Scrap them and rebuild.
It took couple of months for these ladies finger plants to fruit, you must have seen updates on them in my last post. The idea was to explore if they grow on these pots and if they do how well. Earlier, I have planted them in big poly bags, which was having more length, and they grew well, as their root expanded well. But in these pots, the depth is not much, and if you see these plants, they started growing more upwards. They should not have been this tall ideally, and started fruiting quite early.
Few other factors could be abundance of sunlight and continuous rain and the Neem plant covering them. When I brought them from the roof top. this was the best place I had, and that time, we had cut all the stems of Neem plants. They have grown back well, and with continuous rain, the water that drops on these plants is Neem flavored, which is not good. We have a saying in my place, that tells, no plant grows well below Neem plant. And I saw it in reality from this experiment. Earlier science was not much developed and these sayings were based on observations - learning never ends.
And this is the reason, these all seasoned inca plants have not flowered yet. With continuous rains, insect attack is also hampering the grow.
I had put Malabar Spinach seeds couple of times in these big pots and finally one plant came up. It grew very nicely, and we had consumed them once.
Before going to Kolkata, I cut that big stem and took home, the leaves were served as fries and the stem used in mixed curry.
These Malabar Spinach plants grow nicely after being cut and I thought, I would have another nice yield soon. By the time I came back, this place was full of grass and as it rained for a week continuously, I did not go to the garden. And see what has happened.
Caterpillars have made a nice feast of them. I have cleaned up the area now and I will have to cut them once again to see how they grow back.
Now I am planning to scrap the ladies finger plants in preparation of winter. And also scrap some of these plants, that are not doing well and take them to the other side, where they can get enough sunlight. Ideally, the preparation would have started a month back, but it's difficult to do anything with continuous rains. September used to be a pleasant month, with Winter coming around October during Dussehra. That has now shifted by a month, some real effect of climate change. Tomorrow being a national holiday, I plan to spend the entire day shaping up the garden, the best utilization of Gandhi Jayanti. Gardening is a pleasurable passion, if you enjoy it, especially when you see the result. Sometimes so much hard work goes into it, but it's not all roses at the end, so we rebuild it, but never give up. Same goes with life, isn't it ? We fail at times but then life does not stop there.
Happy Gardening!
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