Planting bottle gourd in the home kitchen

As the season gets hotter (and it can get really hot, with the day temperature here in India getting to above 37 Degrees Celsius - that's 97 Fahrenheit) and it is likely to get even hotter as the summer starts to reach a peak. In the summer, with hot weather such as this, it is creepers that grow - plants such as bell pepper, different types of gourds, okra, these are the kind of plants that really thrive in this weather.
For this post, I am detailing my experiences with bottle gourd. It is a gourd that is cooked and made into a dry dish or a curry - the taste is an acquired taste. It is very good health wise and is very easy to digest, which makes it an essential requirement for a healthy diet. Some people use it as a side dish, while others actually use it as a main dish, with some accompanying wheat bread.
Bottle gourd is a creeper that can quickly grow to a large size with large leaves. You need space to grow this plant, to let it climb, and to provide a support structure for the plant. In the below photo, you can see how large the leaves of this plant are. I have provided a bamboo structure for the plant to climb on, as well as provide a cloth support from a higher level so that part of the plant can climb.

Bottle gourd starting to climb the bamboo support structure (More photos / Print of this photo)

The creeper branches out into separate sections, each of which forms a large creeper of its own, and hence, if properly fed, the plant can quickly become pretty large. People who really like to grow this plant create a metal trellis with an overhead support so that the creepers of this plant can grow and grow.
The plant develops two types of flowers - there are the male flowers, that grow prolifically within a few days of the creeper starting to grow large.

Male flower of the bottle gourd - provides pollen (more photos / print this image)

However, the development of the fruit happens with the female flower - as in the photo below, you can see that it looks like a small bottle gourd, with a flower at its end. This is not a fruit as yet - the female flower needs to be fertilized with a male flower. If you have plenty of pollinators such as bees and other insects, it can happen easily. However, many people who grow this in home gardens do manual pollination, where they gather some pollen from the male flower (using a small brush or stick or something small) and rub this against the end of the female flower. If pollination happens, the fruit will develop, but if the pollination has not happened, the fruit will fall off and you will be disappointed. If you have just one creeper, then people actually store the male flower in the fridge and use it to pollinate the female flowers (which may occur a day or two after the male flower).

Female flower of the bottle gourd (More photos / Print of this photo)

This creeper, like many such plants, are heavy feeders. You need to provide large pots, water to ensure deep soaking of the potting mix, do mulching and provide compost on a periodic basis. Make sure that soil is well draining, and if the leaves are drooping, such as in the image below, you need to check whether you watering is enough.

Drooping leaves of the bottle gourd - need watering (More photos / Print this photo)

Planting tomato varieties in the garden

Tomato is one of the easiest plants to grow. It grows pretty easy from seeds, and planted in enough quantity and tendered to, the plants can provide almost all the tomato requirements of your kitchen. The size of these tomatoes also vary - you can have a variety where the largest size of tomatoes can be upwards of 200 grams for each tomato, and you can have cherry tomatoes that are small and many of them can fit in the hands of a person. There are varieties where the color of the ripe tomato is not even red, but yellow; there are tomatoes that look perfectly round, and others that look like an oval or like a pear.

3 tomatoes of different colors (More Photos / Print this photo)

What are some of the varieties of tomatoes that I am growing in my kitchen garden ? I must have upwards of 10 different varieties growing in the garden, although it might be hard to look at the growing tomato and determine which variety it is (the more accomplished people can do that, not me). One variety is totally unknown for me - I just take the tomatoes bought from the supermarket or the vegetable vendor, cut one or two of them into slices and plant them under the potting mix, and soon, in a few days, tomato saplings poke their way out of the mix.

Different containers for growing tomatoes (More photos / Print this photo)

Some other varieties that I use are: Wild Texas Cherry Tomatoes, Yellow Pear, Roma, Beefsteak (the size of the tomatoes can be marvelous), Sam Marzano, Oxheart, and a few others. Watching cherry tomatoes growing (especially when they become so numerous, from the small flowers), or watching the size of the Beefsteak tomatoes where the plant branch strain to handle the weight of the tomatoes is incredible. It would be good to provide some support for the Beefsteak variety.

3 Beefsteak tomatoes hanging on a plant (More photos / Get a print of this photo)

What do I do for my tomatoes ? The potting mix needs to be rich, with a lot of organic compost, well draining. While planting the seedlings (I transplant seedlings rather than growing directly from the seeds), added some bone meal, some Epsom Salt, and crushed egg shell in the soil (where it can steadily release some calcium to the plants as they grow). Tomato plants need full sun (although if you live in a very hot area such as I do, it is important to provide some shade), and are heavy feeders. So add some compost from time to time, and I also add some diluted seaweed extract as well as Bokashi composting leachate (and compost as well). Do all this, and you have a much higher probability of getting healthy plants that give a good product. Of course, you can get unlucky, and no matter what you do, your plant will die on you.

