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.