• Panchagavya

• Seeds and Seedlings

• Hungarian Yellow wax Seedlings [ Bajji Pepper]
• Black beauty brinjal seedlings
• Green chillies
• Cabbage
• All other vegetable seeds.

• Cocopeat

• Fresh lettuce for sale

The location for purchase is http://tinyurl.com/geekgardener
Preferred timings: 10AM-2PM 3PM-6PM

Happy gardening.
GG

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In most of my posts/comments, I recommend people to start with plants like mint that are very easy to grow. Mint for example, is easily available. It grows invasively and very easy to propagate. Or is it? I received many questions on how to successfully propagate mint. I have posted several times in this blog on how to root stem cuttings successfully but I thought it would be really helpful if I dedicate one post entirely for mint.

Steps to propagate mint with 100% success rate

• Collect Mint cuttings — Buy or borrow mint that have slightly thicker stems.
• Take the stem tip cuttings by making a cut at 3-4inches from the top. Make sure the cut is right below a node.

• Do not remove all the leaves. Leave them in the cutting, if the bottom most leaf in hindering them you can just remove them off.
• Prepare the media (in my case cocopeat). The media should be moist but not wet. If you try squeeze the media, water should come out little bit.
• Fill a propagation tray with the media. You can take any container. Propagation tray makes it easier to transplant.
• Stick the cuttings into each cell and compact it so that the cutting is intact.

• Now cover the whole setup with a polythene sheet. If your tray is small enough, you can enclose it in a polybag. Transparent cover is good. This step is extremely important. If you don’t cover the cuttings with a polybag, they will lose the moisture and wilt very quickly.

• Keep the setup in a bright location but not with direct sunlight.
• No further watering is necessary. Keep an eye on the plants daily. The plants should remain fresh and not wilt. Wilting indicates that the plants are not covered properly in the polybag and is losing moisture.
• If you properly followed steps 1 through 8, the cuttings should root in just about a week.

• Once rooted, slowly introduce the plants to the outside world. Since they were in humid environment inside the bag, sudden change in humidity will result in plant going through stress.

• Expose the plants to sun gradually. First start with an hour and then increasing by an hour every day to harden them.
• In about 15 days time, your plants will be fully rooted and are good for transplanting.

This is how you propagate Mint from cuttings to get 100% successful results.

Happy gardening

GG

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It was Saturday morning 8ish and I was struggling to wake up after a week’s work. The phone rang suddenly. It was my mom on the other end. Still half asleep, I picked up the call with the idea of continuing my sleep after the call (duh!). She said, “Hey, do you know? There is an article about you and your garden in the The Hindu newspaper?” .Though I was half asleep, I was excited. By the time I ended the call, sleep had already left the building. I had given an email interview couple of weeks back. But It indeed was a pleasant surprise since I didn’t know when it will be published.

I immediately rushed to the PC and checked out my site.. the traffic was already sky rocketing. Mails got flooded into already full mailbox.

I am pretty excited to share the link of that article.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-propertyplus/article2781915.ece

Thanks for all the support.

geekgardener

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Every visit to my website, made me happier and their questions, made me learn a lot. This blog is what it is now because of all you passionate gardeners. Thank you so much.

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Few weeks back, I posted a topic in the forum to build a database of pictures of various pests. The main idea was to make it easier for novice gardeners to identify the pest they are having without much difficulty. With that in mind, I started looking closely at my plants every single day; all the plants. I got plenty of insects. This inspired me to start this Plant Pests Series. Every post in this series will feature a pest.  It will have the following about the pest

• Identification
• Damages
• Control
  • Natural
  • Chemical

Introduction

The star of this post is Leaf Miner. Leaf miner is a name given for the larval stage of many insects that consume the leaf tissue. Most of the leaf miner are larval stages of  flies. While the adult is considered harmless, the larvae feed on the upper and lower surfaces of the leaves causing the wavy squiggly lines on the leaf surfaces

Identification

In case of leaf miner, the pest can only be identified after the damage is done. The symptom of leaf miner damage is the squiggly lines made by the maggot as it bores through the leaf tissue eating it away. The damage will look like the picture below. (The damage via alphabets in the image is done by me..insects are innocent!)

