 Good evening everyone and welcome to the second part of our any one can grow series I'd like to thank has geek for making all of this possible. I don't think we would have done this without their help Not only are we doing this on zoom and I'm sure a lot of you people are joining from there we also live streaming this to YouTube and Also on Facebook, or at least we trying Facebook today This particular session is a continuation of the previous session we did I don't know how many of you actually were in that session too But I think that you will find that this session continues pretty much from where we left off so this session talks about preparing pots for growing soil improvement and direct sowing of seeds right all things that Answering several questions that I'm sure you have in your mind about how to grow food So just to begin with a brief introduction for those who are new to this session Green essentials. We are based in Goa yoghita started green essentials about 11 years ago and Kind of wrote me into helper too we started growing at home in 2006 several years before that and We run green essentials is actually a kitchen garden store. That's in Goa Place called Sukur a village called Sukur Just outside the town We've been doing workshops on growing organic food for people for the last ten years And in that time we have done different scales of growing ourselves We've grown fruits herbs and vegetables in kitchen gardens for ourselves Of course, but also in small organic farms up to a one and a half eight hectares So we have had several kind of years of experience in growing food organically You know at different scales and I guess that's what we really want to talk about and those experiences Are the ones that we want to share with you today What we look at as our Primary role is to basically to try and coach new kitchen gardeners on how to grow food a lot of people are Intimidated by it or don't have the knowledge they feel they need before they can get started and that's the gap We are trying to bridge right now, right? So I hope you find the session enjoyable and informative and We'll start with it now So this is the kind of kitchen garden that we grow in the kitchen garden at a store Which we used to demonstrate to people what can be done to grow food as you'll see a great variety of vegetables already growing over here and We tend to run this right through the year Things change according to the seasons, but the garden remains productive through the whole year For those who did not join the first session or actually for those even who may have I just like to recap what we covered in that particular session We talked about how it is that we could get a kitchen garden started Even though most of us are locked down and don't have access to basic input seeds and things like that, right? So the first thing that we said was that you really need to get your nurses started immediately I'm hoping many people did manage to do that last week and if not certainly should do it this week We talked about how you could find usable seeds in your kitchen things like tomato, Methi, pumpkin, chilli, mustard, mint and more and we talked about how to use Any available containers you have to set up your nurseries, right? It could be Takeaway containers. It could be small pots anything that you have that can really hold a little bit of soil and can be used to start your seeds And I'm hoping that you know You will be on the way to good seedlings like the kind that you can see on the screen very soon Now when we spoke last time we kind of made this Summary of the different stages of growing that we will go through and we started at the first one which was seeds and nurseries In this one we are going to talk a lot about soil preparation and in subsequent subsequent sessions We plan to do a total of five sessions You know every week pretty much on a Thursday So next time we'll talk about transplanting or sowing then we'll cover growing and caring harvesting and then planning your next growing cycle for the Change in seasons, right? So we'll try and go through each of these so that you have a good sense of how you need to proceed from stage to stage Okay, so here's what we're going to talk about specifically in this session Which is session number two of anyone can grow How do you select appropriate growing containers for growing by this I mean not containers for Nurseries which we already spoke about but for when your saplings will be ready for transplant And you will have to move them to a growing space itself. So these growing containers. How do you select the right ones? Then once you selected the containers, how do you prepare them for sowing? How do you make good organic soil put it in the containers? which vegetables can you will you be Sowing seeds directly instead of raising little seedlings and why why are these sown directly and not put into the nurseries and Lastly troubleshooting questions that you may have in case you started your seedlings and are facing problems So that will be the last section and we will get to it at the end, right? so Just wanted to point out that if you have questions, please, you know send them in as we go through the session You will notice that there is a Q&A section at the bottom of your zoom interface When you put your mouse down to the bottom of your zoom interface and the panel pops up You'll be able to see a Q&A section So please put your questions in there and our team will be able to take note of them and bring them up for answering at The end when we reach the EMA section of the session, right? So just to reiterate We believe very deeply that almost any person can learn how to grow food It is something which may take years to become a master of but to Get a grips of the basics can take just a few weeks, right or a few months at most If you are really interested in doing this if you are a person who is persistent, you know in your work in the garden We believe that you can get pretty good at it We believe also that small growing spaces can be very surprisingly productive We look at a small balcony and think that you know, maybe you can't grow much here But we believe that Substantial amount of produce from the perspective of a kitchen can come out from over there And you can always grow some things if not all things for yourself We feel that your health comes first and that is one of the major reasons why you should even bother to take the effort You will have much more nutritious food as the result of growing your food without chemicals and other fertilizers And we believe that The produce that you will harvest will have an unbeatable mix of freshness nutrition and flavor Which is what really makes it all worth it, right? So these are things that Are are aimed at kind of explaining to you the benefits of growing at home something that we've experienced in a lot of people You know across India now experience as they've got more interested in doing this Okay, so growing in containers as I said can be productive. You can see here This is a you know terrace garden in Bombay and you can see a wide variety of things growing in it There's tomatoes their cabbages. There's mint You know some mustard greens and so on that you can see within the frame and many more things also growing in other parts of the same terrace I'll pass on now to Yogita and She will talk to you about different types of containers and how they can be prepared over to you, Yogita Okay, hi so There's I mean when I started growing it was confusing