EggPlants and Sweet Banana Peppers

From gardening 2009

My plants seem to have survived, flowering and fuiting !!
'Harvested' and cooked up some greens...


tomato flowers..


methi harvested..



and cooked up ..

June 2009 Vegetable and flower Pictures

Coreopsis

Dahlia

Zinnia

I have learned from a colleague of mine that if you pinch zinnia when young they branch out and you get more flowers. I felt pretty bad to pinch it but now I have several shoots from one plant and they all are flowering now.

Bell Pepper

Sweet Bannana Pepper

This is our 2nd Snake Gourd growing. We already harvested one and made curry with it.
They are not growing very long as I expected. I am getting long bottle gourds and short snake gourds.

Bottle gourds under the stairs. As you can see there is one big one growing which is about a week old. May be harvest it next week.Usually it takes 2 weeks for the fruit to mature.There are 3-4 small ones also but I have to watch and see how many will grow.

I observed that usually only one gourd on a vine is growing even though others got pollinated.

If they are on different vines, its good and all may grow.

Dosakai's: Female flowers finally showed up and glad to see the dosakai's.

There are still some more coming. We may be able to harvest these two next week.

Waiting for them to turn yellow.

First Bottle gourd 2009. Planning to harvest this friday June 26th 2009. I think the seed I got is long variety and its growing very long.

GardenPictures2009 - Part5(Tomatoes,Peppers and EggPlants)

1. Peppers: Green Peppers and Sweet Bannana Peppers. None of them bloomed yet.
I couldn't get green pepper germinate at home even with zip lock method. I gave seed to friend of mine who got them germinated and gave me the plants. Sweet Bannan Peppers germinated very fast. I soaked them in water for a day and got them germinated on top of my cable box.

2.EggPlant: Not very healthy. Lot of holes in leaves. May be infected.Got them germinated using zip lock method and then keeping them on top of cable box.

3.First Tomato: I didn't start any tomato plant but a friend of mine gave this plant and its already giving the first tomato. Very happy to see the first tomato of the season.

GardenPictures2009-Part4(Leafy vegetables)

1 : Thotakura in the bed after harvesting(see picture 2). We got good thotakura probably for every seed.

2. Thotakura Harvested : I have spent 1 hour yesterday night cutting it. So you can imagin how much we got. Very happy about it and will continue to grow it.

3.Gongura: Started late recently one week back. Upcoming..

4. Bachali: Its coming up good. Don't if its a vine or bush variety. Right now looks like a bush. It takes time to grow. Should start very early in the season.

All of my greens are in shades of my Gourds.

GardenPictures2009 - Part3(Gourds,Beans & cucumbers)

1. Dosakai: They are in full bloom now. Nice yellow male flowers. No female flowers yet. We have all boys at home. So my husband teases 'no female flowers in the garden also' :)
If they show up I will get some dosakai.

2. Bottle gourd under the stairs. I have put bottle gourds in different beds to see how they do with respect to sun/shade. Will post at the end of the season again.

3 & 4: Bottle Gourd and snake gourd on left side.Beans(chikkudu) on the back,Dosakai(on the right) and leafs in the centre(in the shade).

GardenPictures 2009 - Part 2(Flower garden)

1. Tulips & Daffodils: We love the tulips. They bloom for a short time (2 weeks) every year but are very pretty to welcome spring.

2.Shrub Roses ,Hostas and Ice Plant:
We got Shrub Roses for the first time this year and we are very happy to see the full bloom.
Hope they continue. Ice Plant is perrineal and its been continuing to bloom every spring for teh past 2 years.
Hostas have come back big this year and may have to thin them for next year in fall.

3. Dutch Lillies: Plant 4 of them for the first time . I love the flower but they too bloom for very short period. They are in bloom right now.

Dahlia's and MaryGolds are coming up and will post when they bloom.

GardenPictures 2009 - Part1

Got inspired by GoGreen and Finally uploaded pictures.
1. This is the picture of my cable box with foam cups where I got all of my seeds germinated.
I didn't take pictures of my seeds in ziplock. I used that method to get Egg plant seeds germinated. For gourds, I used the foam cups with seed started mix soil.

2. Once germinated plants got moved to the light stand. Learned this the hard way after some of my plants(dosakai) died because of lack of light.

3. Happy Gourds under the light. They grow fast.

A bright and sunny deck

It is June now, sunny and bright and the plants are thriving. This is what I have - green leafy vegetables - methi, Gongura and thotakura - all started from seeds. 4 sorakaya plants sprouted from seeds and 2 kakarakaya. Put in seeds for bachhali today - should wait and see how they come up. Also bought 4 each of tomato, bell pepper and egg plants from a nearby plant nursery. All in all, my deck is quite a garden at this time - here are some pictures.

My vegetable patch on the deck

I just have a 10 X 10 deck that I can use for my 'gardening' - or 'container gardening' !! But I love seeing a plant grow and simply enjoy a home-grown leaf/vegetable and so I have been trying to grow what ever I can in the little space.

This year, picking on dreamgardener's lead and seeds (yes I got seeds thru post from dg as well), tried some coffee filter/zip lock germination method and also soaking seeds in room temperature water. Both gave good results for sorakaya/ bottle gourd, dosakaya, beans. For some reason only sorakaya survived the trasplantation into bigger pots. Could be the erratic weather conditions and that I had to leave the plants outside through 30-40 temps and terrible rain a couple of weekends..or my black thumb !! That was beginning April.

Continuing on Garden Blog 2009..

I thought of taking pictures and posting them but as usual weekends are too short.
I will try to take some pictures sometime soon.

So far..
Spring colors started in our front yard with beautiful Daffodils. Tulips are up but no flower yet.

Vegetable garden:

Started mint and methi in the empty beds outdoor this weekend. Is it too early?

Indoor(started these from seeds):
I have few (4 or 5) egg plants
5 or 6 bottle gourds(sorakai)
5 or 6 Marigold,
8 Zinnia,
all my dosakai baby plants died(why? too much water?) very sad. need to start them again.
Waiting on
bell pepper,bannana pepper,snake gourd seeds to germinate.

I was able to germinate egg plant seeds using coffee filter/zip lock method. But soaking seeds in room temp water also seems to have same effect. Soak them in water for 24 hrs and sow them in soil less mix. They will sprout in 7 days.

Failed to germinate bell pepper seeds using the above. So now trying the soaking methods
The last batch I soaked them in water for 24 hrs and have sowed in soil less seed mix. Hope this works! Its been 4 days. Same thing with bannan pepper. But I sowed bannana Pepper seeds in regular potting mix. Does it make any difference? I have to wait and see.

Dosakai seeds germinated very fast and the baby plants died very fast too! . I am still sad about them. What did I do wrong? I soaked the seeds in water for 24 hours and sowed them in regular potting mix. Sprouted in 2-3 days. I was very happy to see them. Then they started dying in 1 week time? Planning to start new batch of dosakai tonight. I will post how they will do.

My snake gourd seeds are not yet germinating? Why? Its been 16 days so far. I read online they take upto 21 days to germinate and need warm temp upto 80 degree. I moved two of my snake gourd pots to the top of cable box this morning to see if it helps. Planning to start one more batch tomorrow as I really want to grow them this year.

More later..

Garden Blog 2009

Spring is almost here and its time to start gardening. I love to grow vegetables in our back yard.

This year I am planning to do Peppers,Egg Plant,Bottle gourd,snake gourd,cucumber and other leafy vegetables. I will use this blog to post my success/failure.