A morning at my garden.

September 24, 2009 at 11:49 pm (gardening, vegetables)
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These days, with rain god being so generous, I am spending more time watching the plants than watering them. Their foliage looks lush and clean which only a good pour can achieve. Watching your plants in the early morning in a beautiful weather is such a pleasure that one shouldn’t miss.

Every morning for the past 1 month, when I return from my garden, I bring with me atleast 5-6 tomatoes, 1 pepper, couple of brinjals. I am really surprised how a small patch of terrace garden can sustain so much. I have around 10 plants of Toms, 10 of Brinjal and 4 peppers. When I say terrace garden, its very easy to imagine a spacious terrace with plants. Well look at this,

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This is one side of my garden. Like this I have 2 more.It is 2 feet wide and has just enough space for a person to stand when the pots are kept. Though its not very convenient tending to the plants in this space.It is really very productive. There is too much sunlight to waste.

The plants you see above are tomatoes, pepper ( at the far end) and a Rose (A scented variety. No I am not a fan but my mom is!) . In my old post, I had mentioned about my maid who got many tomato seedlings and had me plant all of them. These are those seedlings. Surprisingly each plant is of a different variety.

Round big sized tomato.

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Flat pumpkin style tomato:

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Tomato with a tipped blossom end. All the tomatoes of this plant look like this like a top.

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The “regular” tomato

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Then there is my favourite tomato plant. It has grown almost 10 feet tall. I regularly prune this plant and do proper staking. It is a prompt yielder and has trusses all the way upto the roof.

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The vine that is seen clinging on the tomato is bitter gourd. Here is a pic. It looks sweet though ;) .

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Here is a tomato plant which is in its pink. Introducing Podland Pink! A pink colored plum tomato. The pink color looks a lot like red in picture but in reality it is a beautiful pink. The red cherry next to it will help you identify the pink.

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Here is bean and a brinjal.

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Wish I could post all the pics of my garden. I will post about the container cabbage experience/learning and some seed starting stories in my next post.

Till then

Ciao.

gg

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Tomatoes, Potatoes and Beyond….

January 7, 2009 at 10:28 pm (gardening)
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Today was special.. This morning I harvested those much awaited tomatoes. Yes, the day had come. This is the day I was waiting since the day I sowed the seeds. Though I had done tomatoes earlier, this time was different. There is this much awaited cherry tomato, which bore lots of tomatoes in a single stalk. I always pluck tomatoes when they are green and ripe them indoors.

Apparently there are many who have interests in my tomatoes. The guests include squirrels, pigeons and workers in the building ;) . I dont want them to be tempted. Who wouldn’t be..

Let me stop talking and let the pics do their job..

Its such a pleasure to see tomatoes with their stalk.

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This is from an Indeterminate variety- Indam Naveen. My fertilizer regimen was not that very good. Inspite of that, these babies did a great job.

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Here is the much awaited cherry tomato. There are more than one stalk here. This is the first batch of tomatoes whcih suffered some serious blossom drop. Once ripe, they will be so sweet not just to eat but to look too.MyGarden 099

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is one tomato (bottom left) in the pic below, with a brown rot.This is a sympton of Calcium deficiency. Its called Blossom End Rot.

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Tomatoes after their crowns removed. I will keep them in the rice sack that seems to speeden their ripening process.

 

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I have blogged from the time I sowed the tomato seeds (Oct 12, 2008) till the day I plucked tomatoes(Jan 7, 2009) from it. Its has been a great learning experience. I thank everyone who encouraged/motivated me esp my blog readers who were curiously asking about the progress. I definitely will feel guilty to consume the tomatoes by myself.

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I guesstimated the weight of the tomatoes I plucked and turns out its approximately 2kilograms.

Tomato seeds = Rs 50

2kg of tomato = Rs 60 (approx)

But the tomato stalk above = Priceless…….

