{"id":1855,"date":"2010-03-12T05:46:42","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T12:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bhagwad.com\/blog\/?p=1855"},"modified":"2010-03-12T05:46:42","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T12:46:42","slug":"growing-tomatoes-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bhagwad.com\/blog\/2010\/personal\/growing-tomatoes-day-1.html\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing Tomatoes – Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since I gave up and lost hope of us preventing catastrophic climate change<\/a>, I’ve been getting the feeling that I’d better know how to grow my own food. Of course, now that I’ve gone vegetarian<\/a>, it’s less than a pipe dream than it once was. But till now I was always deterred by the magnitude of the task. Clearing land, sowing the stuff, mixing up the veggies, etc etc. However, I decided yesterday that enough is enough – I’m going to start no matter what. If with nothing else, then by putting a seed in the damn mud and pouring water on it!<\/p>\n

So that’s what I’ve done today. I watched some videos on Youtube on planting tomato seeds and today I went with Anupa to the Chennai Horticultural Gardens<\/a> and picked up this little packet of Tomato seeds for Rs. 5 :<\/p>\n

\"Tomato
Nuggets of life<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I opened it up and found dozens of tiny little paper like seeds and I caught myself thinking – can a plant really grow from one of these little buggers? Well, I guess I’m going to find out!<\/p>\n

This is what they looked like:<\/p>\n

\"Tomato
The poor little tomato seeds<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Along with the seeds, I bought some compost<\/em>, which I understand to be a mixture of decayed plant and animal stuff which will make my tomatoes go gaga. This was the packet which I got for Rs. 30:<\/p>\n

\"Compost
Plant heaven<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And here’s what’s inside:<\/p>\n

\"Compost.JPG\"
Yum yum!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So I took some nice soil from the garden, mixed around 200 gms of this compost into it, and transfered the ensemble into a pot or gamla<\/em> with some stones at the bottom near the hole for the water to drip out. I then placed 6 or 7 tomato seeds on the soil, covered it with more soil, patted it down and gave it a nice watering. And here is the end result:<\/p>\n

\"Tomatoes
The watered pot with the soil, compost and seeds<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I placed it in an area that gets good sunlight, but not too much. The guides I read on the Internet which were meant for denizens of the UK and said that tomatoes need lots of sunlight – not less than 10 degrees C! Ahem ahem – this being Chennai where the minimum temperature is 30 degrees<\/em>, I put it in a nice place that I thought I would like if I were a tomato plant… :)<\/p>\n

\"Tomatoes
Not too lonely is it?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And there we have it! I’m supposed to find some activity in three days or so. But I have no<\/em> clue if I’ve done it right. But I figure that these tomato fellows must be pretty hardy and take their conditions as they come, or else they wouldn’t have reached the 21st century. So I’ve done my bit, now it’s time for the plants to do theirs…<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for more updates :D<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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