Making the best of monsoons

I love monsoons! And the best part about the rainy season is watching it from inside a comfy house. 

Our lockdown and subsequent voluntary stay-at-home continues due to the pandemic. We have been passing the time in many pursuits, one of them being gardening. 

After our seed planting drives in Apr and May, we have been nuturing them in the hope to get some vegetables. While we aren't there yet, the signs are encouraging. 

The best performing vegetable was Bhindi. Two of it's seeds germinated and shot upto 6 ft! Apparently, a potted plant puts all its energy in growing tall and bushy. So you have to prune the tip of the plant so that it focuses on producing vegetables. After we trimmed one of them, it started giving vegetables. I did realise that we need more than one plant if we want to actually eat them. About 1-2 Bhindis are ready every week, but how can you eat just that?

The other vegetable that did well is Chilli. We bought two types of chilli - Asian and India. Surprisingly, most of the Asian chillies have sprouted, but none of the Indian ones. We have about 7 Asian chilli plants now.

An interesting one is Peanut. We soaked a couple of peanuts from our kitchen and put them in the soil. The plant literally shot out a few days later! It grew quickly and with such confidence. It has started flowering too, with lovely yellow flowers. 

Peanut grows in an interesting manner. These flowers are on a long spike. Once the flower withers in a day or two, the spike drops to the ground so that the flower can touch the soil surface. From there, the flower shoots out a "peg". This peg is what the peanut grows on. 

The lemon also looks happier in the rain. The one lemon on it is already fattening up, while there are others developing.

The Chikoo is doing better this year because of a prune I gave it earlier this year. There are more fruits that we can see forming. Hopefully, they won't fall off.

It's always a pleasure to have flowers in the garden. This Mogra was a free gift from Nurserylive in our order last year. And it has done so well. Looks beautiful! It also seems to flower around the full moon, wonder why?

And ofcourse, every gardener's stamp of approval is given when there are bees and butterflies in the garden! We saw this black beauty in our garden and were very excited that it made the journey to the 13th floor. The picture is not much, but I wnted to include it anyway.

The other plants like Wedelia and Giloy are also enjoying the monsoon season.

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!

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