Growing Carrots in Containers. Carrots is one of those vegetables that is most consumed and always the pricey one in the market. That makes it a very good candidate for a kitchen garden. Daucus Carota, as it is called botanically, is a root vegetable consumed for its swollen tap root. While we are familiar with orange colored ones, there are several colors like Red, White, Yellow and purple. There are also different shapes. In India, the regular orange carrots and the long red carrots are quite popular. In the northern states of India, different varieties of carrots seems to be present.
Did you know? Growing carrots starts from selecting the variety and the container. The varieties available in India, can be grown successfully in container. Container selection: Since carrot is a root vegetable with roots growing up to a feet. You can grow them in normal pots or even polythene bags that are easily available . Potting Media: Potting mix or media is the next important thing to consider while growing carrots. 2nd Harvest. Growing Ladies finger in Container. By geekgardener, on June 22nd, 2010 Not all of us in India are familiar with the name Okra, but Ladies finger/lady finger is something that everyone knows.
I remember the trick my mom used to make us eat Okra. She used to say “If you eat okra, you will become an expert in mathematics!”. I did eat a lot of that but looking at my math skills I think that was just a lie to make us eat. Nevertheless, Okra is a nice vegetable to grow and as well as to eat. I grew mine in 10L containers. 15-May-2010 After they start showing the true leaves, thin them to just one per plant. I grew them using hydroponic nutrients I made for tomatoes. 19-June-2010 After a month and 4 days since germination, they have grown about 2 feet tall and are flowering every other day. This variety you see below is called “Alabama Red”. The red coloration is not seen here since it was picked quite early. Okra is very easy to grow. Hope this will help to start Okra this season. Goodluck gg Related posts: How to grow Mint from cuttings with 100% success.
By geekgardener, on January 17th, 2012 In most of my posts/comments, I recommend people to start with plants like mint that are very easy to grow. Mint for example, is easily available. It grows invasively and very easy to propagate. Or is it? I received many questions on how to successfully propagate mint. I have posted several times in this blog on how to root stem cuttings successfully but I thought it would be really helpful if I dedicate one post entirely for mint. Steps to propagate mint with 100% success rate Collect Mint cuttings — Buy or borrow mint that have slightly thicker stems.Take the stem tip cuttings by making a cut at 3-4inches from the top. Do not remove all the leaves. Now cover the whole setup with a polythene sheet. Keep the setup in a bright location but not with direct sunlight.No further watering is necessary.
Once rooted, slowly introduce the plants to the outside world. Expose the plants to sun gradually. Happy gardening Related posts: Cabbage harvest. By geekgardener, on December 3rd, 2009 This is the day I have been waiting for since I bought the seeds of Earliana – an early yielding variety of cabbage. I wrote about it here and here. This morning I decided to pluck it. Reason?.. Its almost 2 months from the date of transplanting, i ran out of patience and I saw some cracking on one of the cabbages.
Ok now for some details. Totally I had 3 pots with cabbage. This is how they looked day before yesterday. Winner: Runner: Oh wait a minute..Am I in a race? If you notice the 2nd pic carefully, the cracks and the splits are observed. The cabbages are mature but not harvested on time. I don’t know which one, but yeah the cabbage cracked!. Lessons learnt: Cabbage cracking and how to prevent/correct it. Full sunlight is very important for cabbage’s growth.( I mean..Isn’t that obvious)? I am now brave enough to try it one more time and get much better yields. Oh, I forgot to mention how much they weighed. more later gg Related posts:
Growing the Hottest chili pepper in the world – Bhut Jolokia. By geekgardener, on January 10th, 2011 Bhut jolokia or Naga jolokia is a variety of chili pepper growing in the north eastern part of India. This variety holds the title of “Worlds hottest chili pepper”. I read about it several months back. This chili originates from Assam and Nagaland Area. There they smear the paste made of this chili on the fences to ward off elephants. Being a chili fan myself, I couldn’t wait to grow this. I just remembered an incident as I typed this. Should I say more how much I wanted to grow this hottest chili? Let me introduce some terminology here. Take couple of minutes and try to recall when was the hottest chili you tasted and compare it with the following table. Source: Wikipedia [ By now, you must have got some idea on how hot this pepper is. After I got the seeds from my friend, I sowed the seeds in a tray and in 1 month they looked like the picture below.
Check out the healthy leaves and the shine. One important tip. Enjoy! Growing Spinach in Containers. By geekgardener, on June 14th, 2010 Some of you might wonder, Why am i writing a post on spinach. Growing spinach is the easiest thing right? Yes and that is exactly the reason why this post. Growing spinach is the best way to make your way into gardening. Spinach is very forgiving, quick to grow and mature and we all like to eat it right? Right? Anyways, Spinach is a must grow for anyone who are toying with the idea of starting a kitchen garden. Spinach is best grown in trays. Pictured below is a tray that is about 8″ deep( but 6″ will just do fine) filled with coco peat. The above seedlings in just 1 month turn into lush green spinach plant. I harvest them by cutting the mature leaves using a scissor and leaving the tender growing leaving the plant for the next harvest.
This particular crop was grown using hydroponic nutrients. From Pot to Plate. Related posts: Harvest from the Greenhouse – Beefsteak Tomatoes. By geekgardener, on February 16th, 2010 Having grown small cherry tomatoes I started to long for jumbo sized tomatoes. I got some as clones from Anil and some as Seeds from another friend of mine. The seeds were sown long before the greenhouse was ready. They were transplanted into 20L buckets and 10L buckets whichever was available at that time. The plants were looking so sturdy and thick. Those were the first ones to go into the greenhouse. Looking at the harvest I got from them, I think greenhouse works! Tomatoes you see in the picture below are Beefsteak kind. The fruits were perfect pumpkin shaped and very uniform both interms of shape and ripening.
