Growing my own food

Here's what I hope will be a sneak preview photo of the harvest from my vegetable patch. Somehow food tastes so much better when it's straight out of your garden, doesn't it?
We had a great harvest last year (and this photo is a partial record of that) so this year we decided to try and improve on it.

The first step was to increase the size of the vegetable patch. We somehow managed to cut down on the bananas and ended up almost doubling the space for vegetables. See what I mean?

I couldn't give up my lantana bush, though. It is still slam-bang in the middle of all the activity, attracting butterflies and birds to it.

By the way, did you notice the banana plants to the left? The one on the extreme left is heavy with fruit and is bending so much that it is almost in danger of falling over. My helper tried to prop it up with a small stick while he went hunting for a stronger one. I almost burst out laughing when I saw it... it was like trying to prop up a car with a toothpick!
If any banana farmer sees this he'd probably say I'm growing them all wrong. Officially, you're supposed to make sure there's only one plant growing and remove all the others growing from the same clump. But that's not the way I grow them. I allow most of the others to grow too but remove the ones which are of almost the same size / age. This way I have bananas ripening on my plants every other month instead of having to wait almost a full year to get the next bunch.

Cucumbers, gourds, beans and ladies' fingers (okra) are some of the monsoon vegetables that grow so well in Mumbai at this time.
By the way, you don't need a lot of land to grow most of these vegetables. A large pot in a sunny spot is perfect for okra but you have to provide enough space for cucumber and gourd vines to clamber and ramble. If you can guide them to find their way up or across window box-grilles which are a common feature of most Mumbai apartments, I think they'll be happy enough. Just make sure they're not in the way of salt-laden strong winds. Our monsoon winds can get quite vicious at times and I've had perfectly healthy, happy plants in my apartment garden die out on me in a matter of hours after one of these stormy sessions.

The flip side of the monsoon has to be the soil erosion in my sloping garden. I had worked hard at building up the soil and enriching it with well-composted cow manure and ash. But within a few days of heavy rains I found that most of it has flowed off downhill and left behind a whole lot of pebbles and rocks and other nasties.

Whoever said sparrows are hardly seen in Mumbai nowadays will be happy to know that they're thriving in my garden! In this uncultivated corner of my vegetable plot, I found a whole flock of them chirping and squabbling among the grass and weeds that the monsoon has encouraged.

Incidentally, did you notice the weed growing in the foreground (extreme left of picture), in front of the Caladium ? That, my friends, is Phyllanthus amarus, one of the most effective medicinal herbs traditionally used to treat jaundice and now has been found to treat Hepatitis B too. Just imagine how many other potential medicines in our gardens are pulled out as weeds.
As good an excuse as any if we want one to put off weeding, don't you think?

Anyway, back to the sparrows, I found this one perched on an old stump, keeping watch.

And his wife was busy stealing fibre from the dried banana-stem strips used to tie the trellis canopy together.

I wish she would have just pulled some from the bitter gourd plant. Definitely not my favourite vegetable, though my husband loves it. But I do love how it looks and its bright yellow flowers are quite pretty among all that green. I wish I could grow it just for its flowers and not let it fruit at all!

What a potent surprise!

You know how sometimes you suddenly come across something which knocks you off your feet and leaves your jaw scraping the floor? I had one of those moments recently when I was idly browsing through Flickr.
I finally found an ID for a wild plant with pretty little white flowers which shows up in my garden every monsoon. I had very fancifully named it Peace Bells in my mind since I had no idea what it was.
Peace Bells? Ha! nothing peaceful about these little plants.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is Safed Musli, valued as one of the most potent aphrodisiacs from the plant world.

Now do you see why I'm feeling a little dazed? It's almost like finding out that the nice, sweet little girl that you went to school with is now a centrefold model in the more volatile type of magazines!

With the ID I found, I kept searching for more information until I realised that more than one plant from the genus Chlorophytum is commonly referred to and used as safed musli since they all share the same medicinal properties. And my Chlorophytum breviscapum is one of them.
Yes, the same family as our humble Spider Plant but, no, Chlorophytum comosum is not in that elite list.

It is a ground-hugging plant which appears all over my garden after the first rain of the monsoon season. Very soon it sends out stalks of pretty little white flowers . Even its seed-pods are eye-catching! I find their unusual tri-coned shape fascinating.

Did I mention that its white tuberous roots have aphrodisiacal properties according to Ayurvedic medicine? Apparently that's not all that it has. I read that it is supposed to be anti-ageing too. And great for building up immunity levels.

And the funniest, most ironical part of all? Years ago, while talking idly of the commercial possibilities of my gardening hobby, I was advised to grow safed musli as that was considered the most profitable crop to grow.
And I just laughed it off.
After all, I had no idea how to grow it or even where on earth I would get the planting material!