Random Colours: The buds and the bugs

My garden is a collection of exactly nine pots that occupy the little space that we have outside the back door. We haven't let the fact that it gets sun only in the late afternoons and that it is vulnerable to monkey-menace come in our way to have a few plants growing in there. A few tid-bits, that may be of interest if you are growing plants in Chennai but you are too lazy to go to a nursery and most importantly you don't really plan to live off the garden produce:

Growing out of seeds- had very good luck with lime, green chillies and capsicum! Sowed the seeds straight out of store-bought fruit, into the soil and almost every seed germinated. Wasn't as lucky with sesame seeds which I think are more season specific. Looks like February-March works well for them as all of sudden I have saplings from seeds sowed several months ago!

Growing out of the stems- a type of spinach (pui shaak in Bangla) which is a bit gluey and has fat stems was planted by our house-help in one of the pots, just a few pieces of the stems planted into the soil. It grew absolutely lush green in a few days and needed minimum care. Since then we use the seeds it produces in Jan-Feb to plant new set. Easy-peasy to grow and maintain and monkeys don't have a taste for gooey spinach. The other plant that grew out of planted stems is mint (pudina). It was much harder to get mint going but once a few of the stem took roots it has had no problem except one time when the black bugs decided to make home in the pot.

Growing out of roots- failed attempts were turmeric, which were eaten up by maggot-like thingies, and ginger, which were dug up and devoured by some visitors in the night. I had kind of given up on roots when I saw a couple of purple shoots sticking out of sweet potatoes in the kitchen. The whole sweet potato was under-grounded and boss these shoots really took off. Haven't seen anything growing this rapidly. Absolutely gorgeous leaves, both the shape and the colour.

Strong smells- my mother had brought a sapling of a tulsi plant for my garden and somehow I felt it was a good repellant for unwanted visitors to the garden. Since then at any given time one pot is reserved for a tulsi plant. Between mint and tulsi we thought we had most of evil-doers covered but of course......

Bugs and solutions- growing a few plants makes one understand the associated difficulties. A pot full of pudina was reduced to a few sprigs in a matter of a week when a family of black bugs decided to nest in the soil. I could only watch them helplessly, creeping in and out every time I watered the pot while the plants withered away. The solution was the solution of chilli powder in water! Not kidding, it just may have been a coincidence but the bugs disappeared and in a couple of months time the pot got back to being like old times. Then there were these waxy white sticky bugs which apparently go by the name mealy-bugs who got better of me and in a very fast and focused mannered killed the lime plant in a matter of weeks.

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