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.

Bringing in some permanents

As we get better at looking after our plants (and not killing them within 3 days of bringing them home), we bought some plants that are evergreen. Since the wicking bed was empty (yet again), we got plants suitable for that. This time, we tried yet another new nursery called Anand nursery in Gandhinagar. It was the best! Great collection, helpful staff and a complete solution in terms of plants, pots, stones, gardening equipment and fertiliser.

Summer plants and others

A summer collection is incomplete without a Hibiscus. These flowers are bold and the leaves are even bigger! They come in very nice colours, red being the most common. But we decided to go for a yellow one with a red centre.

Hibiscus

To tie our Ahmedabad garden back to our Melbourne one, we included a Kalanchoe in this collection. They are very popular here actually and they come in many different colours. I don't remember seeing so many colours in Melbourne, nor do I remember them flowering so profusely.

Kalanchoe

Another plant common to our Melbourne garden is the Carnation. These Carnations are not as large as the ones we had in Melbourne, but they have more character to them because of the double colour.  They look very dainty.

Carnation

Here's an interesting plant we picked up. It's a Jade plant (Portulacaria Afra Variegata), but double coloured too!

Jade plant

This plant is not much to look at in the picture, but it's dark coloured leaves are lovely. The lady at the nursery said that it flowers too. The pot had two of them, so we put one at both ends.

Alternanthera

And finally, we bought another marigold. This is our second, let's hope it lasts!

Yellow Marigold

We also bought a tree. It's called Tabebuia. It's growing near the society's swimming pool also, but that one has pink flowers. Ours has a white flower with a yellow centre. It's quite leafy and is filling up the balcony space well.

Tabebuia

White flower Tabebuia

We also bought a type of Kamini Jasmine for our terrace. It will be placed just outside our window, so that the fragrance comes in through the window. It has very tiny flowers and quite a subtle orangey smell! I guess when it's covered with flowers, the smell will be more obvious.

Kamini Jasmine

Jasmine flower

We also got a free Mogra Jasmine when I ordered plants from there. This one is not as bushy as the Kamini Jasmine, but flowers are bigger and more aromatic. It struggled a bit in the heat to start with, but picked up with regular watering. I have attached a jute thread to the railing for this one to climb on.

Mogra Jasmine