Composting Update

It is almost 6 months since we started composting at home and it seems to have stuck and become part of a regular routine Though we haven't yet used the compost yet, the recycling is going on. The leave-it-pot is almost full, but the level keeps going down when more thing gets further composted. Except for nasty smell in between that you have to get used to, it has been pretty smooth sailing after the initial bumps. We did think of stopping it for a while when the spirit was pretty low, but finally kept doing it. May be we need one more leave-it-pot(or some container) to make the composting easier. Now old and new waste gets mixed up in the leave-it-pot which makes it difficult to get some compost out. If you have two of them, you could let one compost completely before dumping new stuff.

Overall, well worth doing it, not very difficult to make it a habit, surely worth a try!

GM food

While I don't claim to be an expert to make a comment on the Genetically Modified(GM) foods, I find something really odd about this whole GM thing, in fact something very unnatural. While most of our so called "development" has been using very unnatural and unsustainable techniques, it sounds very odd that the agricultural scientists or biotechnologists has to take this route to save the world from a very natural process of growing vegetables and fruits. Instead of looking holistically and trying to figure out the problems, they are modifying the seeds which would make the seed companies the key part of an otherwise natural process. You are breaking the natural cycle by doing that - may be they had done it before(hybrids) and got better results, but this more intrusive and more unnatural.

What's wrong with their approach is the typical western(followed or pushed out to the world) technique of "local sub-optimization" that fixes just one part of the complete chain in the short term creating significant problems in the future. Pesticide based food revolution was a great example of this. While I can't say for sure the GM foods would create such problems myself, I am not willing to believe the seed companies who are behind this research. To me, their approach is fundamentally wrong and I have every reason to suspect they are in it just to make money and dominate the farmers world over. I am very disappointed at this direction of agri-research which doesn't find anything wrong with introducing an external agent(seed companies) in a very natural cycle of cultivation. In fact the technique that they should apply is the "trimming" technique that would remove the unnatural agents in the cycle to make farming far more sustainable.

While you see this technique applied in other fields of science and engineering, at least that is in the domain where there were no natural process existed before - but typically it is a short term fix against a long term solution. In fact, I can't believe that you need such a complex research to go down really into the genes and fix the productivity issue - I am sure there are cheaper and simpler ways of doing this in an organic fashion. This is an excellent example of technology wasted and gone in the wrong direction.

But it looks like the powers that be behind this GM nonsense are too powerful to be ignored and they will ultimately push it down our throats. Bt cotton has already cultivated in large scale though we don't eat them. But when everything turns out to be a business, this is inevitable. Seed companies want to control the farmers, researchers get money from these guys to push their agenda and most of the farmers are also worried about short term money making, this vicious circle would finally take us in a very wrong way. Even if I want to cultivate in an organic fashion, I am not guaranteed it will be organic especially in a country like India where enforcement of any policy is pretty pathetic.

Organic Terrace Garden Update

Our outsourced organic terrace garden has been setup and the plants are making good progress. It consists of 8 wooden boxes lined with water proof material and filled with a substitute for soil which consists of coco-pith and manure. It is lighter than normal soil and treated to be more fertile. Purna Organics sell these materials which I guess costs around INR 300 for a 30kg bag. There is also an aluminum trelly for the twines to go around. They also setup a drip watering system (which doesn't seem like a real organic thing to do in my view).

We have an 80 square foot garden with each square foot having one type of vegetable. They mix it up by planting the right combination of plants to reduce pests and good growth. Each vegetable is planted in 6 squares(6 sqft) across the layout. We have tomato, okra, dantu(cheera), beet, carrot, onion, potatoe, bitter gourd, peas, beans, capsicum,kari leaves and mangalore southeka. Most of them are off the ground except for potatoes, carrot and capsicum which is taking a bit more time. In fact capsicum seeds failed and it has been replanted. We also added beans in the couple of vacant squares.

Watering the plants is a bit too easy - just turn the tap for around 8-10 minutes and you are done. I would take out the drip lines if I were to set this up again - working out in the garden is an integral part of the organic gardening experience in my book. Anyways, we have some plants in pots and a composter to make up for the lost exercise!

Purna Organics guys visit the garden every two weeks and add manuring and see if everything is going on ok. There is also an inspection visit every month by an agriculture specialist for a review. Looks like everything is going on ok till now.

Hundred Pushups

Having struggled all my life trying to do 5 continuous pushups(for someone aspired to become a footballer, hands didn't matter I thought), doing hundred pushups is something unthinkable. The hundredpushups plan is a program that takes you to 100 continuous pushups in 6 weeks even if you can do less than 5 continuous pushups. The plan has 3 different columns for people with different capacities. While I don't have any hopes of getting to a 100 this lifetime, a 25 looked like a practical target for me. My initial attempt didn't last beyond the first two weeks where I improved my number to around 10.

By the time I started again when I was recovering from my knee problem, my number had dropped again in the 0-5 range. But this time I persisted and finished the first 2 weeks program, but could only muster only 12 continuous pushups after that and hence couldn't qualify for the third week. You need to hit at least 16 continuous pushups.

So I started from beginning and moved to the next column(5-10) now that I could do 10 pushups continously. The first week went well with one or two repetition of some days, but the second week looked like a steep climb. First workout of the second week itself took a week and the second one took more than a month. And this seems like a real wall that I can't climb without some steroids to beef up my puny arms(I have to remind you that I do have a pair of powerful legs btw, especially the left leg:).

