Monday, July 16, 2012

Schweeeet photos coming up!

Jai Sai Master!

Hello people!

Lack of posts since may 28th is aweful, especially when we have so much to share and to learn.

A lot is happening here, regarding our gardens. Firstly, we cleaned the whole place up (lots and lots of invasive weeds), thrown in a cover crop of mixture of seeds (cowpea, chickpea, groundnut, mustard, marigold), then started planting veggies again for the season, started a new compost heap AND...

Lots of seedlings!

Yes! Finally, I got off my lazy backside, sat down one day, and planted lots of seeds in small trays. Our compost did the magic, weather turned up cool and great, and lots and lots of them came up! Photos of them will be up tomorrow.. and its well worth the wait. Isnt it great to see lots of little seedlings, fresh, green, healthy and raring to grow?

Now, for the bad news. We have, right now, a massive attack of caterpillars (as every year it happens) in our gardens. We live on the very edge of the city, and there is lots of 'wild' area near our place. Insects from there find our gardens really appetizing (and so do monkeys occasionally). The come in swarms, literally thousands.. and eat everything they see (almost)!

Our beautiful eggplants are mere skeletons, mustard covercrop is non existent. So far, thats all, but THATS ALL! They have not touched fruit trees yet, but by tomorrow they should be on them. Somehow, they left bitter gourd plants alone till now, and only very few of them touched our chilli peppers so far... but I think in two more days there will be nothing else for them to eat and I suspect they will  eat everything up.

Luckily, I kept the seedlings in the second floor and so far, insects have not found them. So, I am kinda waiting for  the insects to go away (which they will do in 10 or so days) to plant.

Tomorrow, I shall post a video, photos, etc., of our gardens in their most miserable state so that people dont get fooled by the photos of abundance. Some times you win and sometimes you dont, but the idea is to keep going till you learn to win all the time, right?

Fancy blog and all, we are but very very amateur gardeners. Till two years ago, I did not know what a tomato plant looked like. So.

Today, Sasidhar (our beloved watch-and-learn-before-you-do brother in law and motivational speaker) ordered seeds from annadana seed bank. Heard that they are closing down. Too bad. BUT, we are going to have those seeds and hopefully we will be able to save them! Lets hope for the best.

We have lots of seedlings to plant, elephant foot yams, a couple more bananas, a bunch of fruit trees (most of which will be planted some place where they can be planted.. right now, our gardens are full to the brink as far as trees go), and all of those updates, coming soon!

Thank you for reading, happy gardening!