May 28, 2009 at 10:51 pm (gardening, harvest, vegetables)
Tags: bangalore, bellpepper, california wonder, capsicum, container, ganesha, harvest, in bangalore, pepper
Its a problem of plenty. It always happens when the plants in your garden compete with each other and yield their branch off….
Well, this time it was capsicum. Remember my old post on Capsicums.When I planted them I was little sceptical. Not only they were in my balcony with very limited sunlight, they were also planted in a smaller container than what they actually require. Being such sweet plants they are, they were very forgiving and made me proud. What is a better way to thank them than blogging about them. Thank you buddies… 
Batch 1:
Same set with a different view along with few home grown tomatoes.
Batch 2:
Checkout the gradience in the color.
Is the hand big or the pepper small 
When I plucked all these beauties and walked my way to the kitchen, my wife got so excited about the peppers and picked just one of them. And told me….
Her: “See there is Ganeshji in our pepper”.
Me: What?
Her: It is ganeshji .See carefully..
Lord Ganesh is her favorite. And that pepper is ….
It indeed looks a little like Ganesha. There is no arguing here….
What say?
gg
9 Comments
May 13, 2009 at 11:39 pm (gardening, medium, propagation, seedstarting)
Tags: great lakes, iceberg, in bangalore, labels, lactuca sativa, lettuce, lolla rossa, red salad bowl, seed starting
The harvests from your kitchen garden are always priceless though it is a vegetable thats available very cheap in stores outside; though you spent a lot on growing it than what its worth.. Though its available in plenty. But the Joy goes one level higher if you start growing something that you dont get outside easily and its very expensive. Yeah!!.. I am making my way towards the title of this post. “The Lettuce”.
Before we start on the techniques of it, a little primer. There are several varieties of Lettuce.
-
Butterhead
-
Chinese lettuce
-
Crisphead/Iceberg
-
Loose leaf
-
Romaine/Cos
The ones that we get in the super market is mostly Iceberg. It has more water content, and is very crisp. But it is of very less nutritional value. There are other varieties of Lettuce that do have very high nutritional value. Those lettuce that have a mild flavor and pigmented leaves are rich in nutrients and Anti-oxidants.
What are the Cultivars that I sowed:
-
Lolla Rosa [Loose leaf]
-
Red Salad Bowl [Oakleaf Lettuce]
-
Marvel of Four Seasons [ Butter head]
-
Great Lakes 118.[Ice berg]
Though the varieties are different, the sowing technique remains the same. FYI, Lettuce belongs to the family Asteraceae ( Same as Sunflower, Daisy etc).
Seed starting:
Lettuce seeds look like this. The darker seeds are of “Red” colored leaves.
Step 1:
Fill your seedling tray with moist seed starting mix. Your seed starting mix must be free of any pathogens/fungi. Using a sterile seed starting mix will avoid “Damping-off”. Here I use washed Coco-peat/Coco-coir/Coir-pith. Its not soggy but moist.
Step 2:
Take your dibber and make half centimeter pit in each cell of the seedling tray. An old toothbrush can be beheaded to make a dibber as in this picture.
Step 3:
Sow the seeds two per hole. I sow two per hole. If you think one per hole is fine, goahead with one per hole. Once you have sown the seeds completely. Cover the seeds with little coco peat on all the cells. Sprinkle some water using a sprayer if the media is little dry. And important thing, If you are sowing more than one variety of the same veggie, then Label them.
The seeds are sown in the following order from left to right: Great Lakes, Lolla Rossa, Red Salad Bowl, Marvel of Four seasons and the last row is not actually lettuce it is Cabbage . I had just 4 cultivars of lettuce.
More later
gg
17 Comments
May 13, 2009 at 11:05 pm (gardening)
Tags: blossom drop, cherry, in bangalore, yellow-pear
With so many varieties I had, I sowed “Yellow pear” because it had such an excellent shape. I was just waiting for this tomato to bear atleast one fruit so that I can whistle around the house..
This tomato is an Heirloom variety and is open pollinated. One needs to note that these varieties are susceptible to viral diseases.
I lost 2 plants to Leaf Curl Virus but this one seemed to have escaped and here it is in all its glory “The Yellow pear”. Though its not yellow right now, give it some time it will get there…
Another cluster with 3 fruits, yieldwise it is not that great. I dont see so many fruits popping. But if you ask the plant, I bet it has its own share of complaints… ( mostly my fault .
More after it ripes..
gg
Leave a Comment
May 10, 2009 at 9:24 pm (propagation, seedstarting)
Tags: bangalore, coleus, marigold, seedstarting, tricotyledons
Haa..With a title like this, you might have clicked it immediately to witness some beautiful indian bombshells… if you did so, dont worry ..
It happens..
Nevertheless, the cuties of this post won’t dissapoint you.
Remember, last sunday I had sown some seeds, its time to check their progress.
First came French marigold in record time of 3 days.( actually I could see the cotyledons in 2 days).
While I was closely observing all these seedlings, something just caught my attention.. There is one seedling with 3 cotyledons.. ( Tricotyledons??!). May be its a ’sport’. Anyways here it is for your viewing pleasure. Carefully look at the seedling in the bottom of the picture below.
Here is coleus with its teeny weeny seedlings, with a wide smile on their face.
The Ornamental Chillies are slow to come. While I am writing this blog, few of them have germinated. But thats for someother day. They just missed the train when the photo shoot was happening.. .