that what kind of containers to be typically use and traditionally growing up we've always seen the typical terracotta or the mittica containers that we find and Those are the ones that I would graduate to here in Not really off a very strong quality in the sense that after maybe a season or so being out in the rain They usually tend to sort of disintegrate or breaks apart so we were not really happy with those and Over the years we've tried a number of containers and you can see up on the screen there that we put out a bunch of them and Really any one of these works it depends what is easily accessible to you what is affordable and It depends on your situation as well for example I would prefer plastic containers if I stayed up on the fifth or sixth floor because imagine carrying heavy cement Up and down that can be a bit of a problem I mean you develop muscle and all other benefits, but it'll be a tiresome thing So plastic containers are good. They come in a variety of sizes From the smallest one that you can see here to pretty large two feet big and deep one So that is something that is also very easily available if you go out to buy them Cement containers are good if you don't plan to move them around The one of the problems sometimes one has is that they heat up a little too much But we do find that they seem to work just as well As long as you don't plan to move them around because it's the soil and the plant and it becomes quite a heavy thing to Work with grow bags are also a very common or rather popular thing now Very light easy to move around They are flexible you can roll them down if you need less soil you can roll it up to full size if you need more soil They are very affordable. So that also works If you want to have a really large place with lots of pots in it, then you may want to go with go bags They don't last very long But they are very easy to move around Then you could use a sediment container Sediment containers look gorgeous. They have one sitting right here It's a small one though, but they can be pretty expensive So if you want to have several pots, it becomes a little expensive to have many of these You can use maybe the odd nice piece that you find you can add it to your collection of containers Then of course, there's the terracotta That is the most common one. You can also use metal container You know, you have those galvanized buckets that are available at most hardware stores or sometimes you may have an old container like You know the old Biscuit tins or the oil tins that you had if you're able to get the top off That's a solid amount of soil and that can you know do a lot of If you can go quite a bit of stuff in it The only problem is that in our climate these can tend to rust and disintegrate soon So you will need to replace these and Other than this you can sort of use your imagination and you can really use all kinds of recycle containers You have a funny email there of someone using a commode But I have something here, you know These days you go buy a five kilo bag. You get a really sturdy plastic bag. This sort of is a substitute for A grow bag you can have you can collect several of these you can go to your Kirana shop and ask him to keep them for you They even have handles so they're easy to move around My mother is quite Creative person she takes these containers and she paints them around so you can you know make them pretty and You can sort of use these as well Moving on Years, you know some of the containers I have to the bone around the house and put together some are take away Some are old different boxes and so on now the next question Which is an important question is that what should what is the appropriate size of container for different plants? There are different kinds of plants we grow not all of them A huge depth of soil Typically beefy Great if you use an eight inch depth eight to ten inch depth most leafy vegetables and herbs They don't have very deep roots fruiting vegetables like brinjals tomatoes Indies ladyfingers or What have you been or if you're growing cucumber all these would be fine in pots About 12 to 14 inch so usually a pot is more or less as deep as it is right So you have a like a 12 to 14 inch pot would be about as big and you can grow One plant per pot for these really comfortably you can also grow fruiting trees and we have a lot of them growing in our garden We've grown to lemon custard apple figs Guava mango, I mean it's quite an endless list of the number of fruiting trees that you can grow For these you need really large containers. You can use barrels Large barrels you can chop the top off you can use to put the minimum depth You require is about three inches as the plant starts growing and you may need to move it up along as you So here is a picture of my balcony and we have Different sizes and there's a you know quite a collection of pots here You can have quite a range of things that grow in this Okay, now the next The next thing once you've prepared your pot is you want to figure out the appropriate space for your garden now You could have I mean in in cities. We don't really have the luxury of choice We have whatever space we have if there's a tall building in front of us too bad If you're lucky, you know, it's a south or it's a west facing the balcony and you'll be buried in sunlight and you're you can consider yourself lucky Typically the conditions would be full Sun, which means you get at least five to six hours of sunlight direct sunlight on your pot on your plant Semi shade would be where you get between three to four hours of sunlight It may be like an east facing balcony where you get the rising Sun and the Sun goes over after midday Or it could be a north facing balcony which typically would be in shade or if you have a really tall building in front of you Then your balcony is shaded and you have good daylight, but you don't have direct sunlight on your plant So these are the three conditions under which you would go. We'll talk about what can also grow in shady balconies or terraces But pick a spot that is preferably either full Sun or semi shade and we will talk about what can be grown in shady So, yes, what can go in the shade now if you don't have a whole lot of sunlight You will find that it limits what all you can grow. However, there are several things that you still could do You can try some leafy vegetables like arugula finish would also be palak The regular palak would also sort of work There is a kind of spinach called Brazilian spinach also known as tissue spinach it actually enjoys a semi shade or pretty much a shaded condition and It grows profusely. You can just harvest the leaves and it propagates also very fast Some of the roots that you can grow that are also useful. You can go healthy I'll be leaves are also used in cooking. You can go ginger. You can go yam. You can go collocasia Collocasia is that early the leaves are edible the roots are edible Some of the other things that are also easy to grow are black pepper You have two kinds of black pepper one is the wine that climbs on trees and the other is a bush pepper And for those of us who stay in flat bush pepper is really a very productive plant It does not create a vine. It does perfectly fine and shaded conditions and like a couple of pots If they are healthy, you can pretty much get as much black pepper as you need for the year for a small family of Pineapple surprisingly go really well in the shade you can plant one pineapple plant for maybe like a 12 inch pot and this