Hydrangeas in S Carolina

 

Mum loved hydrangeas. I never understood her craziness over the flower in New Delhi till I saw them in Davids Garden in London and in Andy's layout in Cleveland Forest. As I went for my jog everyday up and down the hills, I couldn't help but admire the pristine white hydrangeas in most gardens. Just the uniform white flower in boring similarity in all gardens.  I particularly liked the huge hedge of them in one garden on the way to the kids school. 

A bank of white hydrangeas!

Then the senior guy who lived in the corner massive house decided to do up his garden. A whole team was called in to landscape his garden and last year I watched the whole garden being ripped apart including trimming of the massive oaks. I loved watching them work putting in a crazy paving path and lawns were unrolled in carpets of emerald, green. Of course I had to jog past as it was on the way to Mr Fig tree loaded with figs that I gobbled up by the hands full, beating Mr and Mrs Cardinal to the biggest and the best figs.

Look at them up close. They are breathtaking!

David's hydrangeas are a pale Robin egg blue. I sank a pile of old nails near its roots and the blue grew darker! He's not too fond of them but agreed to buying one, for a cheap one pound, in a local market for me. The plant is 10 times its size now growing in his compost like soil. And I sink iron bits around its soil to enjoy the changing flower colour.

Its Avocado year!

 Its avocado year!

Yes after so many barren years, the avocados in the farm have fruited. FOUR trees in all, one of which or maybe more were Dads germinated in his famous broken buckets! He had those tin buckets which split at the bottom and instead of throwing them out, he filled them with compost and pushed Rose apple and Avocado seeds in them. The seeds germinated and remained in the bucket not growing beyond 3 feet height.

Then along came my farm and all his famous buckets were planted in the farm. Each tree has different leaves and differently shaped fruit. He even had a purple African variety which sadly I did not get. However I recognise the provenance of  the four trees on my property.

The last of the avocados from one tree.

The first tree which fruited had round fruit. They were perfectly spherical and not very large. Those were the first fruit we harvested as we found some fallen off the tree, lying in the grass beneath. The 

leaves of this tree are dark green and large and flappy.

The next tree had pear shaped small fruit like the Haas variety Andy buys in the US from COSTCO. These fruit I took to Goa and my Goa friends bought them and sang their praises for weeks after they ate them. They remained green when ripe and just got soft. It was so heartening that we took them out correctly in time for them to ripen. That is the biggest worry for a fruit farmer. Have you taken out the fruit immature? Then your harvest is wasted.

Arpans stash have ripened in a week.

A smaller tree got a rash of fruit but sadly most of them fell off when there was a storm. It was really sad that only five fruit hung on and grew to maturity.  It was sad, but we realised a fruit farmer can never be sure of the harvest as the trees are open to the elements. Happened with our mango crop last year, but luckily we grow a lot of Mallika with thick stalks even though the fruit are large.

 

The fourth and last tree - Sunday harvest is a ritual.

The fourth and last tree was bent double with the weight of the fruit on it. I had got Sundar to chop a V branch from the Jamun tree and prop up the branches which were almost touching the ground with the weight of the fruit. However the fruit took much longer to mature. I carried home a apple and peach picker from the UK, a gift from a gardener on my group. JP brought the picker to David's house, and we picked apples off the neighbour's tree, which they don't mind. 

The Goa gardeners were begging for the fruit, but before I could advertise all 4 kgs were gone.  Infact I bought a new weighing scale as the older one had done its time. We have an Indian fruit picker off Amazon and this British picker which is also good. I like these simple tools which make harvesting easy and there's no need of extra labour like Dad had to employ.

This year has been a good year for both Lychees and avocados. Hopefully it remains for next year as well. Nothing like good harvests for us organic fruit farmers.

Dragon Fruit on the farm

 

The caretaker in Hoskote got a couple of Dragon fruit cuttings from a nearby farm. Then in typical fashion he pulled out a few kucchas from the side of the land and built a pendal. He knew I would not allow him to pull out the kucchas, as they marked the boundary. 

Anyway, I left the pendal as he built it and we started feeding the cactus looking plant with a lot of compost and chicken waste. Until then, I found dragon fruit tasteless and fine in a salad or fruit salad. Not eaten alone.  

The plant spiralled up especially in the rains and we were so very happy seeing it begin to flop over the pendal as can be seen in the picture. Last year we got two or three fruit. But this year there are many all over the plant.

Fruiting Dragon fruit in Hoskote

What was interesting to see was the flowers were huge and exactly like the Star of Bethlem-  white waxy flower! The flower barely lasted one night and then hung downwards and dried up. One can see the dried petals of the flower in the picture. From the base the fruit begin to grow.

The petals of the flower dry up like straw and hang downwards. We don't remove it, Just let it dry along with the growing fruit. Slowly the fruit grow larger and turn their signature pink colour. Once they turn a deep pink we harvest. So far, I have not sold any of the fruit. They are deliciously sweet and I cannot let any be eaten apart from us. Maybe once Steve leaves. For now we are enjoying them as they are totally organic and shop bought does not compare.