The rain destroyed everything this year
It has been long since I wrote my last garden journal. The reason being I literally gave up doing anything. This year rain destroyed everything and at one point of time, I decided to quit, because it was impossible to work with wet soil. It's not that I did not try, this is how my garden was.
Before leaving to Pune, I bought a big pipe (so that my son can water the plants) and planted these flower plants, expecting they would be still growing and be ready by early Winter. But unfortunately continuous rain destroyed everything except the Curry leaves plant and Malabar Spinach.
You can see there are some holes in these leaves - continuous rain is a heaven for insects. After the rain stopped, I started building it from scratch. Taking out the soil in each of these pots, making them light, by adding Coco pit, Vermicompost and putting back is not an easy task - especially when you have so many pots. So I decided to work in phases as its affecting my back as well. After I made the first batch pots ready, walked into a nearby nursery to bring some saplings.
To my surprise, all they had is only Chrysanthemum saplings in good condition. When nature takes revenge, no one is spared. They must be having almost hundred people working there - ya, its a big govt nursery expanding several acres of land. But when it rains, what can they do even !! Got some ill french imca saplings from them and then I decided to cut stems from my plants and replant them. Ever seen an Aloe Vera flower ?
I had planted just one Aloe Vera and see how they grew - over productive. So decided to threw them and plant something else. I have one more in good condition in my balcony but they are over productive there as well. Need to separate them and replant again. Before taking these out, took a snap of that lovely flower, the orange color is soothing, isn't it ? .
The spinach started growing nicely after some care.
Mint leaves were dead and luckily it grew from those dead stems. Prepared the Jeevamrutha from Cow dung for organic growth.
As of today, this is how it is.
All most more than 30 hrs of work to get this far - called in a person to help, but unfortunately you don't get people to work as you desire.
Whenever I used to work on the rooftop , whoever would come, praise the growth of that Malabar Spinach. So finally I decided to cut it and enjoy the organic taste.
Have you ever felt the taste of vegetable alone ? Like you can distinguish the taste of it from the spices that is used in cooking. It would happen only if its organic and this fleshy Malabar Spinach was no way less than mutton.
Since then we have enjoyed this three times cutting these stems and allowing them to grow again. It's so tasty that we don't waste any part of it - the stem alone mixed in any curry can change your craving for food. And if you do not know the benefits of Malabar Spinach, then I highly encourage you to do some research and grow it yourself - easy to grow with lot of benefits.
Hopefully we will see some nice colors and fresh flowers in couple of weeks. I am not using all pots at once - lessons from past. Keeping few of them for second phase, so that I can have flowers in entire Winter. Again, that's the plan, but you never know !!!
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