Many tomatoes hanging on a plant (More photos / Print this photo)

Growing brinjal / eggplant in the house

Eggplant can be used in a variety of ways in cooking, whether it is fried, or baked, or made into a dry dish or curry (there are innumerable recipes that are available online, as per your taste). There are many different varieties of eggplant that can be cooked - there are the popular purple oval shaped ones (can be small size or real large sized ones), you have long purple and long green, you have white ones, you have ones where the eggplant crown has thorns on it, and so on. The eggplant is a great plant to grow in your home garden, since it very easily grows and is not frustrating like some other plants that you can provide immense love, care and nutrition and they might still fall flat some day.

Long slender green eggplant growing in home garden / More Photos / Print this photo

I grow my eggplant in bucket like containers with the depth being atleast 12 inches. I used to earlier grow the eggplant in much smaller containers, reasoning it out that I can provide extra nutrition. However, that scheme really did not work out that well, and I am now ensuring that in order to get some good fruiting for the kitchen, there is a need to ensure that the plant gets enough nutrition and soil space in order to grow and fruit well.

These grow bags are not good enough to grow large veggies in / More photos / Print this photo

So, this year, the existing plants were pruned and moved into buckets with more soil and more nutrition. It takes some time for the result to come out, but as of now, I can see some of the plants becoming more productive. The plants were not very big last time, so am further waiting to see whether the plant will get bigger, since that would mean more flowers and hence more eggplants on the plant over a period of time. We are self-sufficient in eggplant, but with more, and especially organically grown eggplant, the concept of being able to share such eggplants with friends and family members will be good. The hope is that other people, seeing these plants growing, will get enthused on their own and also start growing eggplant in their houses; and since eggplant grows pretty easily, it is a good large fruit to start with.

Eggplant transplanted into plastic buckets at the back / More photos / Print of this photo

One of the problems that can cause starting frustration with growing eggplant is that the first set of flowers do not convert into fruit; it is only after a few weeks that these flowers actually start converting into fruit and start the production of eggplant. 

Growing sunflowers at home - look really pretty

Sunflowers are real beautiful flowers, looking bright and yellow. They are present in many different varieties, with some large varieties, going down all the way to some dwarf varieties. You put these plants in the garden, and they perk up the look of the entire garden. There are people who grow rows of sunflowers, standing tall with a number of them standing up to the wind and greeting people with their beautiful yellow face.

A large sunflower looking beautiful / More photos / Print

I typically start planting sunflower when winter has passed, growing them through seed. Seeds are planted in a small container in a bed of coco-peat (I normally don't use soil for planting purposes, using a bed of 2-3 inch deep cocopeat for planting seeds). The cocopeat does not provide any nutrition for the growing seeds (the seeds have their own growth reservoirs till the time that they will be transplanted), but does provide a light seedling mix.
Sunflowers thrive in full sun, so the start of summer is an ideal time to start planting the seeds. The potting mix should not get water-logged, but for growing sunflowers, you don't really need to fine-tune your potting mix like you need to do with some other plants and flowers. Just make sure that water does not stay in the pot, and when the plants are started, it can even tolerate some amount of drought. But, from what I have heard, if you want to have the best beautiful blooms, the sunflower requires deep watering before and after blooming.

Close up view of a sunflower / More prints / Print of this photo

If the soil is pretty poor, then adding some fertilizer or compost helps, but make sure that you do not overdo the addition of nitrogen rich additives as that encourages the growth of the plant and reduces the impetus to grow many flowers. When you have plants that grow high (above 3-4 feet), then you might need to add some sort of stake or support to ensure that they do not fall over due to wind. The sunflowers I have seen growing were sturdy to support themselves normally, but when there would be a strong wind, it was possible that the wind could knock them over.

Side view of a sunflower flower / More photos / Print of photo

Sunflowers are supposed to provide protection against pests, so it is a good idea to plant sunflowers with other plants to ensure protection against pests. The plants also attract bees and other insects that help in the pollination of other vegetables and flowers in the garden and decrease the need for having to do hand pollination. Many people also use the seeds from these sunflowers once they are dried, by mixing them with other nuts to provide a very nutritious snack.

A beautiful looking sunflower and one behind / More photos / Print of this photo

Creating compost in a clay pot at home - Purely organic

With the birth of my child, I decided that I would give him a chance to atleast consume some food that is home grown, rather than the fertilizer and pesticide grown food that we get in our supermarkets. Even material that is marked organic, sometimes gets into controversy about whether it is indeed truly organic or not, or there is some chemical that has been added. It would take time to learn, but unless one starts the learning process, it is not possible to get some expertise in how to actually do a good job in the limitations that one experiences while growing food at home. There is an extraordinary amount of material available online in how to grow food at home, even with constraints and all, and in an organic manner. There is effort involved; I would say that it typically does not come cheaper than the food you can buy outside, but you have the satisfaction that there is some stuff you are eating that is grown fully organically (and of course, you will treasure this only when you actually realize the value of consuming organic food).
One of the components of growing foot at home relates to fertilizers. You can easily get commercial fertilizers from the market, but then you are going against the organic process. You can buy compost outside, which makes it organic, and this compost is essential for your parts. At the same time, you can make your own compost at home; there is no rocket science involved - nature does it all the time, but it does take time and effort. As I said, there is nothing difficult whatsover, but you have to know how to do it and be patient.
There are numerous ways of making compost, and I would be loath to recommend one way or the other. If you are already making compost using compost pits, or in leaf composters, or other such methods, well and good. If you are not already making compost yourself, then using clay pots is simple. You can get large clay pots (not the glazed ones, since they are impervious) that are porous and let air and water pass through its many small holes. Get one that has a hole in the bottom.

