A Simple Way To Harvest Joy

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.

An Easy Route to a Spicy Harvest

Charles Darwin was baffled by flowers.

In his pioneering book “On The Origin of Species”, Charles Darwin writes about how populations evolve gradually based on natural selection. Twenty years after writing the seminal book, what still perplexed him most was the origin of flowers. Until the middle of the Cretaceous period, fossil records show the forests were green with cycads, ginkgoes, conifers, and ferns. Flowering plants (also called as angiosperms) were non-existent. But sometime in the middle of the Cretaceous period, there was a sudden boom of angiosperms. It seemingly contradicted his theory that evolution was gradual. Darwin called it the “abominable mystery.”

In 1881 he speculated that Angiosperms must have evolved in some remote corner of the world and a catastrophic event must have triggered them to spread them abruptly. But there isn’t any record of such an event. What caused the world to transform from a muted green into a colorful one remains a mystery.

Evolution allows for all sorts of possibilities and eventually explores all its choices at its disposal. For example, would it not be strange for a plant to have stems underground? Surprisingly there are plants of such nature, and we know them as rhizomes. Two popular rhizomes which are part of our daily life are Ginger and Turmeric. Both belong to the family of Zingiberaceae. They have nodes from which leaves shoot above the soil and adventitious roots that grow beneath. They have an inflorescence that appears around six to eight months. Both ginger and turmeric are used as a cooking spice and also as medicine. Turmeric holds a great significance in Indian culture. It is considered auspicious and sacred.

Ginger and turmeric are some of the low maintenance plants to grow. Both take nearly ten months to mature and harvest. They are usually planted in spring and harvested in late winter. Planting them in the ground allows them to spread in a wide area. As urban gardeners with limited spaces, we can grow them in pots and still harvest a bounty.

The rules for growing ginger and turmeric are more or less the same. Let’s see how to go about it.

How to choose: You can use the ginger and turmeric that you buy from your grocery store.

Select a rhizome that is big with visible eyes.

The eyes pop out of the turmeric.

That's nearly a kg of turmeric we harvest every year from a single big pot.

I wash them free of soil, pat dry, slice and cut them into small pieces and dry them in sun. They shrink and turn hard in a week's time.

The same thing holds good for ginger. Wash, pat dry, slice and dry.

The dry ginger pieces are smaller than turmeric.

Blend them in a mixie. Sieve to make sure the powder is all of the same size. Store it in an air tight container.

How to plant: Since the stems run horizontally and not deep, you need a pot with a wide area. A rectangular potter two feet in length or a round pot with a wide mouth is ideal. Soil medium can be fresh compost mixed with a powdery soil. Plant the rhizomes with their eyes pointing up, two to four inches deep and six inches apart. Making sure the eyes are not exposed. Spray water and ensure that it’s completely absorbed. It takes nearly six to eight weeks for the leaves to appear. Until then keep the soil moist but do not overwater. Watering on alternate days is sufficient.

Here is a tested way to make sure that the leaves spring up; cover the pot with a sheet of newspaper or cloth. It keeps the soil moist and also adds some humidity. Uncover while watering and cover it back. Once the shoots appear, the covers are no longer needed. Until the next few months, water when the soil is dry.

How much sunshine: The rhizomes like full sun when planted in the ground. If it is grown in a pot, place it in partial sun. Nothing makes the plants happy like rain. During monsoon allow the plant to get drenched in the rain. Ensure the water drains and doesn’t stagnate in the pot.

Nine months later the leaves start to dry, an indication that the rhizomes are ready to harvest. Use a spade to pull out the rhizomes and wash the mud away in running water. For the next cycle, reuse the pot with renewed soil.

How to store: Turmeric and ginger can be cut into thin slices and sun-dried until they dry and shrink in size. Grind them in a mixie to a powder and store them in airtight containers. They have a long shelf life and stay aromatic for more than a year.

Happy Gardening

Until Next Time

Cheers From,

Mango Flowers This article first appeared in Deccan Herald on 31st January 2021