cabbage - dire warning

in an 'i-told-you-so' fashion, my avoid-cabbage warning has been expertly explained here by s kannaiyan.

stop eating cabbage - it is nothing but pesticide.

ash gourd misery

a diverse story.

white pumpkin (real name - ash gourd) is one of the best and easy crops that grow in the summer.
full of water, it is a summertime treat.

we planted 4 varieties of seeds 3 different locations since mid january. we picked the right season and in fact spread our risk by planting with such diversity in variety and soil type.
but NOT a single bud to show for the effort....
no idea yet on why we were blessed this way.

on the other hand, our neighbouring farmer grew ash gourds over more than 5 acres and had a bumper crop over over 5 tons per acre.
while he managed to sell one lot, over the last 2 weeks, ash gourds prices have tanked to Re 1/kg.
he will not be able to sell over 15 tons of gourds.

they are lying in his field, unpicked and in a vain expectation of a recovery of the prices.
even if they perk up a bit, his fruits will be too mature to be sold.
sadness, indeed to see so much food going unused.

cabbage and beans

inspite of the very short winter, we have a decent cabbage harvest (cricketball to baseball sizes).


and beans has been a winner in terms of ease of growing, uniformity in output per plant and seed to harvest conversion.


both are hybrid seeds.

sun drying tomatoes

with the surplus of tomatoes pleasantly hitting us, we tried our best to use it all up.
almost to the verge of stoping use of tamarind.

even then we were left with much.
then we decided to try DV's suggesting of sun drying tomatoes.

here is how we did it and looks like it has worked.

the harvest



cut it into quarters

put it into the solar oven



after 7 hours in the oven


at the end of the drying.


it needs to be completely dry for it to store well.
it reduces from 10 to 1 through this process.

potatoes - negative ROI

the extended rainy season and the shortened winter period put paid to our potato aspirations.

one bed was wiped out by the wilt and one bed was lost in transplanting (we planted originally in the wrong place).

total planted weight = 3 kgs
total output = 2.5 kgs

and we attempted mounding to promote additional tuber development, which also flopped.

we have realised that there are other tubers which grow in our climate and are planning to expand our tuber portfolio.

veggies galore

you were notified about our vegetable planting.
starting early december, we had increased our vegetable growing area very significantly and had moved onto newer methods.
and inspite of losses due to wilt, we have already breached all 2010 numbers.

	Jan – Feb
Tomato	19.91
Radish	10.32
Pumpkin	5.4
Okra	1.27
Brinjal	1.62
Kaaramani	0.29
Bitter gourd	2.39
Ridge Gourd	0.91
Winged Bean	1.2
Beans	3.1
Avarai	1.51
Total	47.92

of this total, february is 39 kgs by itself.
the whole data is public. so go and check for yourself.

we also have a surplus of lettuce which we are not including as weighed produce.

since early feb, we have bought only around 2 kgs of onion and 1 kg of potato. so we have now a good sense of how this season works.

as it gets hotter we are hoping that the gourds (ash, snake, ridge, bitter, bottle) will start their production in april.

wilt, wither and winter

our tomatoes are getting hit.
by bacterial wilt.
there is no treatment...not that we were planning any.
the plants wither away over a week and starting from one branch it moves onto the entire plant.

till date we have lost around 20 plants.
and ouch....many had just started to fruit.


oh...it has hit some of the potatoes too.
from the high of the planting, we are now down to 2 very decent growing beds, 1 average growing bed and 1 almost wiped out bed.


and in spite of the extreme winter reported from many locations across the world including north india, the duration of our winter out here has been severely restricted.
from the time we announced the arrival of winter in early december 2010, we have seen increasingly warm days since mid jan 2011. so just around a month of cool climes.
a majorly curtailed period for vegetable growing. and many organic vegetable growers are getting hit.

looking ahead to a real scorcher of a summer this year.

what's growing - 2010-2011 winter season

here is what is currently growing out here.
the winter season will hopefully keep on for its usual course till late february.
most of it is self-explanatory.
the variety is wide, but some of the exotic/leafy vegetables are in small patches only.

1. red long bean - from deepika/bernard (auroville)


2. radish-carrot bed (both likely to be hybrid varieties)

close up of item 2..


3. chakara kumbhala - yellow pumpkin: from janadanya


4a. potato bed 1


4b. potato bed 2


5. ridge gourd: from janadanya


6. bitter gourd: a hybrid variety, but it is in its second generation and soon the yellow one will yield seeds for the third generation.


7. pak choy (chinese greens)


8. lettuce: unknown parentage - from a friend


9. mixed spinach/arai and siru keerai: seeds from madurantakam seed shop


10. cabbage: hybrid


11. brinjal: from deepika/bernard (auroville)


12. beans - hybrid


13. tomato: hybrid


14. winged bean - from deepika/bernard (auroville)


15. sweet potato


16. creeper spinach - pasalai keerai


in addition, we have just planted some exotic varieties of beans (from deepika), snake gourd, ash gourd, bottle gourd and lots of cow pea.

vegetables in 2010

we maintained (and continue to do so) a fairly exhaustive (but not necessarily well designed) vegetable production database.

it is a public document and here is the link.

2010 was a real dream start. a total of 130 kgs dominated by cowpea, pumpkin and bottle gourd (approx 2/3rds of total production).
and interestingly these 3 toppers are all creepers and are not from our raised beds system of veg growing.

additionally, we would have bought over 250 kgs of vegetables from the market.
so in all, our production works to meeting around 1/3rds of our total consumption.

what is heartening is the diversity.
with the extra growing veg beds, we could go up meeting half of our vegetable consumption in this year.

NO, we will not set any targets on output variables. only targets on input variables. and this is another post.