is the season now they'll be Producing and of course many of you may have heard of microgreens these don't need a whole lot of sunlight They are short-term crops that can be harvested with me And so you don't really need sunlight for that and we will talk about that down the line as well Most shooting vegetables do tend to struggle if there is no sunlight on them So that must be kept in mind Okay, now we sometimes hear this question and it's a very valid question that why should we transplant at all? Why don't we just let me put seeds into the pot or into the garden bed where we are growing and It's it's actually you could do that But one of the main reasons to transplant is that we want to protect once the seed germinate that baby plant is actually susceptible to disease or to pest attack in us in a Typical city situation you may have pigeons that will come and pick away at the little tender leaves or rats or You could have any fungal problems and these would eventually die So to prevent that from happening you grow them separately and you transplant healthy seedlings into pots It's also a very efficient way to use time and water and seeds if you put a whole lot of seeds all over Sometimes you don't know what has germinated what hasn't germinated So it's a great way to conserve seeds only as many as you need and really it helps you pick the healthiest of the lot and put out into your garden and It also helps you get a head start now often in the rainy season as we come to the end September is always You can never say when you'll get like a really heavy downpour last year rain all the way till almost to December You put out seedlings and therefore little you know That if you get a big bout of rain, they just flatten all your seedlings So you can start them in those in a shaded balcony or a sheltered balcony And when they are strong like about three or four weeks old to transplant out these plants and then they are much They stand a greater chance of making it through that initial period and you can end up with a healthy garden So What can we so directly if not everything needs to go into a nursery? There are some seeds that can and should be actually sown directly specifically root vegetables like carrots and radish They don't like their roots disturb So if you make a nursery and you pull out and you transplant you are bound to end up with an unhealthy plant It will only produce leaves and you'll get no roots at the bottom so root vegetables Make sure you put them directly where they are going to go also larger seeds like beans I Have some here like these are beans over here Larger seeds like beans or any of the gourds if you've seen a bottle board or a pumpkin seed These are big they are really tough seeds and They actually because the size is bigger They go much lower in the soil and therefore they stand a better chance against best and disease and So they can be sort of So having said that my preference is as long as I can do a nursery with it I will do a nursery and I will transplant a healthy So that's really how I go Now Karan has already gone through the different going stages that we have we've already done the seeds and the nurseries We've done the soil preparation in the next session We will cover transplanting and of course growing taking care harvesting and very importantly planning the next cycle that Will come there after Here's a photo from my garden I took this morning It's basically 12 inch pot with tomato plants that have been state They are in a pot a finish a bit pot they get about three to four hours of sunlight, but they're doing pretty well very healthy and I just want to share that with you Okay over to Karan. Thank you So Again, this is recapping something we talked about last time Even as we are taking you through one stage of the garden. We need to start preparing for the next stage. So Especially since our movements are restricted at this time It makes a lot of sense for us to take certain steps to make sure we have the right inputs available when When the time to transplant and and the growing stage comes along, right? So I'd mentioned this before Start composting today. If you didn't start last week, you're gonna need compost. It's not going to be so easy to find We know that you know, it's expected that we will have a lot of stores coming open from the 20th of April Agricultural supply stores have been included in this. We hope this will mean that you shall be able to access You know soil nutrients soil itself Pots and seeds and so on more easily after that day But in any case it makes sense to start composting your kitchen waste and kind of just feeding it to your garden, right? In addition, please try and collect some dry leaves. You get our talked about mulch. I Would say that it's probably the single most powerful thing to making growing your own food easy So it just simplifies all your tasks as a gardener and saves you a lot of time and effort So collect dry leaves from your compound wherever you can find them These can be of different sizes smaller is usually easier to handle But even if you have larger leaves, that's great. You can break them into smaller bits and Pieces and kind of apply them as mulch, right? Don't burn a lot of pollution in the cities is due to burning of different types of waste amongst them leaf waste So please don't if you're in a in a in a colony Which tends to burn on a regular basis tell them not to use this resource Deploy it in the gardens and of course save yourself the pollution, right? This is how mulch is applied in this particular case you see we've used paddy straw as mulch But the idea is just the same Basically, we are trying to create a leafy blanket that covers our soil pretty much like you see in a forest so if you walk into a forest you will see the entire floor is covered by leaves dropped by the trees around and This leaf litter is really the main reason that forests are forests and not deserts right if you didn't have all of this organic matter going into the soil moisture being retained Microbial life being thick you would not have such good soil in a forest, right? so Borrowing this idea from nature in your garden makes a lot of sense even if you're growing in pots Of course, it makes sense if you're growing on a in the soil also right Here are a few ideas so looking ahead now assuming that you will be able to you know Access some seeds in your neighborhoods whether it's in Goa whether it's in Bombay whether it's in Bangalore or any other part of the country Here are some things that we would suggest you plant now considering that we are sort of in the middle of the summer season For most places and heading into the monsoon also So the monsoon is supposed to be or I mean at least them You know the projection seemed to say it's going to be on time and it's going to be a healthy monsoon So if that happens these these plants will kind of run through not only the summer, but also through the monsoon Malabar spinach is one, you know type of spinach or Brazilian spinach This can be grown at this time red amaranth or other type cut types of amaranth can also be grown They handle the heat reasonably well compared to some leafy greens Cucurbits or gourds. This is a family that loves the warm weather Which thrives in the heat and later on when the monsoon comes along also Ladyfinger again is you know like gourds. They tend to love the warm weather fruit very quickly and you know Become ready to harvest very quickly because of the warm weather long beans are also quite