Back In the Saddle Again

So, here, finally, is a 'future' post with the promised pictures!

Zea Mays 'Tiger Cub' and 'Old Gold' (seeds courtesy of Nan Ondra of  Hayefield )

Nan's corn seeds sprouted beautifully and the plants came up tall & straight!  They also put out a couple of cobs but alas, no corn (seeds) in them.  Perhaps pollination didn't take place?

2012 Pongal Panai Turmeric (with some unexpected papaya seedlings)

The New Year Pongal Panai turmeric (the broad-leaved plant).  Looks like the soil had some papaya seeds that are also hitching a ride!  I left the papayas in but just kept trimming the papaya plants' leaves so that they wouldn't shade the turmeric too much.  It seemed to help and almost a year later, the turmeric has started to bloom!

Turmeric in bloom: about 10 months later!

So, here's the turmeric flower!  (I had to chop off one of the papaya plants that was crowding the bloom quite a bit.)  The flower is quite fragrant if you rub up against it although my mom says that the fragrance should be quite overpowering and wafting all by itself.  It is still the early stages of the bloom (couple of days old, really) so, lets see.

Gossyprium herbaceum 'Nigrum'

I was also able to germinate the Gossyprium herbaceum 'Nigrum' seeds that I got from Nan.  They also grew beautifully--for a while!  I then forgot to water them--for a while, oops, my bad: so, RIP, my Levant cotton flora-mates!  Incidentally, the paper pot they are growing in is moi-made!  A very useful piece of DIY handicraft to pick up, especially for aspiring gardeners.

Colocasia esculenta (Seypang kizhangu)

And finally, here's my second attempt at growing C. esculenta!  A bit more successful than the last time around.  The one shown here has already been harvested and in fact, its children are also almost ready to be harvested!

Springtime Blues

February is just about over but the mercury is already spiking: it hit almost 33C ( ~ 92F) here yesterday!

Which means my attempt at growing poppies will probably fail miserably, yet again!  My last attempt at growing these was an abject failure:  I starting growing them around mid-summer and the saplings simply shriveled up in the scorching heat.  So, this time around, I figured I'd try them around late-spring and I scattered a whole bunch of seeds a few days back (around the 16th or 17th).  I do see a bunch of green shoots popping up.  But, its a bit too early to tell if these are indeed poppy saplings or the ubiquitous species of the Weedsae family.  Keeping the proverbial fingers crossed.

Since I also have a tendency to shvitz like a hyperhidrosising tri-lamb nerd at a ΠΔΠ mixer when the temperature spikes up, I thought I'd play it smart and get as much stuff done around the garden as possible before the heatwave kicks in.  So,  I

• un-potted (most of) the roses and got them into the ground
• un-potted the Thumbai (Leucas aspera or Leucas indica) and got them into the ground
• dismantled last-year's trellis that I'd set up for the mochai, worked the left-over dried up vine back into the ground and (trans)planted the Tulsis in there
• transplanted the seedlings that, surprisingly, came up now from seeds that I'd tried to germinate last August: the seeds have all gotten mixed up so, I've no idea what these are
• started a whole bunch of seeds including some tomatoes

Looking at the 'done' items makes me realize that this is just the tip of the 'to-do' iceberg.  Oh well, as the famous Broadway 'ditty' goes, there's always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow!

Late breaking news:  my nephews have gifted me with an iPod so, I'll start working some nice pix in in future posts.

Caveat lector!

Today's blog is—perhaps fortunately?—totally unrelated to gardening!

The folks at Casey Research, if anyone, are to be blamed (perhaps credited) for this:  if they had not sent out that deliciously quixotic, and even sublime-in-some-places, Friday Funnies, and thereby activated the 'Oh-man-I-have-to-tell-everyone-about-this' gene that all of us seem to have, my post might not be going through this Jason Bourne-ish identity crisis and simply stuck to gardening.

But, they did.
And, to top if off, they also blessed my request to blog it.

So, thanks to Casey Research, enjoy their Friday Funnies below!


Friday Funnies

Here's a good one that's been going around for a few years. Supposedly, it's originally from the winning submissions from a Washington Post neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words. The winners are:

Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

Gargoyle (n), olive-flavored mouthwash.

Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.

Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners:

Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.

Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

Karmageddon (n): it's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

Glibido (v): All talk and no action.

Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Arachnoleptic fit (n..): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

Ignoranus (n): A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

A big tip of the hat and thanks to Nan of Hayefield for her free and generous contribution of a whole bunch of seeds.  I just got them from my brother-in-law:  a big tip of the hat to him as well for bringing them over.

I shall be more than happy to share these once I try these out and if there are any left over: drop me a line if you are interested in any of Nan's seeds:

Zea mays 'Tiger Cub'
Zea mays 'Old Gold'
Ibicella lutea
Persicaria orientalis 'Shiro-gane Nishiki'
Solanum atropurpureum
Gossyprium herbaceum 'Nigrum'

The Cocoanuts

No, this is not about the eponymous Marx Brothers movie but about half-a-dozen or so cocoanut plants that I'd like to give away.

It will

• be on a first-come first-served basis (yes, a FIFO queue with, let's say, toss-of-the-coin tie-resolution!)
• have to be dug up and carted away by you

Any charitable, tree-loving, exnora-ish organizations welcome!

Flat Out

I didn't think I was going to be blogging this soon again--its just been about a year since my last post, really!

But, lo and behold, my lackadaisical, laissez faire gardening efforts appear to have been written up about in a recent issue of the Hindu. Yikes: Heinlein, I think got it wrong--it ain't the moon, but karma, that is a harsh mistress!.

Now, about the Hindu piece: the bit about me gardening in 'my apartment' is a bit off the straight and narrow, a, in the immortal words of Cool Hand Luke, failure to communicate. It is actually a house with a few yards of hard, clayey soil that I engage in my attempts (to garden, that is).

So, with that out of the way, we shall go back to our regularly scheduled programming :).

New Year Mochai, Orange, Plum, Potato and Turmeric

Pongal, especially here in the South, usually means scrumptious eats: chakarai-pongal (which, ironically enough is made with jaggery rather than sugar) and the accompanying sambar or kozhambu containing a medley of vegetables--presumably from the New Year harvest--including, my favorite, mochai paruppu.

As far as I have been able to determine, the botanical name for Mochai Paruppu, as it is locally known here, is Dolichos lablab var. lignosus Prain. I saved a few of these pods from their intended sambar-death and got the seeds growing in my 'standard' seed germination set up (newspaper pots stuffed with coconut coir and loosely capped with the 25-liter drinking water container seal-lids). Its just been a couple of days since I got them started but, it looks like they are about to sprout already!

An interesting feature of the Pongal cuisine is that the pongal panai, i.e., the pot in which the pongal is made, is girdled with one or more turmeric plants, roots (rhizomes), stems, leaves and all. I have no idea why but, it does make the pot look 'green' and festive. And, once the cooking is done, these plants are discarded. So, I scored a couple of these, cut up the rhizomes into a few pieces and got them planted in a regular 4" terra-cotta pot containing an equal mixture of sand, neem seed-cake and compost.

Feeling a trifle industrious, I also stuck a pre-soaked plum seed, a (whole) potato (which had been drying on a closet shelf for god knows how long), some kamala orange seeds (all of which had been soaking in water, again, for god knows how long) into a few terra-cotta pots filled with just plain old garden soil. I am pretty sure the potato is simply going to rot away much like the seypang kizhangu that I had stuck in a (different) pot much earlier.

I am also planning on trying to germinate the Bhut Jolokia seeds that I got from Geek Gardener and maybe some ginger as well.