Garden update-SPINACH SUCCESS

I have been making garden update blogs here on the ecology blog for
over a month now.
And I have been lamenting about how MY OVERWATERING of the pots is
causing the roots to rot and the spinach plants to die.
well,guess what,
upon my fifth attempt and carefully planting new taproots of spinach
with little leaf stubs in multiple pots and carefully UNDERwatering
them,I am now the PROUD mother of six spinach plants...
funny how i call myself their mother when infact they are my
mother.They are gonna feed me super nutritious leaves very
soon.CHEERS.
Tags:gardening,kitchen_garden,spinach,garden_update,How_to_grow_spinach_plants_in_pots

Garden update-Sweet potato vines

Well,if there is one thing that grows without much care in my
mini-apartment garden,it is sweetpotato vines.
Yes,the sweetpotato plant grows out in a vine--atleast some varieties.
Yes,the leaves are edible-raw and cooked..
yes,the plants are just PLAIN BEAUTIFUL-with their ivy shaped reddish
green lush leaves.
The thing is,when I buy sweetpotato,I don't manage to use them right
away,so they sit on the kitchen shelves for days and some of them give
out red shoots.
so,I end up cutting out those sweetpotato bits that have given out
shoots and plant them.
within days, I end up with lush greens
One reason why the sweetpotato plant survives in my mini-garden is coz
the plant is known to survive even if planted in just nutrient
water(no real soil,whatsoever)...
That is right,IT CAN SURVIVE in water logged conditions.
So,while I am KILLING MY SPINACH with OVERWATERING my pots and
waterlogging the soil,THE SAME,seems to HELP the sweetpotato vines to
flourish.
Right now,THE ONLY PLANTS IN FULL FLOURISH in my mini-garden are the
sweetpotato vines..
so,yeah..have I eaten them?yeah,kinda.
.THEY ARE SHARP tasting when raw..good for salads for sure...eat them,eat them.
Tags:gardening,sweet_potato_plants,ARe_sweet_potato_leaves_edible,green_thumb,kitchen_garden,potted_plants,greens,sweet_potato_plants,

GARDEN UPDATE-The spinach-part4?

The spinach plants are dead.
After just the day when i thought I have finally managed to grown them in a pot
Well,my fourth attempt this was.
I waited and DIDN'T OVERWATER them..and waited and waited ,till baby
leaves started appearing.
And a day too early,I DECIDED that i SUCCEEDED...So,I cut away the
shriveled larger leaves that were there when I planted the
taproot..and then,IN A FIT OF HAPPY EXHILARATION,I possibly
OVERWATERED my stubs with the baby leaves.
BOOM,
two days later,THE PLANTS DIED ON ME..
FOURTH ATTEMPT AT GROWING SPINACH FROM TAPROOT STUBS=FAILURE.
thanqvery much
bows to Crowds
Stifles a tear
MOVES ON...
trying once more
this time,maybe with seeds.
btw,,In other good news..
i managed to grow RED AMARANTH using this technique..so,yeah,all is
NOT LOST in my mini-garden.
tAGS:how_to_grow_spinach_in_apartment_garden,mini_garden_update,gardening,spinach,red_amaranth,potted_plants,kitchen_garden,plants,green_thumb

Spinach gardening

Can spinach be grown in pots? mmmmm....
See,why do we grow spinach?
so that we can eat them later?
why do we want to eat spinach on a regular basis?

because they are a SUPERFOOD and a natural diet SOURCE that meets so
many of our nutritional needs-iron,protein,vitamins,fiber all in one
and OH SO SUPERTASTY TOO

But,for spinach to pack such nutrition it needs to grow in NUTRITIOUS
SOIL...much like..in order for a pregnant woman to produce adequate
nutritioius milk, she must first have those fat reserves in her body
which come from eating more than just for herself during herself,for
here and also the fetus and the future breastfeeding newborn.

So,yeah,being a physician like I am, Just will end up quoting MEDICINE
ANALOGIES even in a gardening blog.so,,enjoy my MEDICAL ANALOGIES IF
YOU WILL

coming back to spinach now..

Yeah..for very long now I have been trying to do a MINI GARDEN IN MY
APARTMENT with all recycled products-including the pots I grow the
plants in and the soil which I constantly recharge with my own wet or
biological garbage.

Some herbs seems to be doing okay in a POTTED mini balcony
environment..but I HAVE HAD TOUGH TIMES WITH TRYING TO GROW SPINACH.
I have been trying this mini garden concept ON AND OFF in the past
year in the apartment i currently live in. and I have tried growing
spinach from a preexisting bunch which i denude of bigger leaves and
plant the rest...FAILED THREE TIMES..fourth time now seems to become a
success.

HOW AND WHY?
One little detail about my gardening methods-
I will plant anything into the soil which has a root...and if at all
the plant grows out due to an intact root system fine...If not..then
well,whatever i planted is manure.
speaking of spinach,I buy my spinach bunches from a FARMER'S MARKET
and so,mostly many bunches end up having ROOTS intact on the sale
counter.
I choose bunches with TAP root intact,,and get them home.
All this time my method has been to try to pluck off most leaves and
leave out the smaller ones on the root and stem and plant the whole
lot..
IT WORKS...coz THE NEW SMALLER LEAVES DO START appearing.
All these three times that i failed what I did was OVERWATER the soil
to the point of WATERLOGGING THE SOIL...each day
till finally THE STEM ROTS and the plant dies...

hmmmmm.
So, now..I UNDERWATER THE SPINACH POT and for the first time and upon
my THIRD/4th attempt to grown spinach...NEW SMALL leaves HAVE appeared
again all over again..
NOW, I MUST RESIST THE TEMPTATION to overwater and WATERLOG THE
SURFACE SOIL...wait...REFRAIN and
I am serious about this..
I WANT A SPINACH PLANT IN MY HOUSE...I WANT IT TO GROW AND THRIVE...
I WANT TO GET BETTER AT GARDENING and i am LEARNING ON MY
OWN...without books,gardening blogs or anything else...
I am doing this with just my intelligence and my high school botany
knowledge to go by and I am applying my MEDICAL DEGREE analogies into
gardening too!
HAPPY GARDENING EVERYONE!
I am doing my own research and am GOING TO DEVELOP MY OWN METHODS and
then teach everyone? A true daughter of LEONARDO DA VINCI AND MADAM
CURIE....:))))
Tags:How_to_grow_a_garden_in_an_apartment,apartment_garden_options,apartment_herb_garden,herb_garden,composting_at_home,spinach_growth,gardening

How the concept of MIXED CROPPING can minimize the use of fertilizers!

Artificial/synthetic fertilizers, though might immensely increase agricultural yield temporarily, they end up immensely altering the nitrogen balance,chemical composition and acidity levels of the soil and in the process also kill native micro-organisms of the soil.Each microorganism of the soil thrives at a certain acidity of the soil.If the soil acidity alters, the microbes die.
These microbes play an important role by degrading large macro plant and animal matter back into nutrients which then become part of soil as usable and absorbable elemental nutrients for plants.Plants depend on these soil minerals and nutritions to grow and produce newer food for us.
Thus, usage of artificial minerals/fertilizer  to the soil as an effort to increase agricultural yields, over a longer term, essentially makes the soil useless after years of repeated fertilizer administration.
The solution? A concept called MIXED CROPPING.
Nothing new at all.Mixed cropping has existed in nature prior to agriculture happened.All plants of DIFFERENT SPECIES live together side by side on a patch of soil  in THE WOODS.That is a natural phenomenon.
What we have been  practicing ever since modern day agriculture has come into being  is MONOFARMING..We plant the same variety of  plant all over the field, sometimes extending to a vast expanse of miles and miles ..

Mono-farming is not how plants grow naturally though.
In the wilderness , many different plants live together.. in the same area.. some of these plants form symbiotic pairs too.A Symbiotic existence is one where one organism helps the other organism in some way.They benefit from living together and helping each other without damaging each other.

So, in the forest,plants live together..all together. This 'Living together' is a version of Mixed cropping.This co exitence is what is called an mini ecosystem.A mini ecosystem is able to sustain itself and repair itself .Much unlike a monocropped piece of land that runs on artificial fertilizer.

But in planned agriculture by humans, we plant a single species on a patch of land and deliberately delete all other plants from that patch of soil, by "WEEDING" them out!This type of selective plant propogation is called MONO-cropping.Mono cropping in itself sucks out the nutrients from the soil.


A standard example of how we can apply mixed cropping into our farming practices is to pair a nitrogen fixing plant with another non nitrogen fixing plant and plant them together in the same piece of land.
A classic example of a nitrogen fixing plant is -peanuts.A peanut plant has nodules in it's roots that have bacteria in them that fix atmospheric nitrogen into a form that the plants can then use. This then eliminates the need for artificial fertilizer.Thus, pairing either beans/peanuts with  maize/other cereal grain plants , really, not only takes care of the soil but also gives us variety in our meals..It is a TWO-BIRDS-with-ONE-STONE method.We then end up with great soil and also end up with  both beans/peanuts(protein rich) and maize/wheat(carbohydrate) in our plant yields.

You can practice mixed cropping even in your tiny kitchen garden. Look up more info.Research!