Comfortable in the coming season as our chilies and brinjals brinjals Especially are interesting because you know they can be very productive if you just have a couple of pots of brinjals doing Well, you're probably going to have you know enough brinjals for yourself and the neighbors at the same time So these these are fairly productive vegetables And some things that we would suggest that you grow in the coming months Starting now from April and going through, you know, all the way to September or so on the coast Which is when the monsoon tends to end And even beyond that. Okay So a quick summary of some of the things that we've talked about As Yogita said it is extremely important that you use the right size pots if you Use pots that are smaller than what is appropriate for the plant. You're trying to grow That's going to lead to cramped root systems or cramped plants and that in turn is going to leave to plants that Don't grow to be as productive as they might be and tend to be tend to have lower immunity also because they've not built up the you know capacity to produce food in the way that we Wanted to Now the material of your growing containers can be of different kinds. Yogita mentioned ceramics She mentioned terracotta plastic and so on and so forth grow bags and other kinds of containers The growing material the material is actually a little less important. The size in our opinion is more important. Okay Drainage is critical a lot of people tend to kill plants by watering too much And we have to be mindful of ensuring we have to understand that the the plants don't know drink water They just want a soil moisture so they can sip at it a little bit from time to time Right, so that those are the conditions we want to create We don't want to over water and cause more disease also in addition to harming the plants Great soil is the key to good harvest If your soil is, you know, well made Yogita gave you a simple recipe that you know really creates healthy soil Sometimes we will take that recipe and modify it a little bit We may add a little bit of rock phosphate to it in terms of nutrients, right? But but that recipe can work with almost any kind of soil Yeah, it can be very average soil in your compound downstairs And what you can do is you can actually go to it I mean you you mix it in with the cocoa peat and the compost and And you know, you have very very good soil to grow either fruits, vegetables, herbs, whatever it is you're trying to grow And lastly sunlight even more than soil perhaps is the key ingredient for growing plants that produce food You know, while many of us may have shaded balconies You know, unfortunately most of the things we like to eat do require well lit conditions and You know semi-shaded is great for leafy vegetables Full sun is preferred by fruiting vegetables By and large most things that we are familiar with eating as vegetables tend to prefer fairly, you know Brightly lit conditions and direct sunlight at least for some part of the day. Yeah An example, you know of things that we can grow and that grow well, you'll see pots that we have In this case, these are 10 inch pots with spinach growing in them You'll notice they're just a single plant in most of these right any multiple plants I think one of the pots has two plants. That's absolutely accidental. It shouldn't be the case one plant is completely Sufficient in the corner. You may also see a little frilly plant edged leaf That's a kale plant so can grow in the same type of pots and you know, give you a lot of leaves to harvest That brings us pretty much to the end of what we have to talk plan to talk about today I just like to give you a quick sense of the next session as I said, we are going to have five sessions in all Taking you through the different stages of growing Session three is about transplanting your Seedlings into containers. So we are expecting that in another 10 days or so Maybe at the most another two weeks or so your seedlings will be ready for transplant and We will show you how this can be done a little ahead of time We will also help you get a sense of how much to grow of which things depending on how productive they are So, you know, for example, I said if brinjals if you have a couple They are very productive if you end up growing like 10 brinjal plants You're going to be swamped with brinjal and never want to eat that vegetable again Right. So so you need to just plan your garden to make sure that you are growing the right quantities of different things And what we'll also do very quickly is kind of cover growing microgreens There is a lot of interest in growing them and therefore we'll talk about it As Yogeta said, also it doesn't require much light to grow. So even if you have a shaded balcony Pretty much in about 12 to 15 days, you can have a harvest of microgreens and keep the cycle growing I would like to point out though that you have to have abundant amounts of seeds to grow these microgreens So please, you know plan for this accordingly Now as for this session, even for the subsequent sessions, if you'd like to register Please just go to hasgeek.com slash kilter Slash anyone can grow series. The link is right here And this is what you can use to get to the sign up page Thank you so much for joining us. We wish you all the best in your garden I'm Karan and Yogeta Is here too and you can write to us at info at green essentials dot in We can also continue this Conversation on Slack if you're familiar with the tool It's a great place for you to ask questions and for us to be able to answer them So there is a Slack channel that has geek a setup called friends dot has geek dot com You know just click on this link and it'll help you sign up and have access to that channel If you're having problems, you can post photos up there and we'll respond about you know What exactly try to diagnose the problem and also provide solutions for it If you had good experiences, you know with Growing your nurseries at this point. Please take photographs share them with us It'll be fun for us to see also as for other people who have joined this session um I'll stop now and You know kind of asked for questions That you may have so that Yogeta and I can answer them We'll just take a minute while the has geek team can kind of Figure out or queue up the different questions that have been asked In case you haven't asked any questions and would like to do so now I'll just say again. You need to go to this q&a tab Which will be at the bottom of your screen in the zoom interface and you can type in your questions over there right Uh, we'll kick off this AMA now Ask away, please Yeah, we have a few questions. Uh, which have already come in. Um, of course, we want to ask please Ask in the q&a tab The first question comes from amit. Um, he asked if there's a drawing calendar for what to plant in each month In different areas of India Okay, so You know, what I would say is that yes, we can create calendars. In fact, we are working on them I think we should be done by them by this weekend While we have coastal calendars and we have a bit for Bangalore We were also creating another one for the north. So we'll put those together and share those in a subs follow a email Right, uh, but let me just give you some very broad guidelines for the coming season Um, you would have seen that I mentioned certain plants that we could Put down. Um, I'll just go back to that slide right now just to you know, make it a reminder One family that grows well right now are