After several days of mining in the garden, I was able find a miner taking a walk in the park, munching along..The dark lines are its poop.

This is up close with the maggot. The damage to the leaf is very clear in the picture below. The larva has eater away the leaf tissue and only the surface epidermis remains.

Damage

Leaf miner attack can cause serious damage based on the density of the insects and the stage of the plants. Seedlings affected by leaf miner show stunted growth and might die but it is not very common. Plants with heavy foliage can handle some amount of leaf miner damage without any noticeable impact in yield. But heavy infestation can seriously reduce the yield.

Life cycle

This is how the story of a leaf miner goes..

1. Mature larvae in soil/host plants wait for the conducing weather. As the warm weather sets in, they go into pupal stage and turn into adults.
2. Females after mating, search for leaves in order to lay the eggs.
3. Females have a needle like organ which aides them to pierce the leaf and lay upto 200 eggs into the leaf tissue…under the surface.
4. From then, all it takes is couple of weeks for the eggs to start drawing lines in the leaves.
5. After 3 weeks, they become mature and is all set to go into pupal stage..
6. See Step 1.

Leaf miner Control

Usually leaf miners have lots of natural enemies that consume them. The outbreak of leaf miner might arise after a use of insecticides that kills its enemies too. The safest control is to simply remove the affected leaves and dispose them off.

Organic control

Neem oil is an excellent pesticide to control leaf miners. 30ml of neem oil in a litre of water along with little dish soap can be used as a spray.

Alternatively, one can use yellow sticky traps to attract these flies and destroy them.

Chemical control

Insecticides like permethrin, bifenthrin and deltamethrin can be used to control adults. Since these are contact insecticides the larvae inside the plants are still not affected.

To control the larvae systemic insecticides like Imidacloprid can be applied. Dosage of these insecticide are as per the instructions on the label.

That’s all in this post.

Happy gardening

GG

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Wishing you all a very happy and a prosperous New year 2012.

2011 was terrific. There were lots of happening in the website, lots of viewers, lots of contributors and lot of learning. Thanks a lot of being such a nice bunch.

In the year 2012, I am hoping to see more gardeners and more success stories. Lets pull up our sleeves and get those plants growing. Lets take a resolution of growing at least one vegetable self sufficiently. Can we?

Happy gardening

GG

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This article is a continuation of Part I of Hydroponic Cucumber production. The response to the previous article was amazing. Questions started pouring in in huge numbers. This shows how much interest people have in commercial hydroponics. I will try to keep these articles simple for a home gardener and at the same time, sticking to methodologies followed for a commercial production.

This last part dealt with seed starting, transplanting and training. This part will deal with crop management, irrigation, fertilization and harvest.

