Seed, Germination & Transplantation

Introduction, growth, maturity and decline this is the theory for products in Marketing. Here let me try to relate the same theory  for growing a plant. In this post we will learn different types of seeds, and how does it grow while introducing it with identifiable required resources and natural conditions. Let me explain how the seeds germinate and grow to give fruit and finally the decline or a saturation stage.

1. Okra / Lady Finger

Plant Name	Seed	Transplantation	Growth	Maturity
Okra / Lady Finger.	Grow seedlings in smaller cups filled with Compost. Provision of air circulation should be provided. Small pores can be provided for the excess water to flow out.	Seed germination would take 5-7 days. Transplantation of the seedlings  can be done between 12-17 days.	Plant's growth is dependent on soil type. An ideal mix of compost and soil will help the plant grow faster. Buds starts coming in 40 - 50 days.	Plant will mature in 70-80 days. From a healthy plant ideally 12-18 okras can be harvested. Once the plant reaches its maximum maturity  (100 days), suggested to chop off the main stem so that the new branches could provide you more  okras, but will be smaller in size compared to earlier yields.

Okra / lady finger Seeds.




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View: Okra / Ladies Finger Plantation









2. Bitter Gourd

Plant Name	Seed	Transplantation		Growth		Maturity
Bitter Gourd	Grow seedlings in smaller cups filled with Compost. Provision of air circulation should be provided. Small pores can be provided for the excess water to flow out.	Seed germination would take 7-12 days. Transplantation of the seedlings  can be done between 17-20  days.	Plant need support of climbers either a net like structure or a vertical support for the vines to climb. An ideal mix of compost and soil will help the plant grow faster. Buds starts coming in 40 - 50 days.		Plant will mature in 120 -150 days. From a healthy plant ideally 10-12 gourd can be harvested.

Bitter Gourd Seeds

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View : Bitter gourd / Pavakya Plantation

3. Long Beans

Plant Name	Seed	Transplantation		Growth		Maturity
Long Beans	Grow seedlings in smaller cups filled with Compost. Provision of air circulation should be provided. Small pores can be provided for the excess water to flow out.	Seed germination   would take 4-8 days. Transplantation of the seedlings  can be done between 7-12  days.	Plant need support of climbers either a net like structure or a vertical support for the vines to climb. An ideal mix of compost and soil will help the plant grow faster. Buds starts coming in 40 - 50 days.		Plant will mature in 120 -150 days. From a healthy plant ideally 30-50 beans can be harvested.

Long Bean seeds. 


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View: Long Beans/ Valli Payar Plantation












4. Long Broad beans.

Plant Name	Seed	Transplantation		Growth		Maturity
Long broad Beans	Grow seedlings in smaller cups filled with Compost. Provision of air circulation should be provided. Small pores can be provided for the excess water to flow out.	Seed germination   would take 4-8 days. Transplantation of the seedlings  can be done between 5-10  days.	An ideal mix of compost and soil will help the plant grow faster. Buds starts coming in 30 - 50 days.		Plant will mature in 180 -200 days. From a healthy plant ideally 10-12 beans can be harvested.

Long broad bean seeds.

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View: Long Broad Bean / Vaalari Payar Plantation

Plantation Season in South India

Location Details:

Country: India

State: Kerala

City: Trivandrum

Climate:Tropical, equable, hot, humid and dry.

Soil: Red soil in the Southern-most part of Kerala

The red colour is due to the presence of Fe2O3. The soil is almost homogeneous. Acidity ranges from 4.8 to 5.9. The gravel content is comparatively less. Low in essential nutrients and organic matter.

Meda Masam or Medam month in Malayalam calendar followed in Kerala is the ninth month. Meda masam 2011 begins on 14 April and ends on 14 May. The first day of Medam month (Vishu) marks the beginning of the Astrological Malayalam New Year in Kerala. Every year this period is suitable to start plantation.

Pest Control

Insects, pests, and tiny worms are regular visitors to my organic rooftop garden. Over time, they’ve almost become a part of its little ecosystem! In a way, I’m happy that these creatures feel at home here — it shows the garden is alive and full of natural activity.

But of course, my main task is to make sure they don’t harm the plants. I keep an eye out to see which insects are helpful and which ones are troublemakers. Whenever I find one that’s damaging the plants, I turn to organic pest control methods to keep things in balance.

