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!

pictures

This is what my terrace garden is sporting these days...

my very first guava flower


 

this flowered in May, of course there were many buds which all flowered but only a couple went on to become like this ...

baby corn ear finally flowered when the plant was 5 feet tall
Waiting to see the next developments in the coming week



These are the male flowers or the tassel are they are called, they emerged first and then the female flower or the ear made its appearance

previous mint tub was completely broken, hence started a new batch in a basket. This is the initial growth...

colocasia leaves also called arvi in India grown for making vadi (alu vadi in marathi)
This variety is not supposed to make very good curry; the leaves for the curry type are more rounded and less green.

some color to perk up the spirit
bush rose

the sole watermelon
this year it is much smaller and doesn't seem to be growing bigger, seems like we will have to be content with this size








waiting for the sunset bells and other monsoon flowers to start now...
Happy Gardening and welcome to the rains..