Cleaning up !

An essential aspect of Gardening which no one usually likes is weeding ! Despite the fact that weeds are the plants most suited for your land, no one really intends to have them !!

However in our case, we have been truly blessed. If not for weeds, we would have not come across 'Kashikaya' / solanum nigrum, 'Gangavayalu'/ portulaca oleracea and 'Doggali Koora' / amaranthus polygamus.

Along with tomatoes, brinjals, lady finger etc, we have our very own 'weeds' which form a major constituent of our diet. No we are not complaining at all! But being lazy as we are, we usually find these 'weeds' alongwith some other nasty ones (which do not form a part of our diet) literally making our garden look like jungle.

 

These 'weeds' have a tendency to outgrow what we have sown and they give our veggies and small fruit trees a  run for their money! So on May 24th, we decided to clean up the area a bit. Here a few photos which will give you a idea of what we did.

Foliage! Before we started "weeding"

Cleaning up is much more of a task than planting. So we decided to work in patches. Also we have planted lots of Bananas and Casuarina, which are a bit difficult to make out within the sort of jungle of that we have. We cleaned up a patch carefully, put our very own 'homemade' compost near the young fruit trees and proceeded to the next area.

A view from the top, on the left we have patches where we cleared the 'weeds'. Right side is untouched

Left side of the garden

Right Side of the garden

Close view. This is how we ended up clearing. 

Little did we know that due to false information, we ended up clearing our 'ground cover' just before the hottest time of the summer ! So for now we have put a stop to this chop and drop. In order to salvage our lost pride, we are contemplating on cover the ground with either coco peat or straw. Be tuned for further updates !