Signs Of Life..

So I'll admit it, I've been enjoying writing these posts about the Resurrection Garden - but I'm also a tad over it. Not that I want to stop sharing about what's been going on with it, not at all, I'm just over looking backwards!

For a while it really was enjoyable for me to be looking over old photos and thinking through how far it's all come, but now I just feel like there's so much exciting stuff going on that I'm chomping at the bit to share, and so that's why this post is great! Because by the end of it I'll hopefully have covered all the worthwhile parts of the journey of the Resurrection Garden that will lead us up to the present! And then we can really hit off on some recent developments!

 

Freshly sowed and watered experimental plots in late November 2012

So in late 2012 I began taking the contents from my Berkley Method Compost Heap (which you can see the remains of against the wall in the back of the above image) and started dishing it out. I was already way behind the ideal time to be planting and so I decided to wait for the next year to lay the garden out the its final form of the way I had dreamed it could be. Also, I knew I didn't have enough compost and aged manure to fill each beds with as much as would be ideal and so I decided to make use of the opportunity and do some experimenting.

I began digging some long trenches, some individual holes, 3 larger plots (roughly 4x1x1 feet) that I completely cleared of soil and then 2 long rows right against the back wall. I filled all of the holes with only the compost and manure except for one of the larger plots which I mixed in 50% of the old soil that was already there. I was interested to see what changes would occur in the quality of the soil in each of the different plots over the coming months now that there had been such a good influx of freshly decomposed organic matter and hoped that would give me some more direction for the next years.

New growth in early December 2012

I planted some seeds in punnets to be transplanted out but the vast majority I simply sowed direct where they were to grow with a fairly high strike rate of germination. I only had a relatively small amount of space ready for planting (compared to the long term vision, we're really only talking 15-20%) but I managed to fill it up with 6 different types of lettuce (something which you can't often buy around these parts), Pak Choi, Spinach, Yellow Squash, Zucchini, Cucumbers, Snow Peas, Sugar Snap Peas, Tomatoes, Rainbow Silver Beet/Chard, Carrots, Radish, Basil and Garlic.

Interestingly Garlic has turned into a bit of an obsession for me lately. Here, Garlic are these pitiful little things which taste fine, but are so small that you'll need 4-5 of the little fellas just to equal 1 average clove from back in the West. And considering Garlic is in so many Indian meals, I imagine the local women must be stuck on the kitchen floor for hours each day just pealing those things which is why you'll often hear Shoonkdedi Bloom shouting out the windows and across the landscape "Indian Garlic is a form of female oppression!" So now every time I see a Garlic Walla pushing his cart around I find myself eyeing off his produce trying to find a decent sized bulb or clove so I can plant it and start a process of growing some decent sized Garlic.

A happy garden in January 2012

Growing Subzi (Hindi for 'Vegetables') in the Resurrection Garden isn't without its fair share of relatively unique problems. I've already spoke about the state of the soil and all my efforts to clean it up but sadly those efforts didn't translate into my neighbours ceasing from tossing their rubbish over the fence. Each morning there would be a new bunch of rubbish; everything from broken shoes, unwanted plastic items, last weeks homework, last nights dinner, all the way up to plastic bags filled with human feces were daily left there for me to clean up. Shoonkdedi Bloom helped me to come to terms with this one morning when I was feeling particularly frustrated when she quite helpfully pointed out that "When we gardened in Australia we had to pull the weeds out of our garden and that was just normal, now when we garden in India we have to pull up the weeds as well as our neighbour's rubbish, and that is just the new normal."

Another problem I'm facing is trying to come to terms with the different growing season. Up till around August-September it's simply too hot to grow anything (or do any work in the garden) and the monsoon rains make it difficult for many seeds/seedlings to not get flushed out. But when it hits late September and the temperature starts coming down then you have the problem of wanting to plant none-winter crops in the lead up to Winter. In Australia I'd be planting many of my crops as soon as it hits Spring and things start warming up but here once it 'warms' up everything's just going to die, so I'm doing a bit of research at the moment and trying to understand better how to plant during this completely different set of growing seasons to what I'm accustomed too.

 

Some locals checking on the buffet

 
And then there's the greatest problem of all. I have looked around for advice and even turned to my trusty copy of the Gardening Australia book but for some strange reason Peter Cundall doesn't seem have any advice on how to deal with Monkeys in your Garden! Now look, I know what you're thinking, "Oh monkeys, that's so cool, they're so cute!" But you'd be wrong. It's more like how you'd feel if a pack of wild dogs came into your backyard every couple of days, not so exciting. Not only are they carrying all sorts of wonderful diseases, but they love to destroy things and at certain points of the season when they became particularly bad they'd come every few days and start ripping whole plants out of the ground or pulling up the radishes and taking a single bite then tossing it away. Sadly it's an on going problem with no real solution. However the acquisition of some decent slingshots (care of Oodbilav) has served to level the playing field somewhat!

Little Feather, Wild Flower & Fräu-Clau helping harvest for Sunday Lunch at the River Ashram

During January and February I was fortunate enough to have a number of people lend a hand to dig new plots and sift out rubbish from parts of the garden I was yet to get to and for this I am still EXTREMELY grateful (you know who you sweet folk are!). I happily managed to plant a number of things in those later months which I knew I would never see the fruits of as when it hit February my sweet Winnie Wild Flower was 8 months pregnant with Little Foot and so we left Banaras and started making our way south to Kerala where he was to be born. Because of this, all my work in the Garden was finished for the season and so I had to be content to wait and scheme for the next season before I could get back into it.

The Resurrection Garden from August 2012 to January 2013

All things considered, I feel like in just 5 short months the transformation that you can see in the above image is pretty immense. You only have to look at the drop in the ground level against the back wall to get a feel for just how much rock, brick and rubbish we pulled out of this thing (check out the drop between the 1st and 2nd brick pillars in the above two images) and that literally every brick that makes up my paths or little garden wall that you can see in the 2nd image was pulled out of the ground when I first started cultivating the garden beds.

And not only did I get to improve this little patch of earth and visually transform the space, but I was able to feed my family with fresh organic produce (something I'm growing more and more passionate about) and even had enough to be able to feed the throngs of sweet Hippy travelers that came each week for our Sunday lunches at the River Ashram. 

My resurrection project has both eyes on the long term, but I have to admit that even after just one season I'm already super excited about the amount of transformation I was able to achieve and am still feeling hugely excited about what the future will bring!