My obsession for the vegetable plants

I’ve been in doubt my tomato plant to bear fruits recently. It’s because according to gardener, (whom I asked for the tomato seedling) tomato plant needs to be planted on the ground, not just a pot soil because it needs a lot of soil nutrients to bear fruits, and what is the need they are in plenty in the grocery market.

plastic bucket mosac

Any how I got two packets of seeds one each for tomato and chilies. I used an old almost 10 gallon bucket. Yes, to gear up the recycling drive. Made some holes at the bottom for drainage, and filled it with soil (equal amount of sand, clay and vermin-compost mixed thoroughly). Then I saturated the soil with water and spread some seeds of chilies and tomatoes to raise seedlings to transplant. When prepared I transplanted two seedlings of tomato, two chilies, and planted two seeds each of bitter guards, and bottle guards.

As for as creepers of bottle guard and bitter guard is concerned, I have been trying to grow since long but without any success. This time also both of them grown very well up to certain length and then withered.  I’ve tried them several times before and they have never done well not sure why. May be the creepers need an open space? For creepers there is real difficulty in getting the right position with adequate sun exposure. Once set it’s difficult to move them elsewhere, usually they untangled with the host plant. While for tomatoes and chilies I spread them to various locations under the roof for shed and to save from heavy rainfall and for frost.

Now back to the point……after sowing point. Yes after a while after sowing seeds and transplanting seedlings, the pots were forgotten (However the two times daily watering was done by my niece as routine work in the dawn and dusk). A month later I saw these little tomatoes, the creepers and chilies struggling for breath and space to grow. I did the total pruning in the big bucket, and leave the ones that were in big bottles, totally untouched. Within a week, the pruned tomatoes and chill gear up to sprout new and fresh looking leaves. 

tomatoes

it’s bearing fruits! So tiny and beautiful!

But weather the plants bear fruits or not, it’s fine with me. I’m happy to see my green plants healthy. They add colour to my balcony, and relieve my stress (of all family members, I think so). Also as the air hauls through each plant it got its smell intermingled and the aroma and cool air soothes our brain. Smell

At long last I see red little….

This was about mid June the Hottest time. It was just too hot for gardening. I have now run out of enthusiasm for even watering pots and my tomatoes which I’ve looked after for months together. I think they have had more attention than the children. however the twice even three times daily watering that they need has now become a chore ans as the gardener ( I talked about in the beginning) said… it would be easier just to buy them from the grocery market. He is right of course. However, I promise, I will be buying the seedling from the roadside, full of enthusiasm and will have forgotten that after several weeks, I have only picked three tomatoes to date… it did’nt taste great either!

However, after so many weeks of mostly sunsine, wind storm, thunder storms I took this photo to remind me how lucky we are living in India. You really do never get bored of walking up to blue sky ….and of course along…our roadside…

previously written post! 

xoxo