How some organically grown plants might actually not be vegan

I see a lot of vegans go a step further and set more dietary rules for themselves like for eg. How they are only going to eat locally grown food and how they are not going to buy from companies that hire cheap labor and exploit them and such. One resolve I commonly see in vegans is that many of them insist on buying only Organic food.
What exactly is organic food?
Organic food is food that is grown using Organic raw materials. Yes, the term organic is used quite differently is the world of chemistry and Biochemistry where It could actually even include petroleum and other products. Any compound that technically has Carbon and Hydrogen could be organic. Also, did you know that petroleum products are also actually derived from highly compressed plant or animal material over centuries and centuries?
Anyways,nowadays, when we say organic food, we actually don't mean it the Biochemistry and organic chemistry way. We mean it in a different way . The term 'Organic food' is essentially used to indicate that while growing the plants, no chemical fertilizers were used. Only non chemical manures were used. Non chemical manure is mostly derived from compost .

Why is NOT USING chemical fertilizers very important?
Chemical fertilizers are chemicals which can alter the pH of the soil (i.e, make it either more acidic or more basic) over the long run and sometimes make the soil worthless for future cultivation over years .

How does this happen?
Well, for one, You must remember that a lot of microorganisms live in the soil. These microbes are the ones that are responsible for breaking down large biological matter added to the soil to smaller easily absorbable nutrients.
Who absorbs these nutrients you ask?
Well, the plants do. Thus the lovely food chain continues.The plants use minerals from the soil and use the sunlight energy and with chlorophyll(the green pigment of plants) synthesize various compounds that enable the plants to grow. We as herbivores(yes , being a vegan myself now, I am sticking to the theory that we are herbivores and not carnivores.Read my previous entry for more details as to why I believe so) eat these plants and plant products.We grow big and live long and finally die. We are buried or cremated . The microbes then act on us and break us down into smaller particles which then are reused by the plants.
So yeah, coming back to the question of the organic food. Technically, any manure that is not a synthetic chemical qualifies as organic. Due to this misling definition, many farms which also have associated animal dairy farms not only use the animals fecal matter as organic manure, they sometimes use the slaughter house meat offal as manure too. It is documented that a lot of fish wastes in fillet manufacturing units are also ground up and used as certified organic manure.

Why is animal slaughter house offal and ground fish not safe as organic manure?
In the past few centuries ever since man started eating more and more animals as part of his regular diet, newer group of parasitic infections have started appearing in humans which previously  were only known to occur in animals.
You see, even hundred years ago, not that many people were eating squid or lobster on a regular basis as they are now.
Sure, some coastal communities used to eat them , but thanks to faster refrigerated transport means available now which is often called as the COLD CHAIN, A lot of supermarket shoppers have started consuming such sea animals at a larger AND faster and alarming rate . So yes, Now we have a whole new group of parasitic and non parasitic infections that have started appearing in human patients that were never commonly found in humans earlier , all thanks to this change in diet pattern where we are eating things we are NOT supposed to eat at all.
Coming to vegans and organic food, Vegans per say by their clever Dietary choice to avoid animals or animal products in their diet are smart enough to circumvent exposure to aforementioned parasitic infections and other such rarely occurring microbial infections as well. UNLESS, unless ,of course the vegetables they eat are somehow coming in contact with fish or meat of some sort like when
a/meat being placed next to or touching vegetables on stall shelves,
b/Same person handling both vegetables and meat at the supermarket without washing hands
c/tainted sewage water touching low branch vegetables in fields being irrigated with kitchen waste water/bathroom waste/sewage water)

How exactly can such cross contamination of vegan food with animal parasites occur?

So yes, this is where organic farming figures. If you remember right, there have been far too many episodes of salmonella infection/e coli infections  due to contaminated tomatoes or contaminated pistachios and what not? Salmonella is supposed to be transmitted to humans only from animal products.E.coli by the very definition of its name comes from the intestines of animals (coli?) . The only way plant products can acquire salmonella is when they have been in contact with other contaminated animal products, be it contaminated eggs or contaminated cheese or what I suspect organic manure made from ground up fish or animal offal from meat curing plants or slaughter houses.

Therefore, I think it is time vegans think twice prior to being too keen on organic food. The organic food you purchase might not really be vegan after all, what with all the ground fish and meat offal that come  in close contact with your tomatoes that were hanging too low to have touched the soil. Ya know, think about it !
What is the solution to this?
For one, if you live in the suburbs, you could try composting your own organic wastes and then using that compost to feed your own lil kitchen garden.
Secondly, when buying locally, you can ask your grower if they use ground up animal offal as manure. I am sure your local grower will be happy to provide your this information if you sound really interested. Research your food before you eat that is all I am saying.