Sunday, June 20, 2010

Garden Update

My garden is like an oasis in this sweltering heat. Gardening, especially a vegetable garden is not easy work. I do it out of interest and the fresh, organic produce that comes out are a big bonus.



The most rewarding are the greens. Swiss chard, mustard greens, amaranth are some of the easy to grow green which are very prolific and last through the growing season.




Besides manual labor I want to document the amount of money spent in the garden the produce that we are rewarded with and the recipes that are made with them. I usually fall back on tried and tested familiar recipes.






Expense

Cost

Seeds

41.56

Garden Soil, Pots , Fencing

530.92






see the little guy?



chard flowers


Produce from the garden

Date

Vegetable

Quantity

Recipe

May 27,2010

Swiss Chard and Amaranth leaves

2 Cups of chopped greens

Sambhar

June 2,2010

Swiss Chard

2 big bags full of leaves

Swiss chard and green peas stir fry with coconut

June 7,2010

Mustard greens

1 bag - 4 cups of chopped greens

Moong dal with mustard greens

June 8 ,2010

Night Shade greens

2 cups of chopped greens

chutney

June 15,2010

Swiss Chard

2 big bags of greens

Red Kidney beans with chard leaves

June 16,2010

Mustard greens

2 Cups of chopped greens

Toor dal with mustard greens, tomatoes and green chilies

21 comments:

  1. Beautiful garden.. Dishes made out of fresh veggies that too from our own grown garden is really tasty. You have done so beautifully and the table is really interesting.

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  2. Lovely greens! How nice to keep records of your yield.

    I guess there are intangible benefits that can never be counted in dollar amounts, like your kids growing up knowing how fresh food tastes and where it comes from.

    Is the little guy a baby bitter gourd?

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  3. Indo.. those are some of the most amazing pics!! And I love the records.. time, effort, expense and yield and dish made. All good stuff to track and note. Look fw to more such garden logs! :)

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  4. What a lovely green garden! I love it.

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  5. Wow - you are absolutely organised about this!!! Kudos !

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  6. Woww such a beautiful garden..interesting table,beautiful clicks very pleasant to eyes..

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  7. I want your garden, but then i don't have a green finger. Lov eyour garden.

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  8. That's a fabulous garden and I can see that you are already reaping the benefits.
    Thanks to your mulberry post, I recognized the fruit immdtly when my FIL surprised us with this after his walk in our neighbourhood. I had no idea it grew in our neighbourhood too until then :)

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  9. Beautiful garden, lot of hard work has gone into that...appreciate it, love those lil bitter gourd' my favorite:)

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  10. Beautiful!! :) Thanks Indo! How wonderful that you are tracking that your garden offers! I'll start writing down too in a paper.

    We harvested a bunch of cilantro and dill from our community veggie patch last Friday. The sambar which used those cilantro leaves turned to be best ever I had. The fresh from garden stuff beats the supermarket stuff by a mile or 100!

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  11. your garden looks amazing, i wish i had such a green thumb!

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  12. Oh my! What a beautiful garden! I love to see home grown vegetables more than flowers. And can understand the joy of seeing your own greens flourish ... I had planted 8 saplings of the MAlabar spinach and am watching them grow like a proud mommy. :-)

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  13. you have got a lovely garden! i have a few tomatoes, basil, cilantro, thyme, rosemary and sage growing in my backyard and i feel like little kid every day when i go and check the "progress" of the tomato flowers. there are some advantages to maintaining a veggie patch that just cant be counted monitory, i guess.

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  14. ur garden looks very professional now.so what all have u planted this season?

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  15. Beautiful garden ! Awesome that you have kept a record of your yield....

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  16. Lucky, lucky you! I once tried planting amaranth in my old house and they grew, all to be eaten by insects! I had a great crop with gaping holes in the leaves.

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  17. Wow Indo, such a bounty of greens. This year I delegated my veggie patch to my Dad. It is beautiful and green but we are yet to see any bounty ;-)

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  18. I envy you.. oasis indeed!! My yard is not faring too good this year for the bunnies have found their ways to sneak thru the fence and eat up everything.. waaaaah!! i really feel like wailing. all the tomato plants were gone in one evening. the methi an karela are still there with tiny little karela hanging in there. amaranth gone... i am so depressed.

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  19. Soma, I know exactly how that feels. Last year the patch was useless because of that.

    If you look closely at tIe first few pictures, the black fence has another aluminium fence in front which is a 3 feet rabbit fence. I had to do that to grown any sort of plants in the patch. Cost was couple of hundred dollars but IMO well worth it.

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