I’ll keep updating this post with all the different pests and insects I come across in my garden, along with how I manage them — naturally! 🌱🐛

Tobacco leaf and garlic are the two ingredients that is being used for controlling pest. Usage of this will not kill any pest or worm, but will restrict it to reproduce

.

Further to that manually remove the worms from the leaves or found in any other parts of the plant.  

Usage of a sprayer will not cause any damage to the plants. Proper care needs to be taken while spraying as the smell of the natural pesticide may not attract the butterfly or bees those help in pollinating the flowers.

View related links:
Pests and insects I
Pests and insects II
Pests and insects III 

Organic vegetable Garden on Terrace

Fertile soil preparation

Homemade Compost

Pest Control

Experiment with Drip irrigation on terrace

Plantation on raised Bed

Honey Bee/ Beekeeping

Mushroom on closed rooms

Homemade Compost for Terrace gardening

Preparing compost require sufficient amount of vegetable wastes, dry leaves and other  waste materials from plants. Vegetable waste collected in a month from my kitchen will fill maximum a 10 liter container. Since I have almost 50 sacks on my roof top, this processing and the cycle time for compost generation only from vegetable waste is not sufficient. Soil used in first and second batch of plantation was not 100 percent compost, of course 30% of compost and used hydroponics but not to the level of what is required, also used dry leaves and other  parts of plants.

This time for preparing compost used wood chips since I read that wood chips could produce more earth worms while processing it for compost preparation.

Step 1 : Collect dry leaves from your yard and either crush it with hands or else use a cutter to chop into pieces.

Chopped dry leaves of Teak

Dry chopped Coconut leaves.

In India, Kerala state is rich in coconut plantation. These leaves were also chopped into pieces.

Step 2 : If you have harvested any plant from your garden, then make use of those for composting.
Chop those plant leaves and its stem into smaller pieces. Make sure that the plant is free from pest or worms. Ideal way to process this would be, once the plant is plucked out from the container, cut the plant leaves and stem into pieces and leave it under sunlight for 2-3 days so that if there are any worms or insects that may not reproduce or will be killed.

Step 3 : Wood chips if available make use of it, since this is  a high carbon source and would increase the moisture content within in the compost processing container. 

The air within the pile moves more easily through the composting materials. Therefore, during the active composting period, the temperature inside the pile does not fall even without frequent turning or aeration.

Wood chips

Wood chips

Step 4 : Collect vegetable waste from kitchen everyday. Store it in a separate container and make use of it once ready to prepare the compost.

Chop vegetable waste into smaller pieces so that the decomposition process will take lesser time.Collected vegetable waste which will be used for preparing compost this needs to get decayed. So it is suggested to cut an chop those into pieces. Better to add wood chips and some manure, so that the decaying process will be fast.Proper ventilation is required in compost pit.

Vegetable Waste

Step 5 : Mix chopped dry leaves, plant parts, wood chips and vegetable waste in a container that will be used for composting, container should have the provision for air circulation with in it and also suggested for continuous mixing 

Turn the compost at least 3 times in a week, exposed parts of the compost towards the middle of the container. This will expose the compost to oxygen which essential to break it down. Doing this will also accelerate the decomposition process. 

The clay pot filled with coconut husk, coconut fiber, and vegetable waste, and soil is also used but only 30%

Processing compost in a clay pot.

The image shows the black colored compost mixed with soil. This was processed in previous months.

This compost used 40 % of vegetable waste and other plant parts.

Compost

Poombpatta - The Pupa

In Malayalam Language there are few poems, rhymes and other articles written on this. I could find the similar kind of pupa in my garden, but not on roof. Plant called 'Arali'  which was grown on ground and I could find this pupa one day.

In this image you can see a pupa which almost looked like a skull. 

Living habitat on Roof Top

Blessed to see and feel living things, unexpected creatures on my roof. Few left after 3 months and few among them still living. To an extent this gives me more excitement when I find them in my garden,. the reason would be the organic plans or may be not using any pesticides and fertilizers.


It is been 30 days now, since I have seen this chameleon. I could find him/her when it was very tiny in size and always hanging on either bitter gourd or other beans plant.

Small bugs on bitter gourd plants. Too many and not easy to control. 

Third Harvest

Weather condition was not that supporting for a good Harvest, but still the plants could fetch the maximum. There are a lot of learning attached to this season, those will be described in this Post.


