, the Kalanchoe flowered quite beautifully. This year too, the flame red flowers look so fantastic!

Kalanchoe

A few plants to look forward to are the herbs in the vertical planter. The Basil is well settled now and the leaves should be ready to be plucked soon. We have already started to harvest the Chives, Rosemary and Mint.

Basil

Chives

Lastly, I am so excited with the flower developing on the Cactus!

Cactus

Preparing for winter

Winding down summer is always a sad feeling, especially for us when we have grown up with sunshine all year round in India. The plants make up for it by giving us vegetables that last us for a while.

The newest addition to the veggie patch was the Brinjal (Eggplant/Aubergine). We harvested two really nice ones, though I had to watch out for the hidden thorns on the green part of the vegetable! There are a couple more that are developing, but not sure whether they will make it before the cold arrives.

Brinjal

The potatoes are still faithfully providing us some every year. They tend to start sprouting from a new spot in the vegetable bed every year, so I really have to watch out for them through the mulch!

Potatoes

Next up are the various chillies. I had planted three varieties last summer and had over-wintered all of them. They did well, though not as much as last year. This season will be their last in my garden.

Chillies

I also harvested the various herbs and a single bhindi (okra). Obviously the bhindi needed more heat than our so-called summer gave it.  In the picture below, clockwise from top, are mint, cinnamon basil, capsicum, chilli, jalapeno, large chilli and bhindi in the middle. The final harvests were done, summer was over.

Last summer harvest

To cheer us up, we thought of trying out our hand at some easy to grow winter veggies. Winter is a cold, damp and windy time in Melbourne, so we were not looking for something that needs a lot of care. We settled on Kale, Spinach, Garlic and Peas.

Winter veggies

While we were there, we also picked up a vertical herb planter. Our wall gets the sun in winters, so I thought this might work. We got Coriander, Parsley, Rosemary and Chives. We filled in the other spaces with Basil, Mint and Strawberry cuttings from our existing plants.

Vertical planter

Updating the veggie bed

When we bought our veggie bed, we did not have enough soil to fill it all the way to the top. To fill it to the top needed at least 40 bags of soil, which was back breaking work. Hence, the first year, we only filled it halfway. Every year after that, we raised the level of the patch in part. This year was the final raise to bring the entire patch to a workable level. It did mean transplanting some plants that we had growing already and not being able to increase the height of the asparagus side.

Raising the level of soil

We added some seasonal vegetables like lettuce, spinach and eggplant to the mix. The potato on the right, and the chillis and capsicum on the left are from last year.

Last summer, we had bought 6 chilli plants. I wanted to try my hand at saving the plants from the frost, to see if they would survive. I am happy to say that they did. We covered them with a shade cloth throughout winter and pruned the dead branches at the start of spring. I later learnt that this process is called "overwintering".

Hot chilli

Jalapeno chilli

Mild chilli

This year I also tried  my hand at raising some vegetables from seeds. A couple of years ago, we had a basil plant from BAAG, whose dried leaves lasted us for two years! We wanted a new one this time, but were disappointed that the season was not hot enough for them to stock the plants. Instead we picked up seeds of a "cinnamon basil" plant. I planted it September, it has just started to show some leaves.

Cinnamon basil

Finally, we picked up Bhindi (Okra) seeds too.  I do not have much hopes with this vegetable as it needs heat. Our veggie patch gets direct sunlight only in peak summer (2-3 months) for 4-6 hours per day. Anyway, the seed did sprout and I planted two of them. There is a sign of a fruit/flower in the plant already, will have to wait and see what it develops into.

Bhindi plant

Season 1 finale

By this time, we had quite a few vegetables that were ready for picking! Mint grows really vigorously and I had to start drying the leaves out for later use. The same can be said about Basil. It grew at a furious pace over the hot days, too fast for consumption. Hence, the Basil leaves were also put out in the sun for drying.

Mint

Basil for drying

Amongst the other vegetables that we had planted, the potato harvest was the most substantial. We did have isolated harvests of tomato, chilli, spinach and (a) capsicum.

Potato

A few tomatoes

Tomato harvest

Some chillies

Lone capsicum

Spinach harvest

But winter was approaching and Season 1 of Anshu-Pallo's garden show was over.

Seed of an idea

The temptation to grow some vegetables was too much! We had a really long garden bed, so why not?

We wanted a raised one to keep the dogs from getting into it. But our sunny spot in the garden had a downward slope. Thankfully, we found Birdie's raised garden bed, which was perfect! We assembled it, filled it with soil and were all set. On the way, we picked up the 42nd edition of Yates Garden Guide book. It was written for the Australian environment and covers everything from pests, propagation and watering to a comprehensive plant index suited to the local climate. It also has some great tips from other gardeners which I found very useful.

Now on to picking the vegetables! Naturally, it makes sense to pick the ones that we eat. But not all the ones we eat are easy to grow. For example, cabbages, carrots, onions and cauliflowers need so much space and they can be harvested only for a short time. And some of the others that we eat, are not available here like mooli (white radish), bhindi (okra) etc. So, we started with the very basic one - potato.

I got some good information from the Seed to Plate website, which gave information about various vegetables and how to grow them at home. Potato is the easiest to grow and also helps prepare the soil for other fussier vegetables. We did not buy the seed potatoes which are disease resistant because there were just too many in the bag. After all, I did not want to start a farm! We just planted a couple of sprouting potatoes from our veggie shopping. We also planted a few seeds of methi (fenugreek) and dhania (coriander) with the seeds picked from our spice rack. They all started sprouting up plants in two weeks!

Seed to plant - methi sprouts

Seed to plant - methi with leaves

Seed to plant - potato shoot

Seed to plant - potato plant

I mentioned in the previous post to resist the temptation to buy additional items when you buy plants. I learnt that lesson - and then promptly unlearnt it in the next trip! We bought a seed tray and some seeding soil mix, along with various seeds. In the end, the purchase was worth it as gave us the opportunity to try our hand at growing many vegetables. In the picture below you can see cauliflower, coriander, mint, carrot, onion, chilli and pumpkin.

Seed raising box

Seed to plant - Onion

Seed to plant - Mint

Seasoned gardeners may know that not all of these vegetables grow in the same season. But, we were novices and did not know that. We got seedlings from all of them, but some could not survive the exposure in the veggie patch. We also bought Basil and Chilli plants.

Chilli

Basil

Our final purchase was a lime tree. Lime is quite expensive in Australia but we eat them a lot, so this was a good investment. We looked forward to eating our first home-grown vegetables!

Lime