Below is the total harvest for the day, spread out in a tray. Total harvest came upto ~2kg. Pink of Berne – 351 grams…. The beefsteak tomatoes alone weighed a whopping 581 grams. This is the second biggest of all. The beefsteak: Beefsteak tomato cross section. I know what you are thinking.. Cheers gg Related posts: Growing capsicum in containers. By geekgardener, on May 4th, 2009 It all started when my mom returned from vegetable shopping one day and was expressing her frustration with the way prices have been going high. Especially this capsicum or Bell peppers as its popularly known. It was around INR 40 a kg. “Can you not plant some of these in our garden?” Fueled with this motivation, I biked to the seeds selling store and returned home with seeds of a cultivar called “California Wonder”. Seed starting procedure was as usual. Take a sterile seed starting mix.In small pot/pan sow the seeds in the moist media ( 1/16th of an inch deep).Slightly cover the seed with media.Cover the pan/pot with a polythene to preserve the humidity.Keep it in a bright place away from direct sunlight.
Tada! Once the seedlings has two true leaves, they can be transplanted into their final containers/ prepared bed. The container mix is equal parts of cocopeat, vermicompost, sand. You can see there are 4 good sized capsicums from that 3L container. gg. Growing Zucchini (Summer Squash) Every time I sit to blog, something or the other comes up and here I am almost a month without a post. Anyways, In this post, I am going to write about growing zucchinis. Growing them is one thing and how to pronounce “Zucchini” is another Why grow Zucchini? Growing zucchini is the only way to get zucchinis here in Bangalore. There are very few shops that sell zucchini and the prices are quite high. This makes growing more interesting. Zucchini belongs to the same family as Pumpkin. The seeds were sown in small pots like below and they germinated in 4 days. 1 week old seedlings: 18/3/2010. In two weeks, this the growth. ( 24/3/2010) In 3 weeks: ( 30/3/2010) If you observe closely, there is a flower already!!
In just 20 days, the flower is already seen. 8/4/2010: A month old plant, it is huge and takes about 4 sq feet. For zucchinis to form, pollination is very essential. Female flowers are easily identifiable. Male flower Female flower I got plenty of zucchinis from just 3 plants. Ciao gg. Growing potatoes. By geekgardener, on December 7th, 2008 This post was due since long time, but lot of things happened in the country that made these things very insignificant.
Here goes.. Last time I had a potato plant grow ing like any other in a pot and me being the impatient kind, I dug it up little too soon and I ended up with 3 fairskinned potatoes . Then I looked up the web to know the way it should be done and I set out to do exactly the same way. Potatoes belong to the same Family as that of Tomatoes. Chitting: “Chitting” is the term that is used for the process of sprouting potatoes. Planting: I potted these potatoes with sprouts into 4.5 inch pots and with in 3 days the plants showed up. Date: Nov 2nd 2008. Roots: . Date : Nov 6th 2008 I started out with just 6 inches of soil mix and planted these plantlets. Date: Nov 8, 2008 This is what they looked like once done. Grown plants with flowering buds. Date: Dec 7th 2008. And the entire battalion. Harvest: Its not time for harvest yet. More later. gg. Propagating Tomato plant from cuttings. Tomato from cuttings? Really? Few of you might be surprised to hear this and few might call me insane.
No I am not, My mom got me tested!.. Before we go into the details of How to take cuttings from tomato plant and root it ( will be referred as cloning from now on), we’ll see why one would do that. Cloning your tomato plants, is the quickest way to produce multiple plants from a single plant. . a cuttings and root it. In this post, we are going to see how to clone a tomato plant. You can take cuttings from side shoots of a tomato plant. Cloning using Soilless mix: Take a cutting and remove its bottom leaves. Prepare the medium. Make an 2 inch deep hole and stick the cutting inside and press the medium around the cutting so that it does move. Enclose the pot in a polythene bag and keep it in a bright location. In couple of weeks, you get a plant with roots like this.. Now comes the hydroponic way!. The following pictures/comments are contributed by Anil Hande. Find a 5"-10" side shoot Ciao gg. How to grow Radish in Containers. Every gardener’s dream is to sow a seed and wait for a bountiful harvest.
The joy is more if the vegetable is quick yielding. Quick yielding veggies are a boon to an impatient gardener. Radish is one of those veggies that gets ready for harvest in no time. There are varieties that is ready to be picked in just a month. Can you believe it? Another best part is, Radishes can be grown in containers very well. Before we get to the growing part, little bit of information about Radish itself. If you are a first time gardener who wants to try something quick, Radish is the answer. Now to the growing part. Radish needs a fertile, loose and well drained soil.
In this post, I am going to post pictures of Long white radish and French breakfast radish growing in container. For growing long radish, take a container that is at least 1 foot deep and for French breakfast radish any tray that is 6 inches deep will do. Pictured below is a week old Radish (French Breakfast) seedlings. Day – 7 Harvests! Pests: Growing European Cucumber. By geekgardener, on August 27th, 2010 Vegetable gardeners get their inspiration from many places. Vegetable market is definitely one of those places that pushes you to grow your own food.
If you grow vegetables, you will definitely go around the veggies section in the super market, just to check what all he has and also to know the price of every item you see. It gives you a measure of how much your produce is worth. The harvest from your garden need not be profitable, but it is good to know its worth. One such vegetable I saw and badly wanted to grow is European cucumber.
I immediately sowed the seeds and in just 4-5 days they germinated. 1 week after sowing [15/5/2010]. Usually I get to take couple of pictures of a plant before it starts yielding. 11/6/2010 – Can you spot the cucumber? I need to explain something that I hinted at the beginning of this post. Close up The fruits are very consistent in their size and taste.
The availability of the seeds is the main problem. Gg Related posts: