2022 garden progress was satisfactory. For me personally, it exceeded my expectations. M transformed into a serious gardener, he built two beds all by himself and planted season vegetables – tomato, green chilies, eggplant, snake gourd, white pumpkin, dosakkai, cucumber, long beans, ladies’ finger and some greens. We had very decent harvest. M’s goal was to harvest enough tomatoes, green chilies to last for few months and more importantly to grow white pumpkin to use on Ammavasai days to prepare pumpkin sambar and offer to my in-laws.
We had only one pumpkin and that was big enough to last for following 12 months 🙂 We cut it into pieces and stored as 12 portions to pull out one bag every month on Ammavasai day. Tomatoes and green chilies were duly frozen, and I still have stash to last for few more months 🙂 It’s a different level of feeling to use home grown veggies.
I personally enjoyed snake gourd as its my favorite kootu vegetable made with boiled channal dal. This year, we added two banana plants (received as gift from a relative family residing in North Carolina when we visited them), moringa plant and a bunch of greens. Most of them have been moved indoors along with the hibiscus plants.
I have to give credit to my neighbor as she was “garden-sitting” when we were out for 3 weeks on Europe trip. She visited our garden every day and harvested all veggies to save them for us! She is a blessing to me in many ways! To make her job easy, we installed drip irrigation for all pots on the deck and setup sprinklers for the bed. The drip irrigation needs lots of patience, multiple trials and some technical knowledge to get it to functional state. We installed timer to water the pots three times a day!
M became a pro gardener by end of the season 🙂 I can’t wait to see his plans for this year. I have decided to take the assistant spot and allow him to lead when it comes to gardening and oh boy I am super happy about it 🙂
Our garden update in a video:
We have named the single petal red colored hibiscus as “Redda” and even in winter he blooms flowers. This is him last week on the day of my father in law’s death anniversary day!
Do you see all the buds? Redda is our way of remembering my father-in-law as he used to grow multiple varieties and colors of hibiscus plants! This is his 4th year with us 🙂
Between my littles and me 
I am speechless Ani…this is so very calming.
👏👏
🙂❤️
Woah… what lovely produce… it’s so rewarding to see the fruits of your labor 🤗🤗
absolutely and credit goes to M 🙂