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Friday, 6 July 2012

the latest from my garden




Hi,
Here's the latest from my garden

 
my first baby corn!

I could not resist removing it the day the silk turned brown






result--   baby corn. Frankly speaking the taste was not all that great, but then I have never cared much for baby corn, preferring the mature corn or 'bhutta' as we call it- roasted over hot coals and seasoned with butter and lemon.... ahhh heaven!

I will harvest the next one at a more mature stage when the silk dries off 



 Butterfly pea new plant- this is the only plant that I have noticed to have two types of false leaves before the actual three-lobed leaves typical of pea family emerge.
Is this true of all peas?- I must check..

 This is the blue butterfly pea- double variety, I had posted about my butterfly pea- single variety sometime back



 
Brahmakamal

'Brahmakamal"/ night blooming Cereus Epiphyllum oxypetalum (Fam. Cactaceae) flowered last week. I had posted about it last year here.

This flower has been blooming regularly each year for quite some years now. It is in the same pot, I often neglect to water it, certainly I never fertilize regularly, but come the monsoons, it sends out 2-5 buds out of which at least two bloom. Maybe if I take better care of it, I might get more blooms- staggered over a few nights. The smell of more than two flowers is overpowering at times.


Balsam- says Thank You

These are balsam flowers Impatiens balsamina, (Fam. Balsaminaceae)
also called Touch-Me-Not, probably due to the ripe pods bursting when touched. It is very common in my garden during the monsoons, they keep self-seeding and I have to remove them from my pots. I must have missed this pot, had planted Indian spinach but the balsam dominated.

Bush rose heavy with the rains 

 



This rose is actually a double color- light pink for the inner petals and red for the outer petals
After a day the whole flower turns red



This is an unknown flower, the latest to join my garden. A bit of googling gave me this name- Ruellia brittoniana ( Fam. Acanthaceae). It is also called as Desert Petunia or Mexican Petunia, but has no relation with the common garden petunia.
What's in a name? -said W. Shakespeare
The flower is a wow!

Anybody to ID this flower- three guesses-
Farmers not eligible!

This is groundnut/ peanut; I just threw in a few nuts as a lark in my vermicomposting bin, and there-- the flowers came in no time.
An interesting fact about groundnut, botanical name Arachis hypogaea (Fam. Fabaceae legume family).

Hypogaea means under the earth, after pollination the flower stalk elongates and pushes the ovary under the ground till it is horizontal where the ovary then develops into a mature fruit pod. This is an example of geocarpy

This was an extremely long post, I hope you enjoyed it, as I enjoyed writing it.
Happy Gardening!

4 comments:

Vetirmagal said...

Corn swaying in the breeze is so pleasing to see. The tufts are like velvets against our skin!

So cute,

The groundnut flower, is yellow. I thought it was white:-)

Chitra Vaidya said...

I don't think that I will get any groundnuts from this plant; snails are eating off the flowers.
I have not yet figured out how to avoid getting these tiny slimy creatures in my garden; tried salt water and even neem spray, rain washes it all off.

sensible gardening said...

What an incredible white bloom. Reminds me of orchids, the more I forget about them the better they do!

Chitra Vaidya said...

yes,the white brahmakamal is unique flower.
It generally flowers only once a year. This year I am getting a bonus- I can see some flower buds again :)