the cucumber bits. Okay And the cucumber bits means different types of gourds. It means cucumbers. It could be bitter gourd Karela. It could be rich gourd. It could be, you know, a pumpkin. It could be any of this family really, uh, you know bottle gourd so many others that grow and are nutritious for this time of the year A lot of these, uh, you should put down So look at it as a family the cucumber bit or the gourd family and most of those will do well They are also native. Most of these are native to India. So they do well in these conditions the warm conditions and then the Monson coming a little further down the line, right? Um, the second family that is pretty comfortable is what I would call the Solenacious family. So this is chili Uh, brinjal, both of which you see here tomatoes also though, they won't do so well once the monsoon comes around Tomatoes are a little susceptible to fungal diseases and high humidity and water availability tends to cause that right The next family that you want to grow is the beans not the french beans, but the long beans, right the french beans prefer Cooler weather, but the long beans and the cluster beans do well even on warmer climates Which is what we are experiencing now and will for the next couple of months. So that's something else that you should grow Um, other than this lady finger loves the heat again And and you should be planted right now will grow for you for the next four or five months and produce quite a bit also Leafy vegetables tend to struggle a little bit like lettuce for example, just won't grow at this time of the year Many of the mustards will also experience aphids, you know, especially when humidity gets a little high So we tend to limit the amount of leafy greens that we grow at these these times But still you can grow red amaranth. You can also grow arugula You know to some extent or rocket as a leafy vegetable You can grow malabar spinach, which is a very wine like growing kind of leafy vegetable So all of these are things that you can look to grow in this coming season As I said, we will create more detailed calendars and put them up in the next summer email So sort of email that we send out to you. You should be able to access them for your region Okay, um We have a few questions from joy. Gosh the first one is about Um, the plants that he's tried growing in his balcony most of the seedlings have turned out to be very curvy Is that because of the sunlight or is that something? Yes, yes, yes, so we call them leggy when the ceilings I mean the stem is not firm and therefore they tend to be bending over usually towards the light, right? They tend to be a little weak So I'm not sure how your house is but if you have a sunnier even a ledge or something like that Perhaps a window on the other side You will immediately see if you just leave it out there for a week You will suddenly see that these perk up and do very well Or I know it's tricky at this time But if you know a neighbor on the other side can just hold the seedlings for you They'll be good healthy seedlings by the time you get to the end of the three week period Which most seedlings take to get ready Okay The next question is again from joy. He asks if there's any Watering method to follow if one is traveling For a few days And they're not able to walk at the front Okay, so I'll just Yoghita, would you want to take this one? um One second. I just need to Activate Yoghita's There are different things you can do when you're traveling like it's a traveling for three four days There are ways in which you can address that like many thoughts Come with a little base plate and if you have a slightly larger base plate like even this big Steel plate you can fill it with water and the water through capillary action will sort of keep going up at the root level The the the the soil and the roots will sort of be able to access that water You may fill it up till I don't know maybe halfway through this plate or something But you need several of such plates to put your Potts in and they would last typically three four days But if you're going out for a longer period It may be difficult and that is a challenge that many of us who live in flat have Either we can then leave a key with a friend who can come and do the watering or a neighbor or something like that But that is one way once I had done this Um, it's a little uh intensive, but it works You know, you get these um saline drip bags and there is a The you don't have a needle, of course you remove the needle, but you can set the dripper. Basically it becomes a drip thing So you leave a bag full of um I don't know they usually are 500 ml or whatever and you can have that slowly drip at the root level But it's it's not something you can scale up tremendously. Otherwise your house will look like a hospital um, you could also um my grandmother used to do this she would take a clock And she would kind of put that in a big bucket of water Or she had strips of you know, slightly thickish cottony cups And she dipped them in the bucket of water and the bucket would be slightly at an elevation And then she sort of puts them under a little bit of the soil for a while So again through that capillary action, there would be a sort of flow created and you would get a little moisture there Um, you know, there are many things you can try you'll have to see you could if the plant is like a Fruiting tree even put it in your bathroom and leave the tap on very little so that drop by drop by drop It happens it may not like the fact that there's no sunlight But at least it'll get water and if you're back in three four days, you can quickly bring it back out where it gets the sun And it will sort of work up again So there are a few things you can do But if you're gone for a long period, then you've got to sort of make arrangements like you would for a pet For someone to come and walk away Yeah, I just like to add to this uh, and I like to say that uh If you You know notice the soil that we've created by adding co cocopeat. We've considerably sort of increased the carrying capacity the water holding capacity of the soil So this soil will do much better for you than the typical red clayy soil that you know You get for many nurseries or in which your plants Normally come right so, you know, if you take the example of the three four days that yoghita was suggesting I think you would be able to carry pretty well through three or four days as long as you water deeply and well before you left The second tool that we've kind of used to address this issue and which will serve you well I remember a time. I think that we we were away for almost three weeks and we had basil Continue to do well in that period of time simply because the soil was very well mulched, right? So if you mulch the soil you leave this blanket of two inches or so of leaf waste On top of your soil it prevents the wind from blowing away the moisture and retains moisture for a much longer period of time So think of these as also improvements which will help you in those situations Okay, uh moving on to the next question. Uh, if uh We are transplanting Using cuttings instead of seedlings. What are the steps that we have to follow? Would you like to take it? Okay I think one of the things you need to get right is that you should take the right cutting Some plants will only propagate with the cutting is goodie. For example mulberry You'll have a woody stem and then you'll have a fresh green shoot If you try and root the green shoot nothing will happen