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.