Rice is Life...

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Growing Green Fingers...

To offset my ranting over the last few days, I will show you some vegetable wonders of the world... We have had so much rain in the last few weeks, I haven't had to water the garden, so I haven't really been taking time to look at what's been going on. The mornings of sitting out in the sun drinking my coffee have gone and the paddling pool has been put away. 

Has summer gone so soon?

Before we set off on our weekends away, there was nothing but a few flowers on the french beans. Now miraculously we have 6 inches of superfine legumes to be proud of...

The peppers are popping up quite nicely, but the slugs and baby snails have had a field day...

We've had the last of the lettuce now, but the cherry tomatoes are still giving us some sweet little gifts of juiciness...

We haven't had much of a harvest in our first attempt at growing vegetables, mainly because of the lack of space in the yard and because I haven't been able to afford to buy or find any larger pots or compost to repot the things that need more nourishment. I guess if we could compost our waste somehow it would make a huge difference to what we could grow.

I haven't used any kind of plant food because I don't want to get into buying organic food in plastic bottles that won't be available in India. When the time comes I will research homemade organic plant feeds in more depth.

The experiments in sowing and growing have been great fun and very challenging. The satisfaction I have felt seeing and eating something I made happen is unbelievably addictive.

I knew from the start that things would go wrong and I have been happy to learn from my mistakes.

What I have learnt:

• Always use clean soil, to avoid diseases such as 'damping off'. At the very beginning I used some pebbles from the garden to help with drainage in my pots... big mistake! The seedlings and soil went mouldy and developed a green 'dew drop' disease over the surface.
  
• Watering should be done from below to avoid 'drowning' the seeds before they germinate.
• Water regularly to avoid 'bolting' of seedlings. If the tray gets too dry the seedlings will bolt up and grow too quickly.
• Carrots need to be thinned out when they are quite small, otherwise the leaves get too tangled to easily be pulled.
• Slugs love my strawberries!

What we have grown:

• Baby leaf lettuce - lots of it.
• Rocket - lots more.
• Courgettes - very small ones due to small pots, but very tasty too. About 10 in total.
• Tomatoes - cherry, we've eaten about 20 so far.
• French beans - about 20 on the plant, I may use them tonight.
• Peas - haven't done so well because they were in the same pot as the beans, which have won the battle.
• Peppers - the pots are too small so I'm not expecting much.
• Potatoes - an experiment with a few Tesco Value chits! Watered by the bathroom sink, that needs a proper drainage pipe. I planted 6 in a recycling box, too many in a small space, they grew too tall and fell over before they flowered. I had a look and found lots of potatoes but they had a white speckled disease. I just wanted to see how they grew really.
• Cucumber - still growing, but the same pot issue, they are looking a bit small and wobbly.
• Spring onions - from sets, lovely in our salads.
• Coriander - loads of it.

So all in all I'm very happy with the dabbling in 'Green fingered magic' ... The most important thing I have learned is that preparation is the key to success. The heart of any garden is in the soil. Good soil means healthy plants. When we buy some land I will probably spend the first year just building up a good supply of compost and making some raised beds to ensure the nutrients are properly distributed. I'm also going to look into irrigation systems involving greywater. 

I'm excited about learning more of crop rotation, companion planting and moon planting. So if any of you have ideas, links or posts about these, I'd love to hear from you.

One of my favourite garden blogs in India (in fact it's the only one I've found!) is India Garden. She doesn't grow vegetables but her photos are always so inspiring. 

I can't wait to get started now!

Washing Powder Doesn't Grow on Trees...

(Thanks Saheli)

I just realised that I don't know how we will wash our clothes in India. The usual laundry method will result in lovely fresh pressed clothes at a bargain price, but not exactly on the eco path of ours. Washing powders along with everything else are largely sold in never ending sizes of plastic sachet which unfortunately often end up blowing around in the breeze before they float down the river. So with the chemicals they contain and the plastic they come in, a natural substitute had to be found...

Soap nuts! Sapindus...

(from Pasadena Housewife)

I discovered the most natural washing product in the world, whilst writing this post. So I guess with a bit of asking around at the local dukaan, I should be able to source some. Maybe I should give them a go before hand and try doing some washing in a bucket!

Back up to the claims of a miracle laundry product can be found at:

* Revolutionary laundry soap product grows on trees, replaces laundry detergent

with eco-friendly solution

* Soap Nuts: a Review

* In a Soap Nut Shell... Clean Your Laundry and Your Concience!

Oh and I'm glad I decided to give the nopooing a go before we leave...

I just washed my hair with a mix of 2 parts Shikakai, 1 part Amla and 1 part Neem... I don't really like the way my hair feels, maybe I didn't wash it out enough, maybe because I made the paste a bit thicker this time. I'll give it another go with a runnier mix and wash it out more thoroughly next time. If my hair still feels icky then I'll try without neem, then without amla.

