Part of my plans for retirement was to take up gardening more seriously since I would have time to devote to it. Once the idea was in the mind I could not wait untill retirement so the experiments with the Kitchen garden, started almost a year ahead of retirement.Sundays and often Saturdays were devoted to Gardening.
Luckily for me Elango my driver turned out to be even more devoted to growing vegetables than i was. He is probably the first generation to migrate out of the village to city in search of livlihood and was obviously missing tilling the soil as he had seen all his child hood his father do and his elder brother continues to do.So between us my garen started yielding ladies finger(okra), brinjal,bittergourd,green chillie,tomatoes,drumstick,greens( cheru keerai,pasala keerai,),parandai(in tamil ). The bittergourd crop was really good could distribute to a few neighbours, the drivers family and friends.Looks like the tomatoes too will yield a good crop.No chemicals fertilizers are added , just cow dung , red soil, and kitchen waste.
Cannot explain the joy of seeing the first sprout from seeds , the first sign of a bittergourd or brinjal begining to form and of course when I pluck and exhibit it to the family I just go ga ga ....
All this is in a wee bit of land in the backyard and the rest on the terrace. Not too sure if the terrace can take the load of mud and concrete pots so most are in cement bags,old buckets, water cans etc.
The flowers and crotons are in the front garden , again not much space, making the best use of what is available. Amidst this there is a small conrete tub sunk in the soild which hold the moulee about a dozen of them two suckers, 2 Angel fish, 2 tiger fish,some guppies which keep disappearing ( looks like the Angel fish is not so angelic must be either eating them or bruising them !)
The terrace also has a cactus collection and a green house where I am struggling given Chennai's climate to make the Orchids bloom have not learnt the art yet but thre are a few blooms though rare it is not a complete failure :)
Hope you enjoy the photograhs though I am yet to gain reasonable expertise with photography (which is yet another plan post retirement:).
Luckily for me Elango my driver turned out to be even more devoted to growing vegetables than i was. He is probably the first generation to migrate out of the village to city in search of livlihood and was obviously missing tilling the soil as he had seen all his child hood his father do and his elder brother continues to do.So between us my garen started yielding ladies finger(okra), brinjal,bittergourd,green chillie,tomatoes,drumstick,greens( cheru keerai,pasala keerai,),parandai(in tamil ). The bittergourd crop was really good could distribute to a few neighbours, the drivers family and friends.Looks like the tomatoes too will yield a good crop.No chemicals fertilizers are added , just cow dung , red soil, and kitchen waste.
Cannot explain the joy of seeing the first sprout from seeds , the first sign of a bittergourd or brinjal begining to form and of course when I pluck and exhibit it to the family I just go ga ga ....
All this is in a wee bit of land in the backyard and the rest on the terrace. Not too sure if the terrace can take the load of mud and concrete pots so most are in cement bags,old buckets, water cans etc.
The flowers and crotons are in the front garden , again not much space, making the best use of what is available. Amidst this there is a small conrete tub sunk in the soild which hold the moulee about a dozen of them two suckers, 2 Angel fish, 2 tiger fish,some guppies which keep disappearing ( looks like the Angel fish is not so angelic must be either eating them or bruising them !)
The terrace also has a cactus collection and a green house where I am struggling given Chennai's climate to make the Orchids bloom have not learnt the art yet but thre are a few blooms though rare it is not a complete failure :)
Hope you enjoy the photograhs though I am yet to gain reasonable expertise with photography (which is yet another plan post retirement:).
No comments:
Post a Comment