But this was great progress anyway from what I could do before. So I am keeping at it and I guess things are improving, but at a very slow pace that may not be observable in a day or two or even weeks or months! But my continuous pushups went up to within striking distance of my target of 25, to 20, which is a descent number I guess. So I could get onto the third week's program, but I am planning to complete the second week's second column(for 5-10) before that.

But it is a very simple exercise using your body instead of any weights that can be done anywhere anytime without any extra gadgets. So I am going to keep doing the program and would let you know how it goes. I am wondering if anyone got to 100 from just 5 ever - that could have been a long drawn out program, not surely within 6 weeks! But the program looks well crafted to make some good progress and keep it interesting!

Update on 21Feb10: I did the 25! I am planning to continue the program, but the drive isn't that great though!

Organic Terrace Garden by Purna Organics

After realizing that it is not really hunky dory trying to do a terrace garden ourselves, we have got some help, at some cost off course, from Purna Organics to setup one, and with support services as well.

We have had a descent harvest of okra, carrot(most of them looked like potatoes but) and tomatoes(were good for salads, not the size we wanted) though monkeys raided and harvested it couple of times. But the plants were not really healthy and was regularly attacked by pests. Though the organic pesticides worked, pests did hurt the plants and the produce.

What we didn't do well ? Poor nutrition - it was written all around the plants. While we did add composts and some organic manure, it was needed more frequently. And the size of the garden was a bit big for beginners like us to chew - there were too many tomato and carrot plants. The mix was overly skewed. We should have thrown out some of the plants initially. Also the initial enthusiasm died down and we couldn't sustain the effort.

So we found Purna Organics and they seemed to be doing a good job at it, but with a bit of money(Rs.250/sqft). I met Mallesh, CEO of the firm and saw their demo OTG at their office. He sounded very reasonable and he seemed to have done his homework and experiments well. I was impressed, but leaving your garden to someone else was not something that we wanted to. Mallesh said we could try on our own may be after 6 months once we have a better idea of things and he will supply the materials in any case. And we needed some help anyway.

Money was a bit too much if you look at just investment and returns - for a potential return of 5K, we would be spending more than 25K. So the only question that remained was the money - may be I am not buying that flat panel TV this year, or a holiday(anyway we have to water the plants) that we haven't done for while, or that book shelf that we wanted:) In the end, we felt it was worth the money. In order to keep our appetite for doing some thing our own, we thought we would do some on our own as well.

So finally stuck a deal around the new year! It was installed in another week at our terrace.

2009 and Happy New Year!

2009 started with a flu after being flu-less for almost a year. Flu came back couple of more times - could have been the running (longer distances and higher pace) or just the flu! All in all a good year, but ended with a low having injured my knee running and the low impacted life(and blogging) in general. But it was an eventful year overall, the "green" bug really bit me during the year.

• Commute by cycle for 8+ months(suspended after knee trouble since October)
• A truly car free commute except for one day(to carry old clothes for N.Karnataka flood relief), and just 2 long drives.
  
• Terrace Gardening(that was a bit of surprise to myself - monkeys had a good share of our harvest though)
• Composting at Home
  
• Trained to run(ended up with an injury and a runners' low though)
• New job closer home(nothing exciting but a job!)
• Nishka growing at an amazing pace(it is fun)
• Free from colas, packaged juices, milk and junk food, mainly relied on tender coconuts and fruits and nuts
• Frugal(12K cycle was the major investment) and debt free at the moment.
  

No major goals for 2010 - need to keep myself healthy physically and mentally, keep running and biking and hope to get more returns out of the terrace garden.

Wish you all a happy new year!

New Running Shoe - Adidas Response Control

After going through a knee trouble that kept me off from running the Bangalore Ultra 2009, I was under therapy at Recoup. After couple of weeks of therapy, I was declared fit to run and started running. But the knee could last only about 30 minutes, the muscles got tighter and the same pain starts. So my therapist suggested a shoe insert for my pronated feet. I then figured out that I had used my current shoe ,which was a control shoe to handle the pronation, for more than 1400KMs which was way over the recommended distance of around 500-800KM, especially for people with overpronator like me. I also remembered that I didn't have any problem for the Ultra 2008 25K whereas I had problems at Kavery Trail Marathon 2008(and 09) - the difference was the shoe!

So I went around Adidas shoe shops in town, but my shoe, Adidas Response Control was out of stock and the newer shoes, Adidas SuperNova Sequence were comparatively expensive(INR 7K) as well. I cursed myself for not having picked up one when there was a 30% discount on Adidas shoes. So I was going to check Reebok and Nike shoes of the control variety. But I happened to be around the Brand Factory in Wilson Garden and just stepped in to check the shoes. They had my shoe and immediately picked it up at a 30% discount, INR 3700.

Now the problem is, this shoe is gone out of production and I may need it in another 8 months. Either I need to pick up another pair or shop around for another descent one with more money. With an average 80KM of running per month, it will be 600KMs in around 8 months. Not a good thing but. And remember this is crutch that will help you run, the real problems will be hidden for a while, before it resurfaces again when the shoe wears out. So the real problems need to be attended too - strengthening the muscles around the knee should be an important thing to do to keep me running till I am 100!