Compost over here

  Just to say, yes the foresters were right, it did not rain on Friday when we had our regular monthly meeting :)
  Tine, a lady who rides horses through the land and yonder into the cashew trees, gave us 2 loads of horse dung.  Compost by now, as it has been sitting there for quite some time.  Really good stuff for our vegetable garden!
  The thing was bringing it here from not so far away by tractor.  The latest type of tractor; super power, assisted driving, etc.  The people whom we hired could bring the tractor to the spot but i had to do all the reversing and setting up for them to load it with "mumpty and chutty"..hmmm. It has been a long time since i drove a tractor.  When i used to work for the Road Service, then surely i would drive on a regular basis and that too a John Deere, best.
  It is one thing to reverse in a car or tuck but to have a trailer attached is again another thing.  This maneuver required going between granite pillars at narrow right angles..well get the picture right.
  So here, i am doing the thing.  Back and forth.  Again and again, getting closer to the spot.  Attempting to get there forwards..so having assisted steering is great for such maneuvers.  Turning one direction was easy peasy with two fingers, then suddenly when i had to turn the other way it was so hard required lots of force..so that was another thing to tackle :)
  Got it to the spot.  Relieved.  Went off to get tea made for them..on return they were finished and of course they drove it out easy; yeah, going forward is no issue.  Let's seem 'em get it back there for our second load! :)
 

Rediscovering her roots

  She has rediscovered her roots.
  She has started her vegetable garden!
  Coming from an interior design/architect background - she finds today nothing more rewarding then sweating in your vegetable garden!
  She is exhilarated.  She is motivated.  She is full of energy.  She can hardly finish her sentence she is so moved by her joy of work :)
  We visited her work place; home.  Lovely to see her site.  Papayas growing galore.  Pineapple in the hundreds; she says, "i am trying to get a 1000!"  All beds lined up, weeded, a variety of vegetables growing happily.
  All this maintained by her and watered by a drip irrigation system installed by her.
  Even the Farm Group has to say if she can grow so much in so little space, why can't she be a farmer? :)
  To our suprise, she made us a meal that night with home grown veggies!   Excellent!
  oh, yeah,  beans hanging from the sky she collected and ate straight from the vine - our advise - she thought it better then cooked! ;) Thank you Ilona.
  People, edible landscape!

Worms a-hoy

After the rounds of Auroville in the hunt for the vermicompost experts; listening to Jino demonstrate to us the way he made their vermicompost in Discipline Farm, then a quick look at the one in the Botanical gardens and to finish our research - the next day we visited Bernard at Aurobrindavan.

We have 3 boxes; 2ft x 3ft x2ft made by bricks with a pipe for the vermiwash.

Jino was nice to give us a few handful of worms mixed with compost..we took it ourselves as he was bedridden.

We made a bed of white sand and placed the worms with compost in a pile as there as not enough so to save them we added leaves to cool it and sprinkled water to keep its temperature down. We were a little nervous as the cow dung that was ordered a week had not arrived. We had planned to commence our vermicompost adventure with cow dung, get those worms to reproduce and acclimatise :)

We would like to use foliage and our left overs from the kitchen to make vermicompost..

“Vermicompost is 9 times better then normal compost!..The liquid that passes through the compost when we sprinkle it to keep it moist is very good for watering the plants or vegetables.. there are several types of worms..just put some leaves on the ground with some moisture and worms will begin to come and you transfer them to your box..it can take upto 3 weeks to get your vermicompost.. “ I am narrating what they have told me – we are excited and so eager to see happen!

The 3 boxes are side by side so we are trying to use the one in the middle and use the 2 on each side to begin decomposing leaves and and waste from the kitchen and when the center will be ready we will allow the worms to vacate to the fresh awaiting decomposing leaves..smart eh? It is working (positive affirmation) :)

Preperation for the Vegetable garden 2009

  Beautiful showers the night before – thank you!

  Will not give credit to my little mini rain dance that I did jokingly in front of them folks :)

  My roommate Catherine has been persisting that we give attention to the vegetable garden soon – I had to promise to do it as soon as it rained. it would be easier on our hands to pull out the grown weeds making the garden a forest of weeds.

  Beautiful day indeed!  After a good session of pranayama and feeding our stomachs with Auroville bread we made our way to the weed forest :)

  What a site, butterflies fluttering all over!

  Why remove the weeds? Many say it is to give more energy to the actual plants we want, others would say it looks cleaner or easier to plant your seedlings, etc.

  Am sure there is a reason for weeds and a harmony between the plants. The weeds we remove, we will put them back around the seedlings to protect from the sun.

  Throughout the year if we had removed the weeds or piled leaves on/around the plants; it would have cut out the sun to the weeds and slowed their growth.

  Today Friday, we will receive the seeds so that we can soak them in our saliva and germinate them before transplanting them to the garden. 

  Soaking the seeds, not all, of course, that would be funny!  The few that we soak will influence the others.  The idea is that they will register our biochemical beings and will grow to provide for us to be healthy human beings.  You can see vividly the difference when we soak them in our saliva J

  We trying to grow veggies the whole year.