Ladies Fingers are off the soil first!

Almost all of our ladies' fingers have sprouted after 4 days - though they should have planted straight on the pot, we goofed up a bit and hopefully it doesn't really impact the plants. Unfortunately, my still camera isn't working, so here is a small clip of video of it.

Now we need to transplant them to pots or DIY containers. Looks like we need more containers than we had planned for. It also rained a bit yesterday and the one pot we filled seems to have a bit of drainage problem, it takes a while for the water to drain out.

So the next set of questions were pretty well answered by Mr. Raghu Rao, who was our instructor for the Terrace Garden Workshop.

• So how many plants in a pot ? what size of pots ?
  
  Ladies finger plants grow quite large - upto 3-4 feet high and the leaves spread out too. Normally the spacing between plants should be about a foot (12 inches or 30 cms). It will be good if you can put 1 or maximum 2 plants into a pot. If it is a pot of 6 inches diameter, just put one plant into it. Planting two will not work out.
  
  If you have pots which are 10 - 12 inches diameter, you can put two plants in each pot. Make sure that you leave a gap of at least 6 - 8 inches between the plants, though.i.e the plants will have to be planted about two or three inches from the side of the pot, so that there is at least 6 inches between the plants if you are using a 12 inch dia. pot. In a 10 inch dia pot the spacing between the plants will decrease but they will grow away from each other, so it won't be a problem.
  
  But since ladies finger has deep roots, the pots should be at least 10 inches deep so that the plant grows unhindered.
  
  
• Watering, fertilizers ?
  
  You'll have to water them well and put manure in while the plants are growing and again at the flowering stage. If you harvest the fruits tender, then the period of yielding can be increased.
  

So we have transplanted them to two 12" pots and a 8" one. But we have planted 3 of them in the larger ones and selected 2 healthy and a not-so-healthy ones in each of them. It was bit of an effort filling soil, but we should get better with more experience. The late breaking news is that tomatoes and capsicum or carrots(not sure which one, the labels were erased while watering - need to use ball point pens next time) have sprouted as well. Hopefully we should be able to move it to pots in a week or two.

Sowing the Seeds of ...

Finally we got going after all the preparations over the weekend. We sowed the seeds of tomatoes, ladies finger, carrot, chillies and capsicum in a propagation tray only to realize later that carrot and ladies finger needs to be planted directly. That was in the last chapter of the book :( We had tough time not letting Nishka(our daughter of 1y4m) not meddling with the ready-mix of coco peat and vermiculite that looked so exciting for her. The tray looked a bit big and we may have to cut into two so that we can place it in a container with water so that we don't have to water it regularly. I am also looking around for ways to avoid plastic - one possibility is using the coconut shells that we usually throw away.

Still some questions remain,

• How often do we need to water the nursery ? Do we need to keep it in the sun ? Cover it ?
• Which other plants need to be directly planted instead of transplanting from a nursery ?
• How many types of plants at a time ?
  

The terrace looks very inviting with the terracotta color with the latest water-proofing done. We enjoyed the skies(we have a clear view of the skies even after the mega multi-storeyed flats around) and laid out plans for the garden. We will anyway go slow on covering the whole terrace till Nishka can cycle around the pots, but we have plenty of room to get going for now!

Run-Walk-Run(TM) your runs!

I took a while to get on to the running habit and I always hit a wall at 5K. Running was also a boring thing for someone who was crazy about football. And footballers never run continuously - rather your timing of your run to meet your team mates' pass was far more important. But being forced to do some physical activity after my cholesterol readings went out of bounds, I used to go sit in a park and watch the runners or walkers not being able to pull myself up for a run. Then a jump rope kept things interesting for a while and I used running as a warm up for the rope jumping.

Then a friend referred me to Jeff Galloway's books on running. So I got two books - one to get me up and running, Running Getting Started, and the classic, Galloway's book on running, for the running basics which had 5K, 10K and half marathon training plans. It was amazing that before these books reached me, my sister who was in UK where the books were shipped, started running after reading the Running Getting Started book - that said something about the book!

So I started reading Galloway's theory on running and it was perfectly logical - but the only hitch was walk breaks sounded a bit sissy, so I never really tried it and hence never went beyond a 5K. The heart of Galloway's training program is the walk breaks or the Run-Walk-Run(TM) method. But when the Bangalore Sunfeast 10K 2008 was announced, there was no way I was going to make it unless I used walk breaks. So I started training for the event with a 2:1 run:walk ratio, but a fall on Bannerghatta Road while training forced me to go to a 1:1 split for the event. I finished the 10K in 1h20minute and felt really good after the race. So I continued running and worked up to 15K before attempting the Kavery Trail half Marathon, which wasn't so good even after using a run:walk strategy. What I didn't do was attempt the distance or more during the training. So my knees kind of gave up after 16KMs, but I managed to finish with more walking and little bit of running at 3:17. But things weren't that bad after the race. So for the Ultra 25K, I managed to do a 25K before the race and it wasn't really easy either. So I used a 2:2 walk:run for the race and walked all the uphills. But 2 minutes of walk break kind of cools down the body in the earlier phases, but worked well overall though in the end it was more of 1:1 or 1:1-30 of run:walk. So it was almost 4 hours for the 25K, but felt strong at the finish and the knees held up well.