and that's true for many plants. So, you know a quick search online for the specific plants that you're trying to Uh, uh propagate via cutting will tell you what kind of a cutting you should take Also, if you see any cutting you'll find like on on your finger you have these Lines you have points that are called known Now the node is from where either a shoot appears or a root appears Typically what I do is I make sure that when I'm um rooting a cutting I put at least two nodes in the soil So that there is a greater chance. So you if you have a longer stem and it's possible You can even put three nodes that just increases the chances of the root coming out from one of those three nodes And then you need to have maybe uh three like two or three nodes on top um, I typically tend to strip the leaves For example, if it's pudina or a common market mint I strip all the bottom leaves. I just leave like maybe four or five leaves on the top And then I directly root it in soil. You can also move some of these things in water Um, but I found that soil is just as effective and it's one it saves you one step So directly goes into a moist, um pot and you keep watering it regularly and it sort of propagates from there so cuttings are a great way to propagate plants and um It's sort of a shortcut. You don't have to go through the whole cycle. Um It also reminds me if you're going tomatoes You'll have like the main tomato stem. You'll have a branch that may come through and and often between the main stem and the branch You'll have another like a tertiary thing poking out if you allow it to grow It sort of distributes the food and you don't want that normally the end end up pinching that But if you allow it to grow to say, uh, I don't know maybe four four inches or so five inches or so You break it and you root it you immediately get another tomato plant So that saves you 21 days or 28 days of sowing and um, you know germinating and then transplanting you can straight off start a new plant from both Shoots that come in the middle. So that's it if I thought you might find interesting Okay The next question is about a failed attempt at growing Um sort of sprouting coriander seeds and cheese So devaki had tried sprouting a few seeds in tissue paper inside a airtight plastic food container I was sprinkling a little water every two to three days. Uh, but it just would not sprout. Uh, what could be the reasons behind this? I think Karan you're on. Yeah. Yeah. So the first reason This could happen is because the for some reason the quality of the seeds that you have Uh, is not very good. Uh, maybe they are seeds that have been kept for a while and therefore have lost their vitality Uh, they do not germinate, right? Uh, typically if I mean if I if you've got the description I mean just hearing the description of what you've done It should have sprouted by this amount of time Usually it will take between five to maybe eight days to sprout and not much more than that Uh, that's the most likely thing as far as I can see Uh, in the case of coriander, however, I just like to point out something else Uh, coriander seeds are usually more hardy than the example of chili that you said simply because It is like a compound seed. It actually has two compartments and You have seeds in each of those compartments Uh, but one of the things is because it has such In a sense robust packaging What you have to do is you have to actually take the seeds put them maybe in a hanky in a cloth of some some sort Uh, then you you know kind of fold the cloth over and then you rub and press them over so that the packaging actually cracks So so the pods kind of open up and the seeds come out and then those seeds are easier to germinate So i'm not sure whether you did that for the coriander, but that could be one other reason why it Doesn't work I'd also like to point out at this time that there is a good way to keep your seeds that is to ensure that your seeds are Sort of uh, you know doing well for a longer period of time First thing is that seeds don't like being stored in the heat and sunlight So for sure you want to put them in the shadiest portion of your house Now depending where you're located, sometimes we have a lot of humidity example being either the east or the west coast of india Uh coastal regions have high humidity Through a good part of the earth and experience the monsoons when of course they are at their highest You know These can really undermine the quality of your seeds. So what we do is we take Our seeds we put them in a sort of a small self sealing packet I'll just take an example and show you something like this I'm not sure if i'm showing up as the spotlight video, but hopefully now Uh, you can see this I'll stop sharing Yeah, okay, so can you see this packet? You know, so if you see we key take a self sealing bag like this And one of the things that we try to do is we try to squeeze out all the air before we Seal it off So in that way air with moisture is not trapped inside and uh, the seeds will stay for a longer period of time Now what we will typically do is let's suppose I have about five or six seeds packets like this We will put it in a larger self sealing bag And we will seal that off too and we will put it in the refrigerator typically near the door Not towards the back of the refrigerator or you know in the crisper tray or the Especially not in the freezer, right? So you just want to keep it somewhere near the door where the temperature is not too low And where the humidity is likely to be less and we found that seeds will stay for a couple of years even You know if they are stored well in this way So hopefully that's a tip for the future that that can be useful Um, as I said if you use seeds that you brought from some layer, they may have gotten older Or perhaps if these were seeds that you harvested from what was lying around the kitchen They were not particularly effective that seems to be the major reason why I think I mean that seems to me The reason why they've not worked well for you We have one last question in the Q&A tab Are there any thumb rules for when to water and how much? Are you okay? You would like to take that up? Um as a thumb rule I mean Busy city people water when you get time, but try and be consistent It's like a pet likes to be fed at the same time More or less on a daily basis if you are watering baby if your soil is able to hold water you don't need to water So here is what I do This is you've seen how I prepare soil. I can typically skip a day because The the soil holds enough water because of all the organic matter that's gone in and because of the mulch So I don't water every day It is ideal to water in the second half of the day You know you water in the evening that water remains in the soil through the evening through the night and up to the morning when the Sun comes up and it starts the drying process if I water first thing in the morning Even if it's early by the time the sun is up and it's 10 and 11 the water starts evaporating for the I mean the function of water and soil is basically to have the interchange of nutrients and You know all the minerals that are there that that's what the water is used for So if it's there longer, it means that the plant can do that At on a more frequent basis. So That's one thing the other thing is when you water water deeply Don't just water the top and just you know the top two inches of the soil will get wet And then again, you have to water so if you water deeply if you water So that's