Showing posts with label Sponge gourd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sponge gourd. Show all posts

Tuesday, 24 September 2024

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

Tuesday, 9 June 2020

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
Unknown black seed 2

Bhindi saplings

Pumpkin

Time to watch them grow!