But slowly, I started liking the philosophy of taking breaks early enough to keep yourself strong throughout. In fact I was in a break from work(not planned though) when I ran the half and 25K. And I wished I had taken a break from work long back to re-energize myself. Galloway contends that human body is not designed for continuous running and walk breaks restore some balance to the body to go along. It also reduces injuries according to him. I felt no need to attempt running continuously especially when you realize that stronger runners who finish under 3h30m also use the same technique, but with a longer run ratio. And since I don't have any real time goals, this was perfect recipe for me to finish the runs strongly. I also dislike pushing myself to achieve any goal in life, it is far more important me to have a breathing space to relax and enjoy things rather than go all out. And being a footballer(not-so-successful one at that though) who are told not to waste energy running unnecessarily, run-walk sounded like a good strategy. So this style of running aligned perfectly well with that style where it allows one to discover your pace slowly.

In fact Galloway's magic mile would tell you how fast you can go on different races. So based on a mile run(around 9minutes), predicted timings for me were a 1:04 for a 10K, 2:21 for a half and a 5:06 for a full marathon and I was doing well below my potential. So I decided to join a training with Runners High for the Sunfeast 10K 2009. Though their running plans(based on Rouge running) doesn't explicitly advocate run:walk strategy, I was following it anyway and they didn't have a problem with that. In fact they are planning to suggest this to beginners so that they can easily get over the wall. Training was a well planned training with speed work and foot drills to improve your overall running efficiency. Though I couldn't do the Sunfeast 10K due to a flu, 1:04 minutes 10K was very much in my reach with a 4:1 splits, 15 minute faster than last year! I am also doing a longer run splits, 5:1 for shorter runs and 4:1 for longer ones as well. Right now I am in another training with Runners High for a half marathon and a below 2:30 finish would be a great improvement from my first half marathon. A 3:1 run:walk ratio should suffice to reach the goal, though I want to experiment with a 4:1 split.

A pure Galloway training plan has just 3 days of running with one of them being a long slow run in the weekend and the other ones 30 minutes during the week. The day before the long run is a complete off from any kind of exercises. Advice is to take walk breaks liberally for any distance(from 5K to the marathon). You could experiment with your run:walk ratios and the key is to ensure that you are finishing comfortably with the intervals you pick. It is up to you tune your run:walk ratios based on how you feel - the goal is to ensure that you are strong till the end and don't need to slow down drastically at the end. And take walk breaks whenever you need it.

So instead of struggling to run continuously, run-walk your runs and finish strong!

Note: The Run-Walk-Run is a trademark of Jeff Galloway

Gardern Shopping Weekend

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Except for the morning runs and a bit of grocery shopping, most of the weekend was spent shopping for our terrace Garden in the making.

In fact I started on friday itself with a trip to the Hulimavu Dept. of Horticulture office. I thought they were closed on saturday, but that wasn't the case. I took a break from work and cycled to the place, which is a huge place among the concrete jungles that have come up around Bannerghatta Road. May be it was strategically located for all the farmers around earlier before Bangalore became a concrete jungle, but now looks out of place with no serious farming around. But being a Government organization, the place will not disappear fortunately.

I picked up some seeds, since I didn't have a specific list of items to procure, I picked up an already packed one with tomatoes, capsicums, ladies finger and zucchini(what was that?). Also bought 5KG vermicompost for which I had to get my car to pick it up. The boy at the compost counter was also a familiar one, who used to do car-washing at our place. I dropped the compost guy to the next stop and he said they also have bio-fertilizers, which I didn't have much idea about. The seeds were around INR 120/= and the vermi compost was just INR 5/= per kg. It is amazing that they don't have a proper board that tells people what is available for the public from them - yes, it is yet another Government shop, but people were nice once you go inside.

Next stop was at Lalbagh, where they open shop at 930am, I had dropped by at around 8am on my way back from running to check their timings. Bought a bag of pot-ready-soil which was INR 120/= which sounded a bit expensive. They didn't have coco-peat in stock though. I also bought some seeds of green chilies and carrot.