Did I mention that my long wait for the potatoes saw its end last week. No It was not the right time for picking potatoes, its just that my patience ran out. I am known for my impatience …

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This is actually from two plants. The potatoes from the first two plants never get to pose for my camera. ;)

I actually expected more from these plants considering the amount of hardwork i put. But with the very little sunlight we get in the balcony this is not bad. So.. better luck next time.

This time I left my tomato plants to get bushy and didn’t really prune them properly. There are lots of suckers that arise from the plant that result in the nutrition being spread across and not resulting in big friuts. I am planning to raise just two tomato plants of indeterminate plants following a textbook method to see if i can get bigger fruits.

At somepoint in life, everyone should garden and feel for themselves how harvesting from your own plants is like.

geek ‘Happy’ gardener.

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Seed starting Tomatoes, Chillies and Egg plant

October 27, 2008 at 12:16 pm (gardening, medium, perlite, propagation, seedstarting)
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As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been working on seed starting tomatoes, chilli and egg plant. I have been recording information on that at every possible stage. I sowed them on 12th of October and we are 15 days from that point now.

First I will go over the varieties I planted and then the details on each of them.

Tomatoes:

Cherry Tomato F1 Hybrid:

Ever since I came back from US, I have been craving for cherry tomatoes. I have checked nearly countless shops for cherry tomato seeds; over the phone; in person, you name it. And after I came to know the price of it(INR 900/100gms), I had a shock and I almost gave up on it. Then I casually went to Indo-American Hybrid Seeds to buy some pots and on the way I saw a shop called National Seeds(Very close to INDAM Seeds). I had a feeling that I should try one last time in this shop and Bingo! they have it. Cherry tomatoes!! Yes.. 1gms for INR 80. Not bad.. not bad at all. I immediately picked up a packet and reached home back with a Happy Face :-D

This cherry tomato is an indeterminate variety. So It will reach more than 6 feet in height and will keep beariing fruits throughout the year.

Indam – Naveen:

This is another indeterminate variety of a normal sized tomato. Wanted to grow indeterminate variety this time hence this. These varieties are not really meant for Container growing. But hey, what the heck, Lets break some rules. I have already made arrangements for the containers. This time I am going for huge 20Litre Paint buckets and since these fellas grow as tall as i am .. I have bought some stakes as well.

Indan – Rupali:

This is a determinate variety that was loyal to me lasttime by its amazing produce in container, so included that as well.

Eggplant (Brinjal) :

This is the variety that got the name egg plant for brinjal. This is a F1 hybrid variety.

Chilli(long variety):

This one is a long variety from Indam. Chilli plants are perfect for a container and trust me! if you have one plant, you will never have to shop for chilli and everytime you need one, you have a few that you can pluck from the plant and use it.

So Let me end the text here and let the pictures speak.

Seed packets:

Top left- Indam – Naveen Tomato

Top Right- Eggplant (Now you know why)

Bottom left- Cherry tomaotes

Bottom right- Need i mention that?

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Seed starting:

Medium:

The medium I used to start these seeds are peat + Perlite ( in the ration 3:1). I didnt add any fertilizer to the mix. The plan was to fertilize the plants with a weak solution after they show true leaves.

Moist medium ready to take seeds:

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12th October:Seeds are sown and Labelled ( yes labelling is important esp when i have 3 varieties of same plant)

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19th October: 7 days later they peek out. From the right-left Indam Rupali, Cherry tomato, Indam Naveen, Chilli, Eggplant, Zinnia.

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27th October: 15days after it was sown. Tomatoes were the first, then came zinnia and later egg plant, then comes the chilli finishing last. Tomatoes are having a set of true leaves and they will remain in this 2.5″ square pots until they are ready to be transplanted into 20L paint bucket.

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This is what I have been doing last couple weeks. In the next couple of weeks, these seedlings will grow and more work to pot all of them into bigger pots.

Wishing everyone a Happy and Green Diwali :-)

More later

gg

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