Luffa- food and natural scrubs

Luffa (sponge gourd) seeds and scrub after drying

Luffa which is group of summer gourds having ridge and sponge gourds. These have been grown in our basic food gardens since ages as they are very easy to grow. vines of luffa grow tall and reach to distant territories trailing various supports. They come in many colors and shapes from dark green color to light green in colors.

Apart from food luffa after being dried could be used in numerous other valuable products e.g. natural scrubs. Luffa gets dried on the vine itself and seeds could be extracted and, being used as bathing, dish washing scrubs. The beauty of luffa scrub is that it is biodegradable and directly comes from plant which is equally good for planet health.

When sustainable fashion trends are becoming popular and awareness about plastic pollution is getting higher with everyday, people are looking for organic and natural alternatives. In such difficult times, growing your own luffa for food and for organic scrubs is beautiful design to adopt for your life. You can grow few luffa plant which can give you food for all through summer and at the end can provide you some dried luffas and seeds for next season. You can share the sunshine of growing your own luffas gifting seeds and scrubs to your family and friends.

So, if you like to grow your own natural scrubs, start growing your own luffas. To add more beauty to your luffa grow few seeds of maize and legume/beans along as companion plants. Maize would help provide support to trail luffa and beans would enrich the soil fixing nitrogen.

Food Forest Gardens- Productive Eco-systemic Designs

(Courtesy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_m_0UPOzuI)

If you do nothing with a piece of land over the time it will become a forest said Martin Crawford, an English food forest gardener. Forests are moving land to balance, self-sustainable and resilient ecosystem known as succession. Food forest garden is 3-D garden, designed/modeled on young natural woodland eco-system where herbs, veggies, root layers, annuals, shrubs,  perennials, fruit & nut trees, climbers etc are growing in a way that mimics self-sustainable closed-loop young woodland forest-ecosystem.

It is distinctively like a forest, not natural forest but a well articulated design; emulating patterns, principles, processes happen in natural forest-ecosystem. It is designed in such a way that over the time it becomes less energy intensive, minimal maintained, naturally bio-diverse, efficient and organically more productive. A few hundred to thousand  bio-diverse edible plants are planted using all combinations of companion planting and mutualism, mimicking multiple layered forest. Patched plants are all of use, either of direct use such as fruits, nuts, medicinal & aromatic plants, dye, timber, fiber and; some of indirect use called system plants including pollinator attracting plants, functional plants, nitrogen, phosphorous and nutrient fixer plants, which helps the system to function better.

Food forests are need of the hour because most of the agricultural lands are degrading and becoming non-productive. Conventional agricultural practices are not going to be sustainable with complete reliance on annuals as they are rare in nature unlike in normal agriculture fields. Chemical and fossil fuel based monocultured agriculture is very energy intensive and highly maintainable business. Majority of industrial agriculture from plantation to wide-monoculture fields are lacking in natural diversity and negative for environmental, social and human externalities. Climate change and increasing population is further putting pressure on natural resources and current agricultural food systems. It has been observed and reported that it is not gradually increasing temperature which is damaging the plants, it is extreme events like dry storms, big rains, big winds which is of major concern. In bio-diverse food forests and layered ecosystems probably crops do fine by having maximum resilience compared to monocultured crop fields.

Food forest gardens could be overwhelming with so many species on a small patch of land. You do not need to know everything about designs before hand, simply start planting and observing natural forest, and over the time it would shape into a food forest garden. You could start a basic food garden in any small piece of land and transform it into food forest garden successively. Any small patch of land from conventional kitchen garden to big patch of lands could be converted into big diverse tree-based bio-diverse food forest. I personally have a ~ 100 square meter small food-forest-garden with close to 70-80 plants to feed my family, natural birds-insects, animals. A lot of birds, insects and other animals make merry.

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Plant tendrils and bioinspired desings

Strong woody tendrils of grapes

Coiled tendril of grape around supporting material

Climbing plants deploy outstanding grasping strategies to climb using extremely flexible, sensitive, and filiform robotic organs known as 'tendrils'. It has been perceived that tendrils have 360° in-built sensors to locate supports around them for the plant to climb. Some plant tendrils (e.g. grapes) have very strong natural designs and materials that result in a strong death-grip like 'Geckos' lizards. It has been physically observed that grape tendrils'  are so strong and woody in nature that after drying, they remain attach to props.

Different plants use varied twisting and untwisting maneuvers to climb and cling around existing supporting material. If there are props at a distance, tendrils grow spirally and further projectile (jump in particular direction and angle with particular speed) using plant water & sap to control maneuvers and grasp.

It has also been observed plants determine and modify shapes, sizes, thickness, length of tendrils after recognizing existing supporting material around them. Generally, apical new tendrils of cucurbits grow straight and without twisted coils, and auxiliary tendrils are of various sizes and shapes with coils to climb around.

Apical straight tendrils in sponge gourd 

Twisted and coiled auxiliary tendrils in sponge gourd

Bitter gourd tendril trailing around climbing and untwisted coils

Apical tendrils in summer squash

Different plants have been evolved using all these innovations and technique. Traditional growers have observed and applied all these inspiring designs and innovations from agriculture to architecture. These bioinspired designs are further being studied and deployed under mainstream of biomimicry to design numerous industrial materials to intelligent robotic applications.

The bio-mimetic movements and coiled structures of plant tendrils have been studied and deployed to design fabricating strategy for crude oil cleanup to new concepts of robot grasping. it is also expected that the unique structures, shapes, movements can help to design numerous applications in energy conservation, tissue engineering, intelligent devices and smart textile & sports materials in the near future.