Have a lot to share about the training I attended. May be in the coming posts…
gg
6 Comments
May 6, 2009 at 11:04 pm (gardening)
Tags: bangalore, hydroponics, petbharo, soilless, training
I am so excited to post about my training tomorrow. I am attending a 3-day training on “Hydroponics” in bangalore. I will get to meet lots of like minded folks and more to learn.
Another best thing is the training venue is Lalbagh.
Will post about my experience there in the coming days
gg
8 Comments
May 5, 2009 at 11:26 pm (gardening, perlite, seedstarting)
Tags: bangalore, chilly, coleus, flowers, french, humidity, marigold, ornamental, peat, perlite, seedstarting, tithonia
Ever since I started growing vegetable in my container garden, flowers and ornamental plants took a back seat. And everytime I visit garden stores, I end up buying lots of flower seed packets and realize that I dont have enough containers to plant them. But now I got some more new containers/pots. So its party time!!.. My hands started itching to sow some flower seeds. Last sunday, the sowing finally happened.
Here are the pics…
Seed packets on the left and cell trays on the right side with plant labels on the top. Labels are DIY types. If you watch closely the seed packet on the right is Ornamental Chillies. I have been wanting to grow these since ages and finally got it a week back.
These cavity trays will be filled with seed starting mix.
Seeds with the seed starting mix. The seed starting mix is 3:1 peat + perlite. It has no fertilizer and hence will not burn the seedlings. Once the seedlings have their true leaves I water them with a weak solution of fertilizer. Sowing is different for different flowers. For Marigold, the seeds need to be covered but coleus needs light to germinate. Care has to be taken. Spending time on reading the seedpacket will do good.
The red tray that holds the mix is from a local plastic recycle shop for Rs 30 and its such a useful item in my garden that too at a dead cheap price.
Seed are sown in their own cells and covered with a polythene sheet. I started the following seeds,
-
French Marigold.
-
Tithonia.
-
Ornamental Chilly.
-
Coleus.
and now the most difficult job…. waiting for them to germinate..
Will keep you all posted about the progress. There are more seeds to sow.. May be someother day!
more later
gg
24 Comments
May 4, 2009 at 11:09 pm (gardening, seedstarting)
Tags: bangalore, bellpepper, california wonder, capsicum, container, moss, seed starting
It all started when my mom returned from vegetable shopping one day and was expressing her frustration with the way prices have been going high. Especially this capsicum or Bell peppers as its popularly known. It was around INR 40 a kg.
“Can you not plant some of these in our garden?”
Fueled with this motivation, I biked to the seeds selling store and returned home with seeds of a cultivar called “California Wonder”.
Seed starting procedure was as usual.
-
Take a sterile seed starting mix.
-
In small pot/pan sow the seeds in the moist media ( 1/16th of an inch deep).
-
Slightly cover the seed with media.
-
Cover the pan/pot with a polythene to preserve the humidity.
-
Keep it in a bright place away from direct sunlight.
Tada! thats all there is to it. In about a week’s time, you can see seedlings just peeking through the media. At this stage, they need good amount of sunlight and lack of sunlight will make the seedlings lanky.
Once the seedlings has two true leaves, they can be transplanted into their final containers/ prepared bed. In my case it was containers that too a 3 litre container.
The container mix is equal parts of cocopeat, vermicompost, sand. Regular watering and fertilizing is all you need to do for good results.
You can see there are 4 good sized capsicums from that 3L container.
Another view of the same plant.
Plant with the container. The fibrous thing that you see near the root of the plant is “Moss”. I am not sure if it sphagnum moss or not. This moss is what you see wrapped around a stick and sold as stakes in garden stores for plant support. They are also called Moss sticks. Why I have put it in there?. This “Moss” doesnt decay that easily. Infact it stays the same for so long. So I started using it as a mulch to avoid water loss.
Size of a pepper.
I have 3 such pots and each of those containers have around 4-6 descent sized peppers. Not bad huh!?
Next I am gonna sow pepper cultivars called “Bull nose” & “Purple beauty”
More later.
gg
11 Comments
May 2, 2009 at 8:43 pm (gardening, propagation)
Tags: bangalore, coldframe, cuttings, greenhouse, humidity, propagation
Ok, Not exactly a greenhouse, but a poor man’s propagation chamber or a cold frame. what ever you want to call it. Its been sitting there for a while at my home since the day I got it done. I remember my school days when I was asked to write an essay on “My house” and several years later here I am writing a post on “My Greenhouse”.
I use it for seed starting and propagation. Believe me, I have had 100% results in propagation from cuttings. Seed starting I got mixed results. Sometime back I happen to get some Croton cuttings from one of my relatives. They were pencil thick cuttings and were very healthy too. So I just planted them in the media after rubbing them with rooting hormone ( IBA). Media used is peat + perlite.
Here is how it looked. You can also see a coleus cutting next to the bunch of croton sticks.
With in two weeks, I was able to see small green shoots poking through that thick stems. The surprise was on almost all of those cuttings had signs of growth. So I just kept watering them and leaving them happy in the greenhouse. After 2 months, you get this.
Look how fresh and healthy they are. Their internodal distance is so long that I sometimes worry if they will just snap off. The root system is also very good.
Looking at the results, It is very clear that for success in propagation, humidity is a very important and a crucial factor, although there are several other things that decide the result. Here is the view with the door open. The expense incurred for this was around INR 1000. It has the top and the front covered with Fibre glass(acrylic) and all the other sides by plywood. The grey sticker thingy you see is actually duct-tape. I had put it to seal the gaps to preserve humidity. I actually had to bring the carpenter home and make him sit in front of the computer and showed him the picture of a Coldframe. I was very happy with the end result and my plants were too .
more later
gg
15 Comments
