Saw this new insect in the garden. @inaturalist app Seek tells me it is called Atractomorpha Lata. It is herbivorous and belongs to the grasshopper family. I don't see a pair and wonder if there will be more. I am amazed at the way it looks. A minute into the video is a close up and you can see the neck is like an armour. Will update about it as and when I see it.
Some years ago I started growing vegetables in my garden. The first batch of vegetables we grew were beetroot, cherry tomatoes, brinjals, ring beans, ladies’ finger, turnip, potatoes, radish, and carrot. Among them, the first to produce fruits were beans, followed by ladies’ finger.
Before I continue, I want to give you a quick definition of vegetables and fruits. Commonly, any edible portion of a plant is a vegetable. However, botanically, all that grows from a flower and contain seeds is a fruit: this includes tomatoes and brinjals. This dichotomy has been exploited over the ages as in some countries vegetables are taxed but fruits are not!
Coming back to my story, our beetroots were harvested eight weeks later. They were of medium size. The beets were sweet, and leaves delicious when cooked. They tasted much better than the ones we buy at stores. The cherry tomato plants brimmed with ripe clusters for months. The joy of picking fresh tomatoes for a salad or coriander to garnish food was a dream-come-true moment.
Our first batch of brinjals was harvested without any hassles. The subsequent batches had worms and wilt. The brinjals reminds me of a story my father would narrate. Once upon a time there was a grandmother who was very sick. She was on her deathbed, and Yama came for her. Well, who would want to die? The grandmother told Yama that she had a simple wish to fulfill before she went with him. She had planted a brinjal sapling recently, and it was about to flower. Her last desire was to cook the fruit. She promised to him that when she harvests a healthy fruit, free of worms and infection, she’ll cook it and surrender to him. He thought it was a simple desire of a dying lady and granted it to her. Poor Yama had no idea that brinjals and worms go together! The grandmother had to reject every fruit because it had either had a worm or was infected and in this way prolonged her life on earth.
However not everything we harvested the first time was perfect. The radishes were crooked. The carrots were the length of a finger, and the potatoes were marble-sized. Humans have a fixed notion about sizes and shapes of vegetables. We avoid picking any vegetables that do not confirm to this notion. Sellers use this knowledge to their advantage and stock good looking (standardized) vegetables on their shelves. In turn, it falls on the shoulders of farmers to produce such standard produce. When we grow vegetables at home, we do not give much importance to this. We are happy with the “fruits” of our efforts.
We also grew greens— spinach, coriander, mint, sweet basil and fenugreek. We wondered if we could grow tugari bele (toor dal/pigeon pea) and we were happy it was perennial. Once you become familiar with the ways of growing and maintaining, the process of tending a vegetable garden becomes easy.
Let me share with you a simple method I follow for growing spinach. Take three uniformly sized pots and label them as week-1, week-2, and week-3. Layer the pots with soil. Divide the seeds into three equal parts. Start with sowing the seeds in the pot labelled week-1, and in subsequent two weeks sow in the other two pots. In the second week, the week-1 pot would have germinated. And by the third week, spinach in the week-1 pot would have sprung an inch tall. It takes forty-five days for spinach to mature. The leaves have to be harvested at the right time as the old ones taste bitter. You can start harvesting leaves from the first pot and move to the subsequent ones with a gap of ten to fifteen days. This method will yield spinach for a few months. This method can also be applied to grow other greens too.
Living in urban jungles we mostly run short of time and space. Gardening in this environment is fulfilling and I encourage you to grow a simple vegetable garden for the joy of it. Everything we venture into has a learning curve and will be peppered with mistakes. We will learn better only if we persist. Of course, as I always say, gardening advice is similar to diet advice. What works for one doesn’t work for another. You have to find ways that suit your needs and environment.
Until next month
Happy Gardening
Cheers from the Tomato Flowers This article originally appeared in Deccan Herlad on 28th March 2021.
Spring is the best time to seed your garden; all you need is the right amount of sunlight, space and the right kind of soil
Seeds are ambitious. They seek new places to grow and thrive. Some seeds stick on the feathers of birds that visit the plant, and ride on them. Some seeds consumed by birds and grazing animals, pass through the digestive system to reach a new place. Some develop adept wings to fly. Some drift in the water for nearly three years until they wash up on a beach. Some seedpods explode and seeds (like missiles) travel a distance to land in a new place.
My earliest memory of watching seedpods scatter was of Crossandra infundibuliformis, commonly known as kanakambara/kanakambari. It explodes with a loud noise while dispersing seeds and therefore called the Firecracker Flower. Some other common plants that disperse seeds are Butterfly pea, Buddha Belly, Balsams, Impatiens, Yellow Bauhinia, and Calliandra.
In 1963 while excavating the palace of Herod’s palace in Masada, Archaeologists discovered a jar of palm seeds. Forty years later after unearthing, scientists grew a few of them into palm trees. At the Old Summer Palace in Beijing a blooming Sacred Lotus attracts tourists. It is a wonder because it bloomed from an ancient seed, nearly 1300 years old. One of the most significant discoveries was in Siberia, on the banks of the Kolyma River. Mature and immature frozen seeds belonging to Narrow-Leafed Campion were found in squirrel hibernation burrows 125 feet below the ground. They were 32,000 years old, kept safe by permafrost. Even though humans have spent tens and thousands of years with plants, how long a seed can stay alive and viable is still a mystery to us.
What is the best season to seed a garden? In India it is Spring(Feb/March)
Whatever garden you would like to begin, make sure you have adequate sunlight and space for plants. A soil mixed with compost and sand is ideal for cultivation. While the soil absorbs the moisture, the compost provides essential nutrients. The sand keeps the layers porous and helps in draining the excess water.
Mix the soil, compost and sand thoroughly. Make sure it is powdery to touch. If you are transferring it to pots, prepare the pot. Ensure that there is a drain hole at the bottom for excess water to leave. Layer the bottom of the pot with pebbles for nearly an inch. Top it with a layer of sand. Finally, fill three fourths of the pot with the soil mixture. There is a reason for layering it in this method. When you feed water, the upper and middle layer will absorb maximum water. The rest flow down through the sand and pebbles preventing water accumulation.
You have a variety of seeds to choose from if you are buying from a store. Choose organic seeds for a good yield. Once you have grown a cycle of crops, you can harvest seeds for the next season. If you have unused ones, you can preserve them by sealing them in a paper cover and placing them in an airtight box. Store them in a dark corner of your garden cupboard.
Before you begin, it is essential to know how tall and wide the plant will grow. This helps in sowing the seed at an adequate distance. If you are unsure, sow seeds six to eight inches apart till the seedling stage and replant later. Use your finger and draw a line or make a hole in the soil. Drop a few seeds in the hole or middle of the line. Now cover with a layer of soil as thick as the seed. If you sow them too deep, the germinated seed will be under the ground for too long, unable to harness sunlight for photosynthesis and will die. Big seeds like beans and peas are sown deeper. Sprinkle water using a sprinkler or a sprayer to wet the soil. Keep the soil moist until they germinate.
If you are not sure about the quality of seeds, you can germinate them before sowing. Seed germination is similar to sprouting legumes for a salad. Soak the seeds for eight hours. Drain the water. Spread them on one side of a wet cloth, fold the other half over, and place it in a warm place. Within a few days, germination will begin. You can eliminate the ungerminated seeds and transfer the good ones to the soil. These are some of the basic rules of selecting a seed and preparing the soil. In the next column, we will see how to grow a simple vegetable garden.
Until then, Happy Gardening.
Explosive cheers from Kanakambari