what you see the water coming out from the bottom of the container What that means is that the entire column of soil is moist It also encourages then the roots to grow all the way till the bottom A common thing that happens with brinjal plants is that once the fruit come the plant becomes pretty heavy on top And if it's not well rooted your plant will just tend to peel over And then you've got to stake it and that's the problem in itself because you may end up poking the roots and that kind of thing so When you water water deeply it's pressurable to water in the evening so that the water stays there longer And most importantly check the soil, you know check and see if it looks moist keep a day Don't just water every day because you think you need to water every day Check and see if the soil and your plants will tell you like here This plant is looking nice and turkey if it needed water it would be all droopy and it would look sad So it will sort of indicate as well. You don't have to always wait for them to group But you'll get a sense of it. Those are like indicators to see so check put your finger in if it feels moist Totally skip a day skip two days if you You know if it's a during the monsoons you'll find that even though you are at the edge Of our shelter balcony it'll catch the spray and you may find that you don't need to water for three days at the time So that's also good. I hope that answers your question Okay, I think we've answered all the questions that have come in If anybody else has any questions, please Do share it on youtube facebook On the zoom link We have a bit more time to take questions or if you'd like to share your experiences growing Please raise your hand in the participants panel and You can share your experiences So This is pretty much the end of our session for today and I hope you found it useful Uh, perhaps we can just put up the poll about How useful you found it and it would be great if you can respond Yeah, okay. So this is a poll which asks about what it is that you would like to learn I'd really appreciate it if you can take the time to record your uh, sort of feedback here because We'd be interested in Looking at it and deciding what we should cover in subsequent sessions or what to give more time and attention to certainly Thanks. I can see several of you have Given your feedback to us. We have one more question in chat. That's just coming. Um, Viraj asked if you could speak a little bit about the best that Uh Effect some of the plans that you talked about today Okay, so I'll I'll answer that in two or three parts. Uh, first thing If we are doing the right things Vis-a-vis the environment we create for our plants and if you're doing things the right things related to Our soil and the care of the plants Then frankly pests are just a footnote Now, I know it's something that most most new gardeners are really worried about pests and about disease And you know, it's quite disheartening to see when your plants that you've tended to suddenly seem to fall Uh, uh, sort of victim to some kind of problem and you know, keel over or die or just do do poorly, right? Um, I I'd like to then go on to say that yes, uh In an organic system, we do have to deal with pests as with any other system But our approach is very different. If you look at chemical based pest management, that typically means using poison to kill, uh, you know, whatever pests you're Experiencing, uh, the type of poison is fairly generic in the sense. It tends to be the same Irrespective of the pest that you're dealing with, right? So that that's a sort of a if I can call it Well, it seems the wrong word to use when you're using poison, but it is a curative approach, right? Now what we try to do in organic growing systems is we try to have a less not a curative but a preventive approach to growing The first thing that you do in terms of design of your garden is make sure that you don't grow too much of one thing So diversity is one principle that we kind of address and I would like to point out that we will talk about this in detail in subsequent Sessions, which is why I'm going to just go over it very briefly The second thing that we try to do is we after ensuring diversity is we try to Get a sense of which pests we are likely to experience So I give you an example on the disease side where I said fungal diseases are very common in places along the coast or any place with High humidity, right? So that's one kind of thing When this kind of combination of heat and humidity like warm weather and humidity happens The most common pest you will experience is what we call aphids. Okay, so these are little sucking pests which happen under the leaf They usually typically at the you know on the underside of the leaf and they don't have wings They don't move around sometimes you will also see ants while the ants don't harm your plant at all They kind of use these sucking pests to extract the sap and consume it themselves, right? So so aphids are one problem And the way to deal with them would be to not congest your space If you stick too many plants too close together Humidity tends to get trapped inside those kinds of spaces and you will have more incidents of aphids So that's one way to deal with them Another technique that we use is to repel insects purely by creating unpleasant circumstances for them So it's like when you don't want a neighbor to come over, right? You just make sure that he knows that he's not welcome And if you have a nice strong overbowing smell, it works for a lot of insects because they have very sensitive olfactory systems, right? So so cow urine, which is really stinky. I don't know how many of you have used it is brilliant to do that in a way Neem is another one. It's a very bitter kind of a taste and smell So that tends to be a deterrent too quite often we will use wood ash, which is this smell I mean the burning Texture and smell of ash will deter a lot of pests, right? But remember that in organic systems, you don't just blanket apply these you first try and observe and see which pest is it that I am I am kind of experiencing and then respond based on that a couple of other common Pests that we won my sort of Experience so with the gods there are these kind of cucumber beetles that tend to be very common or fruit flies A certain kind of fruit flies cucumber with fruit flies that are common Now the cucumber beetles can tend to be The fruit fly I think is the more common and therefore I'll talk about that it tends to lay An egg inside the fruit when it's very small when the flower is becoming a fruit and then as the fruit grows this tends to Hats the egg hatches and the larvae tends to do something in terms of Sort of causing a problem right so so the larvae will then Sort of hatch and eat its way out and therefore spoil the fruit itself Okay, so so we we we use different systems. Basically, they're called pheromone traps Elders they are used to deal with these and reduce populations of this nature Then another common pest is something called thrips now thrips looks like a tiny like fluorescent green mosquito Which is usually on the plants on on You know at dawn and dusk when the the light is low That's when you can usually see it through the day you may not notice it But basically what it does is it seems to scrape the surface of the leaves of plants like lady finger Brinjal which we talked about also perhaps chili and the the texture of the leaf becomes very it looks very scarred and bumpy and that's really That affects, you