Eating is an agricultural act - Wendell Berry

Monday, June 28, 2010

back into production

after the vain (??) boast over 100 days ago on our eating locally grown vegetables, we hit a 60 day lean patch during the peak summer.
our exuberance made us miss the planting of summer vegetables (all the popular gourds) by around 2-3 weeks and hence our plants had to struggle in their early days in the hot summer and this pushed back the flowering and fruiting.

but we are back and with a bang.
snake gourd - podalai - padwal
we already have had over 10 podalais this season an another 10 or so to go. has been a delicious treat.


bottle gourd - sorakkai - doodhi
this single one was a whooping 2 kgs. and we have another 2 of similar size waiting to be harvested and can expect ....(wait a minute, we are not greedy farmers!)



bitter gourd - pavakkai - karela.
it was planted in the same space as the podalai and was slow on the take off. got crowded out on the vine and took over 80 days for the first fruit. was deliciously bitter.


cow pea - karamani - chouli beans

the karamani is from the ragi-karamani field which has been takere.en over almost entirely by the karamani. so we have a month long of karamani bingeing coming up!!
check this pic as on day 68. see the day 40 pic here.

the ragi is vigourous wherever the karamani has allowed it to grow. some simple lessons learnt on this intercropping will be incorporated the next time.

and it is now time to plan for the next season.
the fun doesn't stop, yeah.

3 comments:

Ananthoo said...

hmm..the podalai and sorai looks amazing..
karamani harvested already from that ragi+k'mani patch? so nice!
BTW u have already blogged on all our visits, hmm...no work for me, eh?

dv said...

i thought you guys were into farming and not games.
anyway if karpagam is playing cricket, it's the wrong bat and if she was at baseball, it's the wrong stance. by the way, why ever would anyone paint a bat gourd green?

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

awesome! the pavakka is my favourite. i know what you mean by deliciously bitter - as this is something that grows well in our home.
can you bring some soil next time? i want to try to run some tests on it.