Amla is said to make your hair lose it's red tones, which is a good thing for me because I'm trying to grow out all the chemicals I've saturated my hair with in the past, leaving it a bit coppery. So the more brown the better.

Neem is said to leave a slight tinge of green on fairer hair, which is quite scary, so I hope to God I don't end up looking like an Oompa loompa

I really was impressed by the Shikakai, so I will be sticking to it.  I heard screams from the bathroom last night when my husband realised I had given away our shampoo and conditioner!

I feel cleansed in every way now!

Strawberry Fields Forever...

At long last we got to pick our own strawberries! Everyday the angel stands next to the flowers and looks into the sage. This being where I have tried to hide the strawberries from the nasty slugs, who had stolen the first juicy ripe ones! She tries to sneakily take them when they are still white and she does the same with the green tomatoes...

I know the land in the hills of Kerala is perfect for growing strawberries. It's a similar climate to England, without out the grey clouds and drizzle! A place I've dreamt of going to is Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra. Renouned for their strawberries, Mahabaleshwar is a hillstation of similar climate to Vagamon or Munnar. So I have high hopes of growing a field (or patch!) of strawberries in the future.

So I would like some advice for expert strawberry growers (more than 3 strawberries counts!) about how to keep the nasty pesty things of my fruit... organically of course. 

This is an excerpt from the site where I found this great photo of a 

"Strawberrywallah"

"That is exactly what Mahabaleshwar is all about in the Indian summer! A place to escape the torrid heat that grips Mumbai, a place to romance strawberries and mulberries, a place to cool off in the thunderous hailstorms thatshower the hot tin roofs and plunge the temperatures for lovers to revel in!

Mahabaleshwar has something for all young and old, trekker and stroller, shopper and foodie or maybe someone who just loves to laze around. Therefore, you will find families, backpackers, moony honeymooners, all doing their own thing and generally having a good time."

***

I'm loving it already!

A Far from Ethical Dinner

My vegetable garden is nowhere near harvest because I sowed my seeds in early June, but last night I did eat my first ever homegrown produce!  We had a baby leaf herb salad (mixed lettuce/rocket/coriander/mint) to accompany our half price, reduced, Lamb chops with African spices and left over cous cous from my organic rainbow chard and mushroom stir fry on Friday.

I had bought some reduced organic strawberries too and so ended up using the reduced to £1 cream I have been keeping to make butter.  But then I still haven't sourced a big enough jar to shake it in!

***

I'm finding it a struggle at the moment to keep to my ethical shopping list.  I'm sure everyone is feeling the food cost inflation as prices rocket from ridiculous to absurd.  I can't afford organic everything at sometimes double the cost and my families healthy diet goes out the window when all we can afford is 'Tesco Value'.  When faced with organic local butter at £1.55 or Tesco Value at 85p, my morals are flying through the window in the path of the food price rocket!

I want to buy only 'whole' foods, nothing added and nothing taken away.  Preferably organic and local.  I feel my choices have been sabotaged beyond repair because of the supermarket world we live in now,  but the dilemma is, when you can't even afford to buy your basic foods, it's back to the devil to buy what you can afford.   We rarely eat meat anymore, which I don't mind so much, but my husband has "never looked for vegetables!"  I feel my duty as mother and wife to provide healthy meals for my family, with my husbands hard earned cash is being compromised on a very basic level.

On another level I feel extremely lucky to have food on my plate.

(This is my homepage, please make it yours too) 

bhookh.com

Veg Box Envy

Oh dear, is there such a thing?

Did I really pay a pound for 3 small onions? I was a bit miffed also to find rather expensive (17p each!) mushrooms (not in the photo, in the fridge!), in place of VEG no. 7...

So we got:

Rainbow chard, a bit limp

A lovely cabbage

Quite a few red potatoes

3 small onions

5 carrots

A handful of broad beans

6 mushrooms (in a plastic bag!)

2 fairtrade banana's from Peru (LOCAL?) (an added bonus, I guess)

I'm not sure if my high expectations of a huge bounty of vegetables in a box was fueled by images of GM plastic packed vegetables at Tesco... but to me it just seems, well, not very many vegetables to feed my little family for the week.  I even Googled Organic veg box just to check out what the box should look like!  Thankfully I found Martin's blog and I feel a bit better that £7 doesn't really buy you many vegetables these days.

I did however find a new shop less than a mile from home, the pick up point for the box.  The Wholefood Coop was a breath of fresh air in the city.  An Organic, Eco Supermarket with a Homeschool bookshop, Roving Books

I'm going to cook up a rainbow chard and mushroom stir fry with cous cous tonight...