Then I went to Varsha Garden store on KR Road, where I picked up some ready mix for sowing seeds, coco peat, a propagation tray(which looks a bit crowded and narrow and not organic), a water spray(which was really expensive at around 250 INR - I should have just gone for a cheaper desi one). They seem to have some good variety of stuff and the guy was very helpful too. All in all it was around INR 470 business for the Varsha guy.

I also picked up some terracotta pots, which have become a rarity in town and is being replaced by plastic and concrete ones. I picked up 3 large(INR 70/=) and medium(INR 40/=) sizes each. The lady wanted to sell more and I was tempted to buy as well, but didn't want to stock up too many before we start some gardening. But I did pick up 5 more medium ones near my place (near JD Mara bus stop on Bannerghataa Road)for INR 30/= each. The guy dropped the price pretty quickly from 35 to 30 when I said I wanted 5. He was a bit sober early in the morning and would've dropped a bit more I guess:) But he was nice and pretty interested in selling stuff unlike many others who seemed a bit unfriendly and not interested. They were a bit burnt pots, which I thought was ok. One reason the terracotta pots are disappearing may be because the pots break pretty easily and there were many damaged ones at both the places. But for our organic garden in the making, these pots were the only choice despite the risks involved. I also bought a sack of red soil from him for INR 50/=, which was a bit too much for just soil, but anyway I didn't want to bargain too much with these guys.

Overall it the money spent was well within INR 1500/= and my wife keep reminding me that it was way below the money I spend for running and cycling. But in the end everything remains a good investment for a bright and green future!

And the field is getting ready as well, with some water proofing done on the terrace before we start sowing and growing stuff. In any case the next step is to do the seeding which we could do indoors. So the excitement is building up, and hopefully we'll take off in couple of days!

I have plotted the places where I picked up various things on the following map, which is in fact is created using a running log website(I haven't figured out how to do this on a google map yet), so please ignore the green and red marks which are usually the staring and finishing points of the run. Click on the blue notes on the map for the locations of the shops mentioned above. You may have to zoom-in a bit to see the notes properly. I couldn't post pictures because my camera stopped working for sometime and I am on the lookout for an economical but useful one.

Terrace Gardening Workshop

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Though I was the least interested among us in Gardening when we were kids, I developed some interest off late especially after reading about Dr. Vishwanath in Hindu about Terrace Gardening. It also fits well with my organic or green interests and gives an opportunity for the family also to participate in this project.

We have a 500sft terrace totally unused except for one kariyappila (kari patha?) pot which was gifted by our neighbor for taking care of her two other pots when she was not in town! We left it in our balcony for a while, but we moved it up to our terrace once we became the owners of the plant. Right now it is being fertilized by curds that seems to have created a good amount of worms in the soil.

I also happened to visit the blog GeekGardener who was just down the road and it was amazing what he was doing on his balconies. Another blogger in town, Raj Panda, also seemed to have done some neat stuff which he is sharing with all details at his blog. So I signed up for the terrace gardening workshop conducted by AME who helps out farmers to do organic farming. This is usually done by Dr. Vishwanath who has many things on his terrace at his own house in the city. But our class was done by Mr. Raghu Rao who has vast experience in farming, not just the terrace variety.

This was a one day course organized by AME Foundation, an NGO helping farmers do organic farming, where they have a classroom session and also show us what they are doing on their terrace where they have all kinds of vegetables from tomato, beans, carrot etc. They also showed us how to fill the pot with soil, sand and compost. An important learning from the session was that there was no need to buy pots or containers, you could use lot of stuff that you usually throw away. Thy showed some DIY containers with plastic bags and tetra packs for growing plants which I thought was pretty cool. For us it was a great session with loads of information to get started. In fact, Dept. of Horticulture office from where many of the folks buy seeds and compost is just across the road from where we live. The GeekGardner also was one participants and he shared a lot of information from his experience.

So we have all information ready to get going and I hope to post some details as soon as we have something to share. So onto the field till you hear from us about this new project that looks very exciting at the moment!

Manchester United goes frugal - signs Michael Owen

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Though it appears an illogical move at first from Sir Alex Ferguson, come to think of it, it sounds like a shrewd and frugal move from him. While Owen has his own troubles about his fitness, if he can regain his touch a bit and score crucial goals even coming on as a substitute, ManU will have its money's worth. And he sure is a proven goal scorer and with Fergusson as a mentor, he may well be able to rediscover his touch. If he fails, it is an opportunity lost for Owen himself, but not a major issue for ManU since they haven't paid any transfer fee on him. It may also improve his England chances as well if he clicks at ManU. So this is a very interesting move from Ferguson and worth following in this years English Premier League.

I also like Ferguson's frugal approach in signing players and not throwing money at them like like Real Madrid (and Man City) which sounds very stupid to me and I predict that they will not win anything this year as well. 11 great players don't make a great team.