Soil for your Garden

Compost! Compost! I hear it all the time from my friends, gardening blogs or magazines. I didn't try it myself, thinking its a cumbersome process or probably lazy! Was dumping all the kitchen organic waste straight to the trash.
When I started planting seeds, around the same time, my husband suggested, lets separate the wet garbage and dry garbage. And I thought, why not try composting instead.
That's how we just started keeping separate boxes to collect recyclable trash, organic waste and the everything else garbage in separate trash cans.

This cascade box sits on the kitchen counter top. All the vegetable/fruit peels, rinds, chilli/other vegetable stalks, eggshells all go here. You can use an icecream box too. When you open the box, you will get a pungent pickle smell, which I have started liking *wink*. Once the container is full, I take it out and dig the ground, 2-3 feet deep. Fill it up with green and brown waste (explained below) and top it with plain dirt. I have no fancy compost drum or 3x3 box yet, which I keep reading in many blogs. In future I might build one. But in the meanwhile, I'm just digging pits in a row, filling them up, turning the soil once in a while and checking if the compost is getting ready.

Compost attracts earthworms and other beneficial organisms.You could find some worms and add it too.

The formula for composting is to have a right mixture:

Green - wet, high-nitrogen materials like coffee grounds, tea leaves, fruit and vegetable scraps, chopped leaves or grass clippings, flowers, weeds, eggshells, grains.
Brown - dry, high carbon materials like dry leaves, twigs, hay, corncobs, nutshells, newspaper, paper towels, pine needles, sawdust, straw, wood chips, wood ash.

DO NOT COMPOST:

• Meat bones, fish scraps, fat or other scraps from meat, as they will attract pests
• Aluminium foil/ tin cans
• Colored paper
• Diseased plants
• Pet poop
• Plants sprayed with chemicals, pesticides.

You know your compost is ready when you can smell and feel the rich soil. It should take approximately two to three weeks.

I noticed Black Soldier Fly visiting the food scrap buried underneath and they have been working a lot too in producing the soil.

Try it, you will love making your own compost and let me know your experience, tips or ideas.

Happy Composting!

Seeds! Seeds! Seeds!

I recently picked up a book from the Library for my daughter, called Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace.  Buddy, the bear gets five colorful bags in the mail from his grandpa, each holding a surprise. It talks about all the colors, shapes, and sizes of seeds, getting the children interested in remembering the names of the seeds, counting, sorting, etc. But it builds curiosity among kids about the germination and growth of seeds into plants.

My daughter is extremely excited about our new hobby. We pick all the seeds from the fruits we eat, from the kitchen shelves, from the vegetables, from the park. We see a seed, it comes home to our little garden we are growing.
 We sow the seeds together and I tell my daughter, we need to wait for it to grow. She thought if she waited there right then, it might sprout. The innocence of a 4-year-old!

The morning ritual is to go straight to the garden and say good morning to all the plants, see if any of the seeds germinated.
When my daughter spots a sprout, she gets so excited and shouts in excitement, "See Mumma what I made, I planted the seeds, and I waited and I waited, and there the plant came". I tell her, "you were a tiny seed like this, and look, how big you have grown". And she feels proud.

We have so far planted cantaloupe seeds, which were the fastest to sprout, 3-4 days. We'd open the kitchen cabinets and pull out some mustard, fenugreek, cumin, poppy, sesame, and plant them too. These took a good amount of time to sprout. We have tried growing peppers, apple, peach, lemon, orange, avocado, tomatoes, seeds from the park. You feel a sense of pride when you see the transformation of seed you've sown into a beautiful, thriving garden. 

Quick Tips for beginners:

1. Label all the containers and the dates when it was planted so its easy to track
2. Sow 3-4 seeds in a container, if it is small. Leave at least a few inches gap between seeds, so they have room to grow
3. Water them enough so the soil is moist and not runny
4. Read my Don't throw your containers! to get an idea on reusing the plastic containers for potting
5. Have been making my own compost, which is yielding me rich soil, for the plants
6. Once the roots have established well, transplant them to bigger pots or the ground. Wet the soil well, and use a trowel to remove it gently.

