April
Sow some capsicums, add some coriander (and other tasks this month)
All over the world people are singing paeans to spring, going gaga over the first snowdrops and planning their gardens. All the gardening newsletters I subscribe to, mostly from the West, are waking up to sowing and growing. Our blink-and-you-miss-it spring has, however, passed and in this summer heat, 'April is the cruellest month' gets a new meaning. But it is the time for long evenings, late sunsets and in the container garden, a time to say goodbye to the winter vegetables.In the herb patch
The radishes in my salad tokri will give way to coriander. I'll let the lettuce grow on until it turns bitter or goes to seed and sow some more spinach. Even though it seems like patra leaves are too 'heaty' and should be avoided, I have new saplings just setting root and I'm hoping they settle in. In the other herb pots, happily growing through the year, are lemongrass, mint (recently repotted and merry), basil, ajwain, fennel, green and red mayalu, khus and tulsi.In the veggie containers
It was a long wait for the cherry tomato seeds from Ratanshi. All through last year I kept going to the store every month asking if it was time yet. Their cherry tomato seeds shelf, however, remained empty though the counter clerk probably soon knew what I was going to ask for as soon as I stepped in. I finally got them and have been enjoying the fruit for two months. Tangy and sweet, I know now what it is to eat a good tomato ripened on the vine. In addition to beautiful salad Turkish tomatoes that I have been sharing with some unknown creatures, perhaps a squirrel or a rat or the birds. It's a race, who gets to the ripening tomato first, a race that I constantly seem to be losing. The tomatoes seem to be easing off now though.In a bucket I threw in muskmelon seeds last month and now I have three plants. They were flowering until about 10 days ago but are under attack from something that thinks nothing of tearing stems and leaves out for no good reason. I've set it up with a container trellis to grow up on and hope this is a battle I will win.
The okra seedlings I planted last month are doing nicely and I might sow a few more.
I've pulled out my old capsicum plants and will start new ones. The last ones gave me some big and some small capsicums and this time I'm hoping they'll be bigger than golf-ball size.
I'm holding on on the brinjals, sticking to the three plants I have that give me a brinjal meal every couple of weeks.
The baby corn, singular plant of mine, is growing. I'm thinking of adding some chowli plants to the pot. Beans, corn and squash are a classic combination and yet I had no success with French beans at all this winter. But chowli, which grew so easily up the drumstick tree last year, is generous and prodigal and is going to find more space in the containers.
The lemon tree, which by this time last year was blooming like mad, has decided, for some reason, to lie low. It could be because I pruned it (indiscriminately, like a cow eating a plant) and repotted it three months ago or it could be that it blooms once every two years. Who knows.
The drumstick at the Urban Leaves community farm at Don Bosco in Matunga is spreading out and fruiting beautifully and every time I looked at it I felt ashamed of mine, a few leaves at the end of a tall branch. Oh the energy it must be expending to get water up there. I had bought it a couple of years ago, before I knew about good potting mix etc and when I finally sat down to repot it a few days ago I found it had a four-inch deep root ball while the bottom of the pot remained compact, hard, mildly watered soil that was completely rootless. It is now in a bucket with beautiful soil and compost and covered with mulch.