	Recap: These plants are about 40 days from the date of sowing. They are sown in black polythene bags filled with coco peat media. Each bag contains about 12 liters of media in it. If it is mini cucumbers, there can be 2 in a bag but for bigger English cucumbers one per bag is recommended.The spacing of the plants are at 16-18 inches apart.
	Pruning: Regular pruning results in healthy, sturdy plants that yield continuously. The fruits will also be of uniformly large size. Too many branches can dilute the vigor and when then number fruits goes higher than the plant can handle, it automatically aborts the next set of flowers till the current ones are harvested.At the same time, care should be taken It can be observed that there are flowers on all the nodes.
	Pollination: English cucumbers are parthenocarpic. It means, there is no need for pollination for the fruit set. This feature makes it a wonderful candidate for greenhouse growing. The grower need not worry about brining in bumble bees for pollination. Also, all the flowers are female flowers. As many flowers there are, that many cucumbers you will get( Well, Technically!).In the picture to the left, you can see the tender cucumbers growing vigorously. It takes 10-14 days for a cucumber to mature. It grows very fast especially in the last few days of that duration. The weight ranges from 400-550grams per cucumber. This weight depends on the stage of picking.
	Maturity: These cucumbers are approx 1 week old ( from the day of flowering). The ridges are a feature of the cucumber variety and they gradually become very shallow as the cucumber matures.The skin is very thin so care should be taken to immediately store them in a cool place or shrink wrap them. Otherwise, they can lose moisture too quickly and become soft and rubbery. On the left, is cucumber 2 days short of harvest. More you leave on the plant, more nutrients are diverted to the old cucumbers and this might delay new ones getting formed at the top. Always maintain a balance with respect to number of fruits per plant. 6-7 fruits at any point in time is a good number. More than that, one might experience deficiencies of calcium due to the inability to support more fruits.
	Training: The plants are allowed to reach the top overhead wire. Till it reaches that height, all the side shoots and branches are removed.Once it touches the overhead wire, the top is cut off and two branches are allowed to form. They are allowed to fall down from the top. Care should be taken such that the stem doesn’t break as it winds around the wire. The fruits are allowed to form on the laterals.These plants on the left have about few inches before their tops are cut off and are allowed to branch.
	Nutrients: Most of the questions, I received were related to this one topic. Nutrient! Nutrient! Nutrient. My idea was to write a dedicated post on Hydroponics Nutrients. Not just for Cucumber but for any crop. A subsection in a post will do no justice to the topic. So in this section I am just going to mention the ppm values used and deal with this topic in detail the next post.   Macro Nutrients Nitrogen(NO3):190 Nitrogen(NH4):20 Phosphorous:50 Potassium:380 Calcium:190 Magnesium:50 Micronutrients: Fe:0.8, Mn:0.5,Zn:0.3,B:0.5, Cu:0.05, Mo:0.05
	Nutrients Continued: It is important to remember that the nutrient is only part of the equation. There is no one single nutrient for any crop. Plants tolerate a range of nutrients. It is the growers responsibility to read the plant and if necessary modify the nutrient to suit the environment. Regularly “read” the plant for deficiencies, toxicity, insect attack. If you find certain the plant is too vegetative( lush leaves, less/no fruits), then take certain measures to steer it into generative mode. There are lots of methods one can use to steer the plant towards vegetative or generative. Temperature, Irrigation duration/frequency, Electrical Conductivity(EC) are some of them.So one formula doesn’t suit all. It needs to be tailored to the area. In the coming posts, I will explain in detail about How to make hydroponic nutrients and how to modify it to suit the plants need. Also on how to “read” your plant.
	This is 1st Harvest. Each cucumber weighed 500-550 grams. We were very excited that we didn’t even eat these cucumber for couple of days.It was like ..in the song from “Damadamm” no touching no touching.. only seeing only seeing”). Most of them averaged and 14-15 inches but some of them dared 17inch mark. This was from one plant that was first to yield. It was also the one that had saw-dust mixed in along with cocopeat as a trial. I was impressed .
	2nd Harvest was huge. I picked about 20 cucumbers and what I liked about this crop was the uniformity. Every plant had almost same number of cucumbers on them and was quite a view in my greenhouse. One thing to remember with english cucumbers is that they have a very thin skin. If not stored properly, they lose water very quickly leading to a soft rubbery fruit. They remain crunchy for a long time if stored properly. The fruit is so juicy and crunchy without the seeds coming your way.
	3rd Harvest and again I got 20 cucumbers. At this point, we were loaded with cucumbers in our house and I already started selling this to my colleagues at work. Who doesn’t love vegetables delivered to their cubicles.. Parallely I had beefsteak tomatoes growing and their yield was pretty good as well. It was tomato and cucumber month. I had so much surplus that I approached nearby Vegetable supermarket and the push cart guys. To my surprise both of them agreed in a jiffy. The best part was I got to set the price and they were ready for it. They also said that they will take lettuce and other exotics I grew. So far, I have harvested around ~40 kg. The crop had its share of insects. I will handle insects and diseases to watch out for in cucumber production in my next post which is Part III.

Hope you all enjoyed this part of the Hydroponic cucumber production series.

Link to Part I : Hydroponics/Soilless Cucumber Production in greenhouse – Part I

See you in my next post. Until then Happy gardening

GG

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In the last post, we saw DFT method of growing leafy vegetables like lettuce. In this post, I am going to post about Hydroponic bag culture of European cucumber.

Before we dive into the growing part, a little bit introduction about European cucumber won’t hurt. European cucumber aka the long English cucumbers. These cucumbers are seedless cucumbers. Why this is a good thing is, they don’t need pollination to happen for the fruit set. Inside the greenhouse, pollination is effected only by using bumble bees. Since these cucumbers don’t need pollination, there is no need for pollination using bees. Hence this variety is very suitable for greenhouse production. Also, European cucumbers have all female flowers. That means, every flower that blooms can become a fruit. Since all flowers can set, pruning is essential to get good quality and quantity of fruits.

Growing Conditions:

Cucumbers prefer warm growing conditions and they can handle summer in India. Greenhouse environment also suits the warm temperature needed for the cucumbers to grow. They consume more water especially in the hot summer days because of transpiration.

	Seed Starting: The seeds are sown in moist coir peat or cocopeat. The medium needs to be just moist and not too soggy. Medium that is too wet is prone to lot of fungal infections like damping off etc. It is good to choose the media that is free from any fungal infection. Sterilized and washed media is also available these days. Cucumber seeds can be sown an inch deep and the seed is covered with media on top. It is recommended that the trays, pots used are clean and sterilized before using if they were previously used. Once the seeds are sown they are covered with polythene sheets to keep them moist and create a humid micro environment. No further watering is necessary until they germinate. Commercial greenhouses use Rockwool blocks for germination. Rockwool is an excellent inert growing medium. It holds less water than coir peat and needs more frequent irrigation.
	Germination: Cucumber seeds germinate in 3-5 days. The optimum temperature for germination is about 24-28 C. Once the cotyledons are fully open, it is time to water them with a half strength nutrient solution. The E.C of the nutrient solution must be kept at 1.0-2.0 until it is ready for transplanting. The seedlings at this point, grow very rapidly and sunlight is absolutely essential. Lack of sunlight will result in tall lanky seedlings.
	Transplanting: Transplanting of cucumber seedlings can be done when, 4-5 leaves have developed. plants 20-25 cm tall. In the picture to the left, they plants are transplanted in a black poly bags that are 1 foot in depth and 10” inches in diameter. The plants were little lanky so I had planted them little deep. The poly bag is filled with media which is cocopeat (coco coir) in our case upto 2inch from the top. It is very important to use coir that is free from lots of salt. Only washed and sterlized cocopeat is recommended. Since cucumber is very sensitive to salinity, Care is taken to ensure the drainage is proper on all the bags. Proper drainage is essential and also keeps diseases at bay. Stagnant water leads to problems like root root.
	Plant Spacing: European cucumbers need up to 9-10 sq.ft per plant to grow.They occupy more space than tomatoes or pepper. I have spaced the plants at 16-18 inches between plants in a row. The rows can be spaced at about 5 feet. When the spacing is larger, Quality of the fruit is improved less number of plants needed High yield per plant is achieved. Plants are transplanted such that there is one plant per bag. This is for long cucumbers. For mini cucumbers, two plants can be planted. The spacing between the plants stops plant from touching each other. Disease spread can be avoided if the plants are spaced well and not too crowded. The plants are fed via a drip line that will supply the nutrients needed for the plants to grow.
	Post Transplant: Once the seedling is transplanted they are irrigated with full strength nutrient solution. The plants grow very fast at this stage. The plants to the left are one month old from the date of sowing. They are growing very vigorously. Since the plants are creepers it is important to train them to climb vertically. I have put stakes in the bags after I transplanted them, so that the stems don’t bend and break. Cucumber plants have a very delicate stem. It is important to remove the tendrils, side shoots and flowers from the plant up to 7-8th leaf. This directs the plants to be vegetative in the initial phase. This is vegetative growth is important for the plant to be able to set fruits later.
	Pruning & Training: After transplanting, the plant will start to grow vigorously. Hence training and pruning should be done without fail. The plants are trained vertically with a twine.The twine is fastened at the base of the plant. Care should be taken to not put a tight noose around the plant stem. This causes wounds when the plant grows later and stops growth. Wind the plants around the twine string in the clockwise direction and be consistent with the direction. As the plant grows, remove the tendrils and the side shoots. Tendrils start clinging to leaves and fruits causing mis formed fruits. Allow fruits to be set after the 8th leaf from the bottom. This ensures vigorous growth for the plant and ability to set more fruits later. If the flowers in the bottom are set to form, there is nothing wrong. Cucumber plant can only support 5-6 cucumber at any point in time. So after that number, it automatically aborts all the flowers until the old ones are harvested. In this picture you can see the twine that is tied to a overhead wire. The plants are twisted around the twine.
	40 days from the date of sowing. They are almost 6 feet tall and are flowering profusely. The plants were hand watered so far twice a day. Drip lines were also setup to automatically water at predefined timings. Two emitters were inserted per bag to ensure complete drenching of the bag. Drainage is about 15-20% of the nutrients supplied. This ensure there is no salt buildup in the bag. The leaves are periodically checked for pests/diseases/deficiencies. It also important to keep the plant balanced. Plant that is too vegetative yields less and the plant that is too generative will not yield throughout the growing season.
	Yay! Flowers! The plants start flowering in about 40 days. As I mentioned before, all the flowers are female and they don’t need pollination. No running behind bees and no brushing around pollens. They just set fruit. Isn’t that wonderful?The fruits of this variety grow about 12-14 inches long and weigh about 500 grams per fruit. The fruit takes 10-14 days to develop from the day of flowering. The fruit has a dark green skin and is thin. So there is no need to peel them off and eat. Just eat the whole thing.

Wow. That was a long post so far. Guess what! I am not done yet. There is part II to it. That is where I tell you how I harvested 12.5kg in the first harvest and 13 kg in the 2nd harvest. The plants are not done yet. After pushing out a whopping 25 kilograms. They are still yielding like crazy.

So watch out for the Part II, there are videos too

If you liked this post, please don’t hesitate to share it with your friends and fellow gardeners! Use the social networking links below to spread the word  and get more people to garden!

You can also follow me @thegeekgardener

Continue to Part II of this post http://geekgardener.in/2011/12/08/hydroponic-cucumber-production-in-greenhouse-part-ii/

Until then

ciao

GG

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Hopefully, this post  will make the wait worth it.

Without further ado, Here is a post on growing lettuce hydroponically using NFT system.

First, a little bit introduction to terminologies is in order.

What is Hydroponics?

Hydroponics is a science in which plants are grown in water that contains all the essential nutrients necessary for the plants to grow, flower and fruit. While the name ‘Hydroponics’ refers to growing plants in water, practically speaking it is not always the case. Hydroponics nowadays simply means growing in a media that is inert and lets the grower provide all the nutrients required. It is also known as soil-less culture. There are variety of media that are used for hydroponic culture. Some of them are cocopeat, rockwool, perlite, expanded clay, sand, gravel, vermiculite, rice husk etc.

There are lot of material in the internet. I recommend the following book if you want to learn about hydroponics.
Hydroponic Food Production: A Definitive Guidebook of Soilless Food-Growing Methods

In this post, we are going to focus only on growing lettuce in NFT/DFT.

What is NFT/DFT?

NFT stands for Nutrient Film Technique. In this technique, a thin film of water continuously  flows through the pipe/gutter always being in contact with the root. This ensures constant availability of nutrients to the plant and also ample oxygen since the root are exposed above the thin film. Since it is a very thin film, there is no stagnant water at all. This system requires the nutrient solution to be continuously in circulation. This translates to the pump being always on. In our condition with frequent power cuts, that is just not possible at all. If the pump fails, the system immediately runs dry.

DFT

Deep Flow Technique, on the contrary always has some amount of nutrient solution (NS) at some depth. More nutrient is periodically pumped in and through the overflow pipe the excess NS goes back to the reservoir. Even when there is  a power outage, there is always some amount of water to keep the plants alive. So naturally, I chose this method to grow lettuce in it. I had grown lettuce in pots before using cocopeat as a medium and got very good results. Always wanted to grow in NFT/DFT to compare the results and the timing was just right.

Seed Starting

The variety of lettuce I chose was “Green Salad Bowl”. The seeds used were saved from the previous batch of lettuce. Needless to say, germinating/seed starting them was a breeze. Good lettuce seeds germinate in 3 days. Lettuce seeds need sunlight to germinate. A common mistake is burying them with media. Usually they will germinate, but it will be sparse. Take good quality potting media. For hydroponics, using just cocopeat is fine.  Moisten the cocopeat in such a way if you squeeze the peat it gives out very little water and when you open your hands, the cocopeat remains as it was and doesn’t fall apart. Make tiny pits in the cocopeat where the seeds will be sown.

Sow two seeds per cell. Gently press the seed on the surface of the mix such that a portion of it is visible. Cover the tray with transparent/translucent polythene bag. Keep checking for signs of germination. The moment you see a green sprout coming out, remove the cover and keep it in a bright place. DO NOT KEEP IT COVERED after the germination. It will lead to leggy seedlings.

Day 1

Sowing two per cell makes up for the seeds that wont germinate. Sunlight and nutrients are very essential after the true leaf emerges. For seedlings, half strength nutrient solution is recommended. Since they are very tender, higher concentration might actually burn the root. Half strength 19-19-19 is good enough to raise transplants.

Day 3

About two weeks later, the seedlings are well grown and are ready for transplant. Infact, they have overgrown in that small seedling tray. I was out for 3-4 days during that time and they remained in the cell longer than they should. Now is the time for transplant.

Two weeks later

The picture to the left below, is the transplant and to the right is the lettuce seedling planted in a net pot. Ideally the netpot is filled with a coarse media so that it doesn’t fall into the pipe. But materials like hydroton are not available easily and they are quite expensive as well. So a little customization was done. The netpot is approx 2″ dia (I think). In the bottom, I made a hole so that the root of the plant can pass through it and come out. Next, I take the transplant from the cell, wash off the cocopeat with running water. Take a piece of styrofoam and cut it to make a circular disc. Now cut a small pie out of it. Hopefully the following picture makes sense. Pardon my drawing skills.

Styrofoam

All this styrofoam gymnastics is to keep the plant intact in the netpot and it also stops light from entering. Filling the netpot with cocopeat is not a good idea. One can fill it with coco husk chips. Usually the sides of the netpots are for roots to come out but in our setup the netpot is to simply anchor the plant in the pipe.

Now comes the main part of the system. The PVC pipe. This is literally the back bone of the system. The pipe chosen for this is a 4″ dia PVC pipe.  Holes of 2.5″ dia were drilled using a hole saw cutter in order to house the netpots. This is made in shape of a U but it needn’t be the same way. One can have a single long pipe and that should do well . Ensure the endcaps are sealed well and there is no leakage.

The pipe should be properly leveled such that there is no slope. Remember this is DFT. We don’t need slope here. One of the two end caps has an outlet through which the water flows out. At any point, there is always 2-2.5″ of nutrient solution present in the pipe. Anything more than that pumped in automatically overflows into the reservoir. Check out one of the pictures below for the picture of the overflow pipe. It can be kept in the side or in the bottom also. In case of placing it in the bottom, ensure a depth of 2.5″ of nutrient solution is maintained.