Now the great task is to manage the plants well, and keep them growing big. For me, I presume the challenge might be managing all these plants in my small space. I need to check online and read some gardening books to keep my plants healthy, happy and growing.
I'm happy and excited like my little girl seeing the seeds germinate.

Don't throw your containers!

What do you do with all the plastic and glass containers?

I was throwing them in the recycle trash up until recently, it struck, why not use them to plant.
I have started using the yogurt containers, milk jugs, starbucks cups, egg craters to plant seeds.

I haven't painted the containers yet. But will soon, I hope. Or does it matter :)

Kitchen Garden Tips

Found some amazing tips online to care for your Kitchen garden. Check it out here
Happy Gardening!

Green Thumb Legacy

In my family and in general, I have seen long-running battles over properties, gold, and other material assets. Legacy is what gets passed along from one generation to another. It doesn't always have to be monetary but our genes, character traits, knowledge, culture, values, do get passed along.

My father grew up in a village in Kerala, India, where farming is the main livelihood of many. Paddy fields, coconut groves, rubber farming are common sightings. The heads of the families held jobs in government or private firms, mostly government because of the sought after retirement benefits. While the farming manned by day wagers provided additional income to support the families. My Grandfather worked for the government electricity board that supplied electricity to the town. 

My family traveled almost every summer some 400 miles to visit extended family in this part of the country. Its the exciting time of the year and I couldn't wait for school to be closed. The earth smells different there from the city. Its lush green everywhere you look. This is the place to be and you learn something new everyday.

I remember going though the rubber farm, curiously asking my uncles, how do rubber grow in trees. I would ask, if my eraser came from the tree. They showed me the dry sheets of rubber that are sold to industrial plants where they would process them and make into different products.

Behind Grandpa's home there was a shelter for cows and goats. One summer was quite exciting, one of the cows gave birth to a calf. It mooed all night in labor pain which wasn't a peaceful night for us kids. The next morning, my sister and I were thrilled to see the young calf. In a few days, it was running and galloping around. We have chased after calves, bunnies, chicks, ducklings, turkeys, seen chicks hatch.  For city dwellers, these are a rare sight. For me, those were the best summers of my life.

My father worked as an Aeronautical Engineer in one of the middle eastern countries and when he lost his job, we moved to India, to one of the big cities in the south. I was 6yrs of age then. We purchased a house with a big lot. The only drawback was that the backyard had a huge crater. He enquired from various contractors the cost to fill it up. Filling it with dirt was very expensive which we couldn't afford at that time. Dirt is expensive in our country! He then had the best idea, which would birth the gardener in me. Which has also inspired me to write this blog. He collected all the organic waste from the local municipal, filled up the crate with the waste, and topped it with dirt. That's it! It was cheap and it produced the best of fruits and vegetables later on. We planted, mangoes, mulberries, coconuts, pumpkins, eggplant, tomatoes, okra, beans, bitter melon, chilies. We sowed a variety of flowering seeds. The once plain, dry plot of land now looked vibrant with all colors & fragrances. He made it beautiful for us! An Eden!

I lost my father when I was 11. I have inherited a lot from him. Apart from the genes and the looks. I like to observe and learn like him. He can stay with the carpenter for less than a day and take over the saw, hammer & smoothing block, he would work on the wood, while the carpenter would be sipping the tea my father offered. My first carpentry project was at age 9, making a wooden cross from the leftover bits inspired by looking at my father.

He's an engineer, so, fixing electrical or electronic devices were never a challenge. But he enjoyed fixing other things in the house by just observing a handyman.
I'm thankful for all that I have inherited from my earthly father and from my heavenly father.

This is a tribute to my Father. My Green Thumb!