Don't look at the weeds!

Is there a trigger warning for weeds? There should be. Anyway, if you are the sort of gardener who begins to twitch when she sees a weed in a field, please do go on to the next post. This is linked to Six-on-Saturday, which means there will be lots of impeccable gardens on Mr. Propagator's blog. This is not for you. If however, you consider a weed to be a flower that has sown itself, please do continue.

1. An oxalis field! Actually, no. I just thought I'd get the weediest photo out of the way first. What this is, is an onion bed edged with french beans. I don't consider oxalis too 'bad' a weed- It does not strangle or overwhelm the other plants, it makes a fine chutney, and the insects love the flowers. Nevertheless, I do keep this bed weeded because the onion seeds were given to me by my Mian's mum, and the onions are special for that reason. I will do this soon.

 

 2. From an edging of french beans to a whole bed of them. These seeds were distributed by the horticultural department in our village. They apparently had a lot of these seeds and a distribution target. We gladly accepted a couple of handfuls. And they are good! We have a french-bean dinner every other day and are happy.

 

3. My poor curry-leaf plant. In the south, where I grew up, one only needed to stick a kadipatta twig into the ground for  it to grow. In our frosty mountains, kadipatta needs much more coddling. Amma and I planted our Kadipatta at the same time about four years ago. Her plant in the Western Ghats is now as big as a truck. Mine..well, just look.

We celebrated this year because the runt had finally put out two branches.
And then the rooster broke them. The plant is now patched up with some clay and sticking plaster. It has been a week now- let's hope the graft 'takes'.

 4. Mian and I had gone to a dear friend's house for tea. On our way back, we stopped to chat with her gardener and I noticed some plants I had not seen before. "What's that?" I asked. "I don't know what they are called, the root is spicy" he replied, scratching a root and offering it to us to smell. Mian took one sniff and -in a lust-filled, throaty voice I had thought was private- whispered "Horseradish!". Manu-the gardener- took one look at Mian's face and silently uprooted a plant. "For you, Madam." I brought the plant home and planted it where it promptly got eaten by a porcupine. Now it is recovering in a twiggy cage and I have plans to take root cuttings this monsoon

5.  And then there is the squash. I goofed while preparing the beds this year. I got a hole dug, filled it with chicken litter, and then covered the hole back up. The Delicata Squash I had planted (seeds given by Mian's mum!) seemed very unappreciative.

It is only after reading Weaver, John Ernest, and William Edward Bruner. "Root development of field crops." (1926) with its lovely root diagrams that I realised what I had done wrong. Apparently, the roots of squash and pumpkin do not go far into the soil at all, preferring to spread themselves along the top. Here is a picture from the book, available here.

Humph. I do hope it works, because I want to do Mum's seeds justice..

6. Finally, the celery. We use celery a lot to flavour stocks and braises. Which is why we were happy to buy the french celery on a visit to Montpellier two years ago. The celery did well, overwintered, and self-seeded so that I now may actually have a 'perennial' celery patch! I noticed this scorch on the leaves though..does anyone know what it is?

Also, I do feel compelled to explain myself- while I am never an immaculate gardener, my beds are usually not as bad as this. I sprained my ankle nearly three weeks ago and have not been able to go out into the garden till the last few days. And even now, I cannot squat or even get on my knees to properly garden. So there.