Now that the pipe and the transplants are ready, it is just a matter of fitting them in. No digging, etc.Fill the pipe with enough nutrient solution and Just snap the pots  in. Nice eh?

Aug 23

With the help of a timer, the nutrient solution is periodically circulated in order to not cause any oxygen depletion. The pH and the EC was also continuously monitored to maintain the conducive environment.  It can be seen from the below picture. NS enters via the black tube at the top left into a hole and comes out on the other end and drops into the reservoir from a height. The turbulence and splash causes airbubbles to mix with water there by causing oxygenation.

Aug 30

Considerable growth is observed after 10 days of transplant. Slowly they are starting to fill the pipe.

Sep 4

Twenty days after transplant and they are already looking gorgeous. Everyone who saw this had a big “Wow”. The inlet and the outlet holes are clearly visible in the picture below.

Sep 12

The same setup from the other side of the pipe. Uniform growth and the growth rate was phenomenal. Every day I could see great improvements in size.

Sep 15

Getting bigger and bigger

Lettuce in all its glory

At this point, the lettuce has reached its final size. Trust me the picture doesn’t do justice. Each lettuce plant looks like a big ball of leaves and is too much for two people to consume. One bunch has enough leaves for a salad for 3-4 people. The market lettuce I saw recently was a small bunch at a crazy price.

A month after transplant

The variety stands to its reputation. Green Salad bowl. With frills and curves in the leaves, it is an attraction by itself in my garden.

Reached their final size or Did they?

Check out the white roots. Everytime I check the plants, I focus on the roots first. It is very important to check on the roots. If the roots are brown that is an indication that they are not getting enough oxygen. In this situation, no matter how much nutrients you put the plant just cannot take it.

White roots; Indication of healthy roots

From pipe to plate

After the harvest, I weighed the lettuce first. It came to about 260-280 on an average.With some modifications to the system, increase in the weight can also be achieved.

Doubles up as an ornamental

Fresh Lettuce

The water quality is also important. The water source I have is hard water and the nutrients had to be tailored for the same. Though this post is complete, there is more to be written on growing lettuce in the coming posts.

Hope you all enjoyed this post. This system can be used to grow many other vegetables besides lettuce. To order such a kit from this website, send me an email with the subject “Hydroponic Kit” to admin@geekgardener.in or use the contact form.

That was a long post. Good job if you made it till here.

See you all in my next post.

until then

Happy gardening

GG

 
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Last Sunday, the kitchen garden day was a great success.  The meet up was after noon so most of them had enough time to attend many other events happening in and around Bangalore in the morning. . I had packed all my seeds, labeled them and was all set for the meeting to begin at 1 PM.

Exactly at 12:55, I get a call from the early birds regarding the meet. I was excited and motivated because of their punctuality. I received them and we went to the meeting hall. While we were discussing, a few more entered. More introductions happened. In just a matter of minutes all the seats were taken and we were house full .

After an initial round of introductions, we started discussing about everyone’s garden and what they were growing. Slowly it became a full-fledged question and answer’s session which was good. I took this opportunity to give a short session on how to start a terrace/kitchen garden. This session, woven with questions and answers took a good couple of hours.

There were seeds and plants on display. Some of them swapped and others bought the seeds. The most sought were the strawberry plants brought by Asha. I had a tray full of Parsley, tomato and coriander seedlings to giveaway. After the talks, we went to the greenhouse for a short guided tour.

We had fun! Look at the picture below.

To all who made it to the event, Thank you so much for making it a memorable event. I really appreciate people who came all the way from other side of Bangalore such as RT Nagar, Yelahanka, Jakkur etc… It shows your passion towards gardening.

Thanks once again!.

To those who missed, not to worry. There will be more such events in future, so watch this space.

As always, Happy gardening!

GG

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