know, how much processing of food the leaf can do and therefore the health of the plant itself So these are common press in order to deal with thrips. We use sticky traps quite often There is a blue colored sticky trap which attracts thrips There is a yellow colored sticky traps which also can deal with aphids So we just use different tools at different times, right? We will in future once we've explained many of the techniques of handling pests organically also create a I mean share with you a sheet that we have which describes many of the solutions Sorry for the long-winded answer, but it's a complicated question when it comes to organic growth We have one more question actually from Devaki So she started growing mustard and fenugreek seedlings after the last week's session She's asking how deep the plot for transplant should be So So mustard being a leafy vegetable. I think an eight inch pot depth should be fine Maybe I would not transplant Maybe I would let it be where it is and you know as they grow because maybe firstly is a more or less a winter crop Um, I don't know where you are Devaki and what your climate is right now, but um, let them go to Pretty much. I would say like a micro green or maybe a little older and then I would harvest it So it is really tender messy because if it's very warm, it will grow It will germinate it will come to the point of micro green and then it will sort of start yellowing or it will You know collapse so don't transplant messy let it grow in the container It is and you could have multiple containers of messy messy grows really faster You could have several small ones and you can slip them and harvest them once you slip and harvest it will not come back So you will have to put down more messy tea um But an eight inch pot that is the size of this pot for a mustard would be fine This is also a mustard I have growing in here Actually, it's in a dahi container. It's growing quite well and I just put it in a Ceramic container so it looks called to be you know, but yeah, you can use recycle containers like that and you can have several Plans single single plants growing in each of these even in an eight inch pot I would put only one because when these plants become full size their spread would be almost a foot So if you cannot put two two plants, they will compete at the root level for nutrition and they will not be as productive So one plant per eight inch pot or even like that's a smaller one can do but this gives it its full potential of I'm oh, I'll just ask for you to put up the last poll Folks, we'd like some feedback. Did you find this useful? Have we done a good job? Was it worth your while? So if you can just rate us on the session from five to one depending on your You know experience in this I'd be grateful While we wait for results to come in I'll also mention a couple of other resources that may be helpful First about three four years ago three years ago. I think we started the seed store It's an online store where you can buy vegetable seeds We started it because people would keep it asking us where you could get good seeds If you I mean we are we are not able to ship right now But assuming in the next week or two courier services start working well, perhaps may onwards you can You know go to the site search for different types of seeds you may be interested in and Try growing them too We focus a lot on germination rates because I mean that was the first thing that we were Sort of disturbed by when we first started growing We also have grown most of the things that we offer here for at least five to eight years So we know that they work very well in Indian climates, not just in warmer climates, but all across India So I just wanted to point that out as a resource that you may find useful right Some of you may need You know advice on how to grow That is more involved. Maybe you'd like to have one-to-one conversations or things like that My phone numbers here just WhatsApp me and we can get in touch and perhaps we can set up a system for us to Sort of regularly guide you in a more Close way than it's possible through a session through this So please do get in touch with me if you would do that That pretty much brings us to the Yeah, I have a couple more questions that I have coming in Okay, okay. Sure. No problem Satish from Bangalore asks, how do you deal with leaf miners on Komepo plan? Okay Yes, a common pest that I should have mentioned. I think we answered this to some extent in the last session So satish leaf miner. First, let's just understand it. It's it's an insect that we see more in the cities It lays an egg in your leaf and once This egg hatches the insect the the young insect tries to exit the leaf But doesn't do it vertically. It does it horizontally So it goes in this crazy winding sort of path trying to reach the edge of the leaf through which it can exit, right? The leaf also provides it a certain amount of food in that period of time So the best way to deal with it is not after the egg is already hatched. It's before the egg is even laid Right. So what we want to do is we want to have preventive sprinklings of either neem or Neem diluted or potash or other sorry wood ash which we can sprinkle on the leaves which makes it unpleasant and You can use diluted cow urine also Just remember when we say sprays typically we mean a 10 solution which mean you take Say neem oil or something like that and you actually dilute it in water Where the one liter of water would have about 100 ml of neem oil just not that you need those quantities But perhaps you need just 100 ml. So you would use 10 ml of neem oil, right? So That's that's that's the best way to deal with neem minor to actually prevent the laying of the egg itself by making the leaves A little bit inhospitable for the insect He also asked if you'll be speaking about hydroponics at any time in the series I'm sorry hydroponics is a little out of our aerial experience while we are very familiar with You know the hydroponic systems and While we have a lot of friends who are involved in it Since our focus had always been on organic growing and hydroponics to the greatest extent requires certain chemical nutrients We never adopted that system. So i'm sorry, but we know a lot about the biology of the plants you can use for hydroponics, but The growing system itself is something that we probably wouldn't be the best people to ask Yeah, I think that's pretty much Okay, great. So thanks so much. This brings us to the end of the session Thanks for those of you who have taken the time to be here. I hope it was useful I hope you learned something from it and I hope you can use this knowledge in the coming weeks We will have another session Just going back to What I told you on the 23rd of april, which is the next thursday And what we'd be covering is transplanting of seedlings into containers We talk about how much to grow enough watt and also about growing microgreens. So We can also in the questions q&a section at the end address any new situations that you've come up with I think david ki had many questions from the last Session, so if as you move ahead and you have more questions, we'd be happy to answer them In the next session also. Thank you so much for your time everybody and thanks so many so much. Amogh, Anish, Zainab for all the help organizing this session You've made it quite easy for us And uh, uh, it's been great fun to do Thanks everyone. Hope to see you next week again Thank you karan. Thank you. Okay Bye. Bye. Good day. Bye