Our own Garden

A little different write up for this blog. Nature is there, yes, but the ramble is much easier. Just around the house garden!

Couple of years back we got an opportunity to build our own house. When the architect asked us to list our requirements, garden space was at the top. So, in a 2400 sq feet plot, we managed to end up with about 900 sq feet of garden space, most of which were filled with soil, and 300 sq feet of car porch area tiled with stones where grass could grow in between them.


OK, we had the garden space, now what? We did not want the garden to be artificially landscaped and preferred a practical organic one with no pesticides. So, we approached Urban Mali whose mantra was in line with ours. They got us started with a lot of native plants. Now we have a small lawn with a pond housing guppies and other visitors in it. A flower patch with colorful Hibiscus plants, Kanakambaram (Crossandra infundibuliformis), Spatika (Barleria), Parijatha (Nyctanthes arbor-tristis), among others. No, I am not a botanist. Names thanks to google and wikipedia! They also made a vegetable patch, and planted fruit trees like Guava and Sapota. Its been about a year and the garden has done fairly well with much hand holding from Urban Mali via maintenance as well as advice. Many lessons learnt and many more yet to learn and implement which I will try to list below.

Lily Pond with a Frog

Ashy Prinia

First, a big bonus for me has been the nature in the form of birds, animals and insects the garden has attracted. As an avid birder, Ashy Prinia's which we would enjoy only during our outings, became a regular guest to our kitchen garden, for few weeks with its sweet calls delighting all. Other bird who have graced the garden are Purple-rumped Sunbird, Red-whiskered Bulbul, Oriental White eye and Tailor Bird. We had a snake visit us too, frogs hopping around all the time, insects, a garden lizard which camped in our garden for few days until food ran out and snails galore. Variety of butterflies have placed our house on their regular daily route. Overall, it has been a pleasure each and every time we spot any of them.

Gauva

As for my gardening effort and success, it has been a mix of results so far. The hard work of cleaning, planting and weeding is done by the Urban Mali gardeners who visit once a month. I mostly water it, do some weeding and harvest the produce! Success has been in most of the greens we planted (Spinach, Basil, Lemon grass, etc,), Guava fruits, and the native flowers. Lily pond, though small, has sustained itself very well with a lily blooming almost all the time.

Lily Moth Caterpillar

Harvest

Some lessons I have learnt. Watering with a proper schedule is important. We lost a lot of the nursery plants we tried to nurture. Manure is key. Without proper nutrition yield is very low or none. Still learning this. I don't have a in-house compost setup. It appears this is a must if we are hoping for good produce as the cost of store bought manure is too expensive. Managing pests such as army ants, aphids is an ongoing struggle. The lily moth caterpillar pretty much chomped away all our lilies. I am told they will grow back. Still waiting. I guess with the organic approach we do share our garden with the rest of the nature. Neem oil as a deterrent helps but its a struggle to keep away some of the pests.

Garlic Vine

Regardless of the struggles we are enjoying our garden so far as it embodies nature at its best with variety of plants, animals, insects, pests and all! Looking forward to many more visitors and bountiful harvests in the future!