MAY 2015

By Daily Diary

Monday May 4th

WEATHER; very hot and humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Arko, Alexandra, Mahendran, Spiros, Lauren, Elumalai with Priya

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We picked snake gourd, papaya, beans, ladies finger, lukki, brinjal and a pineapple. Small quantities of everything but a lovely diversity of produce.
  2. We cleared composted and mulched a bed in the Pryog garden that we will plant with maize this afternoon.
  3. We weeded and mulched a pumpkin bed in the Pryog garden.
  4. We cut basil seeds off basil plants in the Souryan garden to stop the leaves from getting too small to use.

Tuesday May 5th

WEATHER; a bit overcast at times which is a relief from the sun. With clouds building up will it rain???

VOLUNTEERS; Arko, Ganesh, Jaykumar, Mahendran, Parthiban, Ashoka with Rajan and Priya

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We weeded a maize bed in Le Jardin.
  2. We took the large weeds out of a bed of sweet potato plants. The plants created a very good covering for the soil, but large weeds were growing up and I could see they would oon be putting their seeds everywhere if we didn’t get rid of them.
  3. While we did these two jobs Rajan did the grass cutting so this whole area is now looking very good.
  4. We strung up some bean plants in the Souryan garden.

 

Wednesday May 6th

WEATHER; hot, sunny and humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Arko, Ganesh, Jaykumar, Mahendran, Parthiban, Ashoka with Rajan and Priya

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We picked huge amounts of beans and small amounts of papaya, bassella spinach, ladies finger and snake gourd.
  2. Apart from picking we spent the whole time mulching trees in Le Jardin. Rajan had cut the area yesterday so we cut the glyricidea bushes and used the leaves and brown leaves to mulch around the trees. At the same time we also cut down two papaya trees that had got very tall and seemed to have finished producing fruit.

 

Thursday May 7th

WEATHER; hot, sunny and humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Arko, Vijaykumar, Mahendran, Parthiban, Dane with Rajan and Priya

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We completed mulching the fruit trees in Le Jardin that we started yesterday.
  2. We prepared some basil seeds by stripping off the seeds from the dry stems. These seeds will first be dried again and then put in our seed fridge for storage.

 

Friday May 8th

WEATHER; sunny spells and very humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Vijaykumar, Parthiban, Dane with Rajan and Priya

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We picked beans, bassella spinach, ladies finger and papaya.
  2. We planted bassella spinach on a prepared bed in the Pryog garden.
  3. We sorted out a lot of seeds.

 

Monday May 11th

WEATHER; very humid and overcast and a thunderstorm passed over during the work time. Still rather over cast.

VOLUNTEERS; Arko, Parthiban with Priya

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We picked beans, bassella spinach and amaranth leaves to see if anyone wants them.
  2. We planted some more bassella spinach plants on the bed in the Pryog garden.
  3. While it rained we processed some of the seed – basil and made a start on the beans.

 

Tuesday May 12th

WEATHER; very humid after a rather damp night. Overcast to start with and then hot sun.

VOLUNTEERS; Arko, Parthiban, Edward, Donato with Priya

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We cleared, composted and mulched a bed in the seed garden which we then planted with green ladies finger. Rajan wants to grow these in the future (at the moment we grow mainly red ones) as he thinks the green ladies finger are more popular than the red. I think he is correct although I am rather sad that the red ones are not more populat.
  2. We weeded all the beds in the seed garden and Rajan cut the grass after breakfast. So everything is finished there for a while.

Wednesday May 13th

WEATHER; very damp and humid with light rain that penetrated everything. While this made things cooler the humidity was very high and uncomfortable at times.

VOLUNTEERS; Parthiban, Edward, Dona with Priya

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We picked bassella spinach, amaranth spinach, beans and papaya.
  2. We cleared one of the intermittent beds in the wild orchard taking out the pumpkin plants that had not done very well at all. Then we composted and mulched about half of it.

 

Friday May 14th

WEATