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!

Pests in the garden

With the change of season from winter to all-too-soon summer, plants undergo some stress. Additionally, the water we use is RO waste water, which has a higher salt content and low minerals. Some of our plants were invaded by pests. This post is not pretty, but important to document the journey of the plants.

Tecoma

The tecoma plant had some wierd looking bug on it. It looked like a hard blob with spikes. When I squished it, it popped. 

Unknown plant

Sadly, I have forgotten the name of this plant. And now I cannot identify it because these bugs sucked the sap out of it. These bugs were pretty smart as they are the exact colour of the leaves. For weeks I kept thinking that these were buds for more stems. It was only when I looked closely, that I realised that they were pests. I had to scrape them off each stem, but the damage was done. The plant died soon after.

Common purslane

This volunteer plant soon started to harbour a colony of mealybugs. The infestation became so intense that they moved to other plants and to crevices in the pots. Days of alternate neem spraying and picking with tweezers helped to curb them.

Watering system - revamped!

While we were very grateful to have the drip irrigation installed, the pipe used to transport water from the tank to the pots had very small diameter. This really slowed down the transfer of water and increased the disparity of flow at different points. If one drip was more open than the others, then the water would totally stop in the others. So we decided to increase the diameter of the carrier pipes, while keeping the drip pipe the same. The drip pipe allows for modularity as the connectors can be clipped to the pipe easily. 

I ordered all the material from the Amazon, buying a started drip irrigation kit for 10 pots. It consisted of drips, drip pipe, hole piercer, stopper and connectors between carrier and drip pipes. Separetely I ordered 50m of the 16mm carrier pipe and pipe connectors for the 16mm carrier pipe. I also ordered wall clamps for the larger pipe. 

As with all things, the final step took the longest! We couldnt nail the wall clamps into the wall well enough. It took a lot of effort, even with a new and heavier hammer! So, we hired a plumber to come and execute what we wanted. He had it setup in leass than 2 hours! 

We also bought a lawn sprinkler to ensure equal water to all areas of the lawn. Due to the low pressure, it doesnt cover the entire lawn in one go, so we move it around. But despite that, it is a life-saver! Our previous lawn had died, so we replaced it. After replacing, we wanted to ensure that the same does not happen again.

The entire setup can be seen in the video here.

And finally, with all this water, the grass was growing pretty fast. We had enlisted the services of our scoiety gardener to trim the grass. But we wanted to remove that dependancy too. So we bought a manual lawn mower. 

We also bought a lopper to trim the branches of the chikoo tree. It had many branches that were growing inwards and scraping others. This leads to diseases due to poor air circulation. The lopper was used to cut these branches. 

With all these things in place, we were set to expand our garden!