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

Indoor plants

After starting our plant collection on 1st-vaccine-day-for-Pallavi, we thought we could take on more gardening resonsibility. Mind you, this was after we had RESOLVED to not have any plants for the next 6 months. After we had packed all our gardening stuff and put it in storage. So much for resolutions!

So we decided to head out to a nursery and get some indoor plants. We wanted no-fuss, no-dig plants for indoors only; nothing else. Or so we told ourselves.

When we got to Durga Plant Nursery, we were astounded by the sheer volume of plants they had! We didn't have a list, so we walked around to see what we liked. And as usual, we had to do the dog-toxicity test for each plant. Finally we settled on these.

Crotons - They are set in the corner of our bedroom, near the glass door. They get bright light throughout the day and direct evening sunlight.

Croton

Cordyline - This one has lovely maroon leaves. The new leaves are bright green in colour. The Cordyline has been placed to brighten up one of our home office.

Cordyline

Chilli - We wanted to have some basic veggie plants. Chilli is a good no-fuss plant to start with. The nursery-man literally pulled it out of the ground and gave it to us for free. I had to give it a bit of TLC for it to survive the transplantation shock.

Chilli

Curry leaf - Try as we might, we could not find curry leaves in any grocery shop (we realised later that our society had a huge curry leaf tree going in it's orchard!). So we thought we will buy one and see how it goes. We had killed the previous one we bought in Ahmedabad, so my hopes are not high with this one.

Curry leaf

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!

Summer round up - 1

Not much is happening this season as we did not plant any new vegetables. Vegetable grow quickly, so there is something new every week. Fruits take so much longer!

Guava – I saw 8 flower buds in December. These have now become fruit. The fruit are still in the growing phase, so they are only as big as a strawberry, but still, getting there!

Fruit in February'16

Strawberry – Speaking of strawberry, we discovered a hidden stash of strawberries growing deep within the plant. I had given up hope as for the last two years we had lost our crop to a pest. But my aunt and uncle, who came to stay for a day, found them. They were really healthy and much bigger than we have had before. More are expected, equally big in size I hope!

Strawberries

Promise of more Strawberries!

Melon – I planted three melon seeds from a fruit that was store bought. One of them germinated and is now trailing along the width of the vegetable patch. The yellow flowers are quite striking, but were slow to attract pollinators. Now, I can see a couple of fruits forming. I am not sure whether they have enough time to grow and ripen before the winter comes. As I understand it, they need a lot of heat to ripen. But, look like the fruit is doing just fine! The photo on the left is from 22nd February, the right photo is from 26th February. Look at how much it has grown in  4 days!

Melon - photos are 4 day apart

Pomegranate – As usual, the tree had a zillion flowers during spring. Many looked like they would become fruit, but fell off. I read somewhere that pomegranate should be planted in a sheltered position, with less wind. Unfortunately, ours is not and Melbourne can get quite windy. That is why most fell off…save one. This flower was right at the bottom of the tree and we almost missed it. Now it’s quite well grown. The tree we bought does claim to give a large fruit, bigger than one’s palm. Let’s see whether that happens.

Lone pomegranate

Lime – We are plagued by the Citrus gall wasp, which is common in Australia. It burrows a hole in the stem to lay its eggs. These are characterised by bumps and lumps in the stem. I tried to snip off those branches last year after the eggs had been laid, but I think I succeeded partially only. Hence, this year too we got lots of leaves, but no flowers. A month ago, we saw a bunch of them in the stems at the back (which incidentally did not have any visible citrus gall wasp infestation). These now look like potential lime. It is ironic that this was the first plant we bought (2011) because we genuinely eat lots of lime and it is quite expensive here.

Lime

Potato – Potato still surprises me by growing from a different spot every year! I have no idea how it travels from one end to the other of the 7 ft vegetable patch, but I swear it does! This year we got three plants, which I harvested a couple of weeks ago. The potato were quite tiny, but so delicious.

The other potential vegetable harvests like Broccoli, Asparagus and Herbs did not do well. I was only able to harvest a few Chives and Basil. Everything else was too minimal to harvest, so I let them take a break and go to seed :D

Just yesterday, I cleaned out the vegetable bed of the dead Virginian Stock and unearthed what looks to be a chilli plant. I had small chillies growing in that spot in 2015 summer and the plant looks like that. I am now debating whether to bring it indoors for winter. It will certainly not have enough time to grow, flower AND provide chillies before the winter comes.

Chilli

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

A substantial harvest

Season 2 of garden harvest was more consistent. This year we had planted lettuce, capsicum, tomato, potato, strawberries, mint, cucumber, coriander, carrot and three kinds of chillies. Our veggie patch was groaning under the weight of all the produce!

Roma Tomato

Cucumber

Capsicum

Lettuce

The potatoes were our oldest plants. They were shooting up from leftover spuds in the ground. Compared to last year, we lost fewer to rot.

The strawberry plant was also from last year, having multiplied. Unfortunately, this season we have had an ongoing battle with a strawberry thief. We were unable to beat him to the fruit! Despite covering the plant with a cloth, the rat/possum/bird/whatever it was, still ate all of them.

This year we harvested the first of our asparagus. There was only one thick enough for eating. All the others grew side shoots very quickly, which is what sets the roots for the upcoming harvests.

Asparagus and few strawberries

Our most substantial harvest was from the chillies and capsicum. We had three varieties which had different levels of hotness. Hottest were the tiny ones, Jalapenos were less hot and the least hot were the fat ones. There were so many that I had to freeze them for use throughout the year and distribute them to friends!

Chillies in their full splendour

Mild chilly

The entire chilli harvest - ready to be frozen

We had a decent harvest of capsicums too. Most we ate while they were green, a couple we left to become riper and red.

Capsicum

Previous year, we had not liked the lettuce variety too much. This year we bought iceberg lettuce plants and harvested them in full before it became too hot and they started to bolt.

Iceberg lettuce

We harvested many more tomatoes this year, as we had planted them earlier in the season. They were Roma tomatoes, really juicy. The mint plant grew well and I dried a lot of leaves for the year.

Roma tomato

Mint for drying

I had also saved up coriander seeds from last year, which gave us some leaves. Frankly though, coriander needs too much work. One has to keep sowing them successively and can only harvest a few leaves per plant! Also, we got an odd carrot or two but most went to seed. The cucumber did not flower at all.

Coriander

Lone carrot

This season reinforced the satisfaction of growing our own vegetables. They were not as large as the ones in the supermarket, but were really tasty. Season 3 of our garden ended with a resolve to grow more next year!