Filling up the clay pot with waste and shredded cardboard / More photos / Get a print

If you already have some compost with you, it can speed up the process. If you have access to dry leaves, it helps. If you have paper or cardboard (not the laminated or colored ones, but instead the brown corrugated ones), it works. You can shred them to small pieces. So what do you need to do ?
Use the kitchen waste (peelings, and other waste from the kitchen); I also use cooked leftovers (but not meat based, and not ones that have a lot of butter / oil / cheese in them). Start with making an inch thick layer of compost at the bottom of the clay pot, add a 1-2 inch layer of food waste (it helps if you break up the waste into smaller pieces) and add some shredded paper / cardboard. Repeat these layers. Every few days, use a stick or some similar tool and turn the mixture to ensure that air gets into the composting mixture.

Covering the composting pot with paper to prevent insects and flies / More photos / Get a print

Waste getting broken down, composting process underway / More Photos / Get a print

Compost used a mixture of nitrogen and carbon, and you need to get the mixture somewhat optimized and you can read about it, but a lot of it actually comes from experience. Nitrogen comes from the pulpy waste, while the cardboard / paper / dry leaves provide the carbon. The previous compost provides the microbes and insects that jump start the composting process. If everything goes right, within a few weeks or a 3-4 months, you will get your waste having got converted into compost, gold for your plants.

Using seaweed extract on tomato plants - a trial

For a long time, I have been trying to grow tomato plants. There has been some success, and some failures. For a total of around 10-15 plants, grown in grow bags, I would get around 20-30 tomato, which seemed very low. There would be plants where the leaves were drooping, or the buds would remain small, and not get converted to fruit. And it was worrisome, because I could read about other people who would get much more fruits from each plant that I was getting; even if you tried to pretend that they were exaggerating, the plants they had and the photos of tomatoes on the plants were not really fictitious. They were indeed getting a number of tomatoes on each plant.
There is a Facebook group of which I am a part of, where the growth is done by organic principles. So, no artificial fertilizer, no pesticide, only organic additives and pesticides. I use my own compost, and use other stuff such as buttermilk, the water from washing chicken and rice, and so on, to ensure that the plants got enough additives through organic methods. Further, I am open to adding stuff from outside as long as it is organic.
Here is an image of one of my tomato plants that is in a bad condition. The leaves are yellow, seem to be falling off, and overall, the number of tomatoes that one gets from this plant is pretty low. Many of the buds dry off and fall.

An unhealthy tomato plant with yellow leaves, Get a print of this plant

This is in the midst of some other plants that seem more healthy, although I am still not very happy with the number of tomatoes that are being produced on these plants. The quest is to figure out what needs to be done, what needs to be added, and these need to be organic additives. I already spray with Neem oil dilution for pests, spray with other organic materials and also add compost from time to time. And apparently tomatoes are heavy feeders and need these additives on a regular basis.

I had heard people on many Organic Gardening Facebook groups talking about the benefits of seaweed extract. I did some amount of research, and apparently those who have used it swear by it; although it is as yet hard for me to exactly qualify as to the exact benefits provided by adding Seaweek extract. It was difficult to find seaweed extract, but at a recent flower show, there was a vendor who had a packet of seaweed extract. I was excited to see this, since I had not found this earlier.
This was the extract in powder form, and the idea was to add a small pinch in around 300 ml of water and spray it on the plants; and do so every 2 weeks. I did this once, and need to do it again. It is of course difficult to directly measure whether any future benefit is because of seaweed because I add other stuff; but if the tomatoes come out better, I am fine with whatever was the reason. I want more plants like these.

Leaves and flowers of a seemingly healthy tomato plant, Prints of this image here

Unknown plant in my garden - try it out for some time and see

When you create your own compost, from time to time, you will get plants that pop up from the compost (which is part of your potting mix), and it is your discretion about whether to let such plants remain their or not. And it is not only your own compost, but even compost or other additives that you get from elsewhere (or even the store bought potting mix) that might contain seeds. These seeds may lay dormant for some time, and then suddenly when temperature and weather conditions are right, the seeds germinate and the plant pops out of the soil - at which point you have to decide whether to keep the plant or not.
So, in one such case, I had multiple instances of a plant pop out; I took some photos and tried to find out what this plant actually was ? The photos were uploaded to a number of people who tried to detect what the photo actually was - but no conclusive answers. It was said that the plant could be a raspberry plant, but I don't remember planting raspberry seeds, so was not at all sure whether this could be a raspberry plant. Or it could be some other plant which will be clear when the flowers on the plant actually works out.

Now it is a matter of letting the plant grow, provide nutrients from time to time and see how it is faring. With some energy having been spent in ensuring that the plant has grown to this height, will not let it die.