Gardening - A pleasant hobby

Growing vegetable garden was the most calming and peaceful activity that me and my family did this spring.

After having some failures in gardening in the past few years, I had almost given up this activity. But again this spring I decided to get my hands dirty. I hesistantly put forward this idea to my husband, who had always ended up cleaning the backyard after all those failures. As I had expected, he was not willing to repeat the same this year. However, I still continued to work on it. I researched over the net, borrowed several books from the library, some I glanced through the pages, others I read cover to cover and then talked to some people who had done it before and had succeeded. I almost spent 3 weeks in research before I purchased a single seed.

One February afternoon I went shopping to a home improvement store. A gardening expert helped me pick out my soils, compost and peat moss. I had already designed my garden's layout on a piece of paper, so it was very easy for her to calculate the materials I needed. I had set the limit to 3 vegetables this year. So I just picked up transplants of tomatoes, bell peppers and cabbages of different varieties to start with.

My husband saw my van loaded with those huge bags for soil. He thought I was going crazy. But again I assured him it would be fine this time. Hubby, Siya and I made one 7 X 9 bed, seeded it and planted the transplants. We would water it every single day. For almost a month and a half I didnt see substantial progress. But one fine day I saw the tomatoes fruiting. It was almost April till then. I was really excited and felt proud. Soon clusters of tomatoes started growing. I knew it would work this time, so I ran again to get some eggplant transplants. Then came some okra, beans and gourd seeds. I started growing tulsi, methi (fenugreek leaves) and curry leaves in pots. Over the period of time we extended our garden from one bed to three beds.

Soon my garden was lush green. I would water it every evening and check for new blooms and fruits. I felt it was a very peaceful and refreshing activity. My little Siya would jump with excitement when she would see some new tomato fruits, she was just interested in plucking them. My garden started being visited by a couple of neighbours who would peek through their backyard so see those fresh veggies growing. A frequent visitor to my garden was a little rabbit, who would sneak every afternoon to relish some veggies. My backyard soon became the most exciting place in my house.

Soon we started harvesting and consuming fresh veggies that were home grown. It was a successful and relaxing experience. Gardening now became my family's favorite hobby and we are eagerly waiting for spring to arrive.

I will keep posting details for each plant that I grew in my garden. Happy Gardening.