This article is result of  personal observations and imagination of Vipesh Garg, and proof read by Premila Parera from Urban Leaves, India.

Poor grain formation in corn-ears

Uneven poor grain filling in corn

Poor grain-filling is a common physiological problem that numerous gardeners encounter while growing corn in their food gardens. It is a condition of poor and uneven grain/kernel formation on the ear as a result of unsuccessful fertilisation of ovules due to poor pollination. It is influenced by many factors at various stages of growth of  the corn plant. Some of the common factors are below

1. Heat stress and less humidity

2. Drought and lack of irrigation 

Heat stress and less humidity 

In summers, particularly due to high heat and less moisture in  the air, pollen viability decreases and pollen-carrying silk hairs desiccate leading to unsuccessful pollination and fertilisation, resulting in poor grain formation and smaller kernel size.

Drought and lack of irrigation 

Due to scanty irrigation, particularly at the silking stage and ear formation, plants get stressed, resulting in poor pollination, unsuccessful fertilisation and abortion of developing grain/kernels causing uneven grain formation.

Uneven poor grain formation (Photo credit: Urban Leaves, Mumbai)

Remedies

Ensure regular irrigation particularly at the silking stage and ear formation.

Hand/manual pollinate to enhance successful pollination and fertilisation.

Sow corn just before or during the rainy seasons when there is optimum temperature and moisture in the air.

Use heirloom/often-pollinated local seeds which are more resilient and adaptive to local climate conditions

Technical trivia

Corn has separate male and female inflorescence (group of flowers). The female inflorescence is known as cob/ear on which grains develop and the male inflorescence is known as tessel.

Silking is the stage at which silky hairs emerge from the cob. These receive pollen to fertilise the ovum for successful grain formation.

Ear is the stalk on which grains/kernels form in an arrangement. 

This small piece of information is collected by Vipesh Garg and proof-read by Premila Parera from Urban Leaves, Mumbai.

Red cotton bug and red silk cotton trees

Red cotton bug is serious pest of red silk cotton trees. The nymphs and adults feed on emerging bolls and seeds of cotton family/malvacae and reduce the germination capacity of seeds. 

I hunted some okra looking seeds of red silk cotton tree/semal at a park in Gurgaon in the June beginning when trees were at the fag end of fruiting and found heavy infestation of semal bug all across the park. Bugs were feeding and breeding on the fallen pods/balls of semal tree. 

For more information of tree, click and read down below link

https://www.tntreepedia.com/tree-details/?id=1e30a57411f83859ed44beb8c5edd40a

Controlling red-pumpkin-beetle infestation organically

Red-pumpkin-beetles are voracious eaters of cucurbits and munch newly germinated 2-4 leaves stage cucurbits just in no time before you witness the economical demage. They love eating melons and gourds.

Taming them is not rocket-science or you do not need to lead the chemical war, few cultural methods and management practices will keep them at bay. Don't panic, handle them peacefully and they really look charming by the way, right!!! You simply need to understand their behavior. Once you get to know, taming them is not really tough-game.

Their grubs remain in soil and start eating as cucurbits start germinated in the very early stage. They really relish the taste of all cucurbits except bitter-gourd. They might be not suffered from diabetes unlike human that they do not like eating bitter-gourd!!.

Few strategies to tame them

1. Sprinkle ash (dung ash/soft-wood ash) on germinated plants.  
2. Soil solarization in hot-months to kill the grubs in soil.
3. Spray neem oil as precautionary method once in 3-5 days interval. 
4. Manual collection and destructing them by putting under the soil in early stage.
5. Germinate seed ex-situ in nursery and transplant. Once plant start growing they don't feed much and plant has mechanism to bear the damage.

Controlling mealy-bug pest infestations organically

I am often being questioned to resolve the mealy-bug infestations in their aesthetic and food gardens by numerous people. Most of the time it is hibiscus/China-rose which is being infested and set the alarm bells ringing. 

Pink hibiscus mealy-bug is serious pest of plants belonging to hibiscus/malvaceae family including edibles like okra and fiber cotton. This is major problem in warm-temperature days and in dry climate. It is pink coloured nymphs which suck the sap from plants. Even controlling mealy-bug infestations with harsh chemicals has been failed. The other way around applications of simple home-made/in-situ formulations do work well. 

Why controlling/killing mealy-bug is challenging?

1. Simply, because it is thick-skinned insect with protective waxy layer/coating over the skin. 
2. It is being devoid of fluid/blood means less watery.

Key to control

 As mentioned it is being covered with thick protective waxy layer/coating and devoid of blood/fluid in body, application of alcohol and soap holds the key/Brahmastra. Alcohol would dissolve the wax layer and soap would penetrate and promote ex-osomosis, desiccating mealy-bugs to death.

Solutions/remedies

1. Wash/spray the infested plants with simply soap-water regularly. You may use 5 gm synthetic soap per liter water or boil 10-12 seeds kernels of soap-nut berries for organic soap water. 
2. Take 100 gm rice powder 100 gm soap-nut powder/seed kernels. Get mixture boil in 1 liter water. Let it cool down and keep remain for minimum 3 days to ferment (rice starchy water would ferment to natural alcohol, right!!) Use 8-10 ml of solutions third day onward.
3. Mixture of 10 ml of drinkable alcohol and 50 ml concentrated soap-nut berries concentrated liquid could works well. 
4. Mixed solution of 10 ml vinegar 10 gm jaggery/sugar per liter once in 3 days of water helps to ward-off ants from farming mealy-bugs (ants and mealy-bugs have symbiotic relationship. Ants help mealy-bug nymphs to transfer new branches and save from predator).

All solutions/remedies can be applied once in 3-7 days interval as per scale of infestation.