In this image you can see that the tomato fruit is too small, apart from that, purple brinjal, green chilly and lady's finger can be seen in the basket.

Plant	Output
Okra (Ladies Finger / Bhindi ) 3 in Nos. ( Planted 3 months before)	20 Okra in 3 months, Plants still has 10-15 buds.
Tomato- 4 Plants ( Planted 3 months before)	Big Size- 25, Small size- 50.
Pumpkin - 3 Plants ( Planted 3 months before)	Only One fruit appeared but in growing stage. Taking longer time , but the vines are spreading around the roof.
Green chilly - 6 Plants ( Planted 6 months before)	100 chillys
Snake guard 3 Plants ( Planted 2 months before)	No Result

Cucumber 2 Plants ( Planted 50 days before)	4 Cucumber
Indian Spinach (Green & Red) 50 Plants.	Every plant was matured enough to use for making curries. We had a good Dal curry while using spinach as an ingredient.
Long Beans 2 Plants	Started giving flowers

Brinjal (Egg Plant) 10 Plant (Planted 3 months before)	50 Brinjal (Small in size)
Elephant yam, Colocasia,	Flowers are constantly appearing. Enjoying the beauty of it.

Bitter gourd 4 plants	Started producing fruits.
Big broad bean 2 plants	25 beans

Green egg plant	25 fruits.

Growing Long Bean (Valli Payar) on terrace

A typical and very common south Indian Beans, it usually grow up-to 50 cm. in length. This verity is seen in retail markets in Kerala and Tamilnad.  In Malayalam it is called 'Valli payar'. Seeds usually thick black in color and germinated in compost soil.  Seeds can be germinated in a seedling tray or a smaller container, so that it can be transplanted to bigger container once the seedling grows and transplantation can be done after 5 days of it growing.

Placed the plant close to the vertical supporters with net like structure. so that it can climb along the vertical supporters.
Seed germination and transplantation 

Leaves are longer and light green in color. This image is taken after 20 days from the day of germination.

Pest Control Tips:
http://sevenandhalfsaturn.blogspot.in/2011/04/pest-control.html

Rel

Long Bean Flowers

After 4o days plant started producing flowers.
Slightly violet in color and looks almost like an Orchid flower.








I could initially find that the flowers were falling , then noticed that there were  small worms which started eating the pollen of the flower. Also another threat to the buds are the very common red ants.

This image shows the long beans which is yet to grow in length and size.

Long bean

From one single plant, we can harvest minimum 1kg. of beans.

Growing vegetable on terrace

Pests and Insects on Organic vegetable terrace garden - II

Bugs, Worms and other flys, they are called pest when they attack farm or a crop. In-fact they are beautiful creatures. Even-though  they are spoiling the plant they have every right to live in this world. Let us study on these creatures and there vicinity for preferring my Organic Roof.

let them enjoy.........

CATERPILLAR ..., looks so attractive but will not let the flower of pumpkin to survive.

Organic vegetable Garden on Terrace

Fertile soil preparation

Homemade Compost

Pest Control

Experiment with Drip irrigation on terrace

Plantation on raised Bed

Honey Bee/ Beekeeping

Mushroom on closed rooms

Related Links:
Organic natural pest control

Roof Plantation - II

After the second harvest and studying on roots of different plants, I learned that few plants require bigger containers as the roots are more of fibrous in nature, few among those plants are Beans and bitter guard. So my plans is to prepare a better support for the vines for the bean and bitter guard plant.

This is the new structure that I created, this would be another experiment. There is no investment at all, so may not look attractive.












I could find that the structure was leaning towards
one side, so tied it with ropes from all ends like a tent
structure









Also arranged plants surrounded along the four corners of the structure.

Four sacks are planted with Long beans and bitter guard











Most appropriate structure for any vines to climb is
being constructed here. let us see how this will work.











Four plants in sack in four corners, with bitter guard
and long beans.

Another variety of Tomato

I could collect few different variety of Tomato seeds. This plant grows in length as it needs more support and the fruit is also bigger in size compared to my previous tomato plantation. In this post I will share different stages of its growth.

Since I found this is growing in length, I felt it needs better support. Tied the plant almost along with a PVC pipe and also rested it to the wall of one side of the roof.

This variety of tomato is bigger in size compared to previous batch of plantation.

In this image the plant is supported with a PVC pipe.