Friday, April 16, 2010

Growing vegetables in containers

I guess everyone should experience the pure pleasure of seeing tiny seedlings emerging from the soil. But I should warn you, its addictive!

We do not have enough space for outdoor gardening, so my garden is limited to the terrace or balcony. I read on the Internet about the best practices to grow vegetables in containers and bottles we throw away. Actually almost everything came from waste. In the below image, you can see my mint plant growing in a used Coca Cola bottle!
I used kitchen waste for fertilizer and used sand and this waste to fill the pots. I also filled a large bucket with water and leaves, both dry and green we collected from around. These decayed leaves were also used as fertilizer. After a month this mix started smelling like cow dung! I diluted this to use for the plants.
In the images below you can see yard long beans and the beautiful white flowers of snake gourd. The best part of my gardening efforts was getting the kids interested. As soon as I return from office, they would say, "Come, let's water the plants!" They would tell me if anything notable happened. My son would say, "The cucumber has a new female flower, shall we hand fertilize it?" We did all that and also spent a lot of time, removing bugs and those tiny creatures troubling the plants.
This year, the harsh summer was so unkind to my plants, but many of them thrived. I am experimenting with grapes too. I managed to grow them from seeds. Here's a seedling below. Ladies finger seedlings are also doing well.
It's a wonderful learning experience. And I have really learned a lot from my experience. I am sure I will do a better job next time around.