Growing spinach in Containers

Spinach is the easiest of all the leafy vegetables. It will be ready to harvest in a month. It recommended vegetable any first time gardener. Zero maintenance vegetable.

Picked up the seeds from Lalbagh Botanical Garden. Paid Rs. 30 for the below packet.

Google for the pic of seeds, plenty available. I had read of germinating seeds on tissue paper.

Thought of doing the same for spinach. Bad Idea. The seeds should be sown directly into the soil and not transplanted. 

I had put in five seeds, all of them germinated. Transplanted them into the bottle of coke. But only one survived :(. This seeds were placed in the tissue paper on 1st July. They took 5 days to germinate. This pic was taken on 8th July.

The plant in the middle, is the only one standing from the germinated seeds. I sowed couple of more seeds next to it. The below pic was taken on 12th July. 

 And this is the one taken today, 29th Jul.

 The spinach should be ready to harvest in a week.

Spinach in the bottle wasn't enough for one meal. But it made its way into the Salad :)
I picked a tub this time to grow my Spinach:

 Medium used is Coco Peat and compost. 70% of peat & 30 %.
Made 35 holes with a stick and sowed the seeds on 11/Aug.

The pic below was taken today morning (18/Aug)

26/08:

New pots, bag and plants :)

I was given 5 saplings at VMSRF, and luckily for my mother's friend was discarding clay pots.
Grabbed the opportunity and this is how they look now:

Have applied panchgavya today. Eager to see the results.

Put in lot of efforts to dig through the coco peat. The brick was 1 feet long and I soaked it in a cement bag.

Got enough to fill the below plastic bags and this is how they look now.

The first two contain carrots and last one has brinjal seeds. The seeds usually take upto 5 days to germinate.

Eagerly waiting for the next weekend to see the results of my new experiment.  

Using coco peat for gardening

Lesson Learnt!!!

I have been reading about this method for quite sometime. There are many alternates to soil.

Water, Coco peat, Peat moss etc... Cultivation on water (Hydroponics) is clean. There is no wastage of resource and it can always be re-utilized. This doesn't work for me as I don't have enough space and not keen on spending money on this setup.

Coco peat & Peat moss can be used in pots. Coco peat works good for me. Light in weight and perfect for keeping on the terrace/balconies. 

I picked up two bricks of Coco peat from Garden Guru Store last week. This is how it looks:

You have to add water and the brick expands, giving you the medium for sowing. I a feet long.

The lesson I learnt was never to buy a brick unless you have a big bucket or a drum. I found it hard to cut into half and didn't have a big bucket/drum, so dropped it into a gunny bag and I am literally digging to get the coco peat. The material is loosely available. Recommend to use it.

About 500gms of coco peat brick would need 3lts for water. You do the math, if you buy a brick. Don't have to source water if bought loosely.

Most Important, coco peat doesn't have any nutrient value in it. You have to add nutrients. You have bags (similar to tea bags) available, that you place in the pot and every time you water the planet, the nutrients flows into the pots.

I am using Panchagavya(PG). An organic Indian mix, prepared from products derived from the Cow.

Check the wikipage for more details. However, it looks like this:

Usage: put 5% of PG in a liter of water and apply to the base of the plants. Many people are using it and the results are amazing. 

An update on my Garden

Coriander has started flowering :) waiting for the seeds now

 Spinach looks good too. Have another set of Spinach growing along.

 Dil too looks beautiful. The germinating of Dil seed was amazing.

 Proud to have this Mint. Story goes, bought at the store, cleaned, sorted and left is the refrigerator for more than a week. I realized mint doesn't need a seed to grow but only a stem. Picked up 4 from the refrigerator, only one survived. So, this one holds a special place.

Just back from Terrace Gardening Workshop

Attended workshop held at Vittal Mallya Scientific Research Foundation. Met Dr. Viswanath, a pioneer in the field of Organic gardening in Bangalore. Started promoting Organic Gardening since 1995 and has been successful in enlightening more and more people in this field.
There were 30 people who attended the course. Few pics from the VMSRF terrace

Choice of containers is up to you. Your imagination is the only limitation. Cauliflower, Tomato grown in 12" clay pots. Capsicum & a new variety of Chilly in paint containers.

 Dr. Hegde explaining seeds varieties, soil mixing, seeding, tools, pest control/management

At the end of the day we were gifted with a copy of Dr. Viswanath's popular book "A handbook of Organic Terrace Gardening"and the below five saplings. Two chilly, two cauliflower and a tomato. I picked up a Strawberry sapling :)

Will be planting the saplings tomorrow morning. will update tomorrow on how it goes and also on the technology I picked up at VMSRF.

My first harvest

The leaves underneath started turning yellow, hence decided to harvest the cilantro.

Feels good, to eat what you've grown. Without any fear of chemicals, fertilizers.. just pure vegetable...

However, I am a little unhappy about the spinach I transplanted last week. Out of 5, only 1 survived. Will post pics of it later. 

I picked up few tools last week, paid about Rs.220 for them.

Wonder when and how I am going to use them :)

Germinating seeds

Having been following a group named Organic Terrace Gardening on Facebook. Read a post where in Seeds were germinated before sowing. Hence, as per the instructions:
1. Soaked spinach, tomato seeds overnight in a bowl of warm water.
2. Placed the seeds in tissue paper, and sealed them in zip lock plastic bag. Remember to keep the tissue paper moist and not wet as the seeds rot. Lot a bunch of spinach to this :(
3. After five days the spinach looks like this:

Carefully cut the piece of paper and placed them in the bottle of coke and it looks like this now:

High hopes on this experiment :) btw, coriander looks like this now:

 Using as pots with everything that is being thrown away. Bought a toy for my Son, used the box for planting coriander again.

Have planted tomato seeds today. Will share the pics as soon as the seeds sprout.

Status update

Its been 3 weeks, since I sowed the coriander seeds and it looks like this now:

The growth rate seems to be slow but happy with progress :)
Toying on the idea of reusing cola bottles, i emptied a bottle and cut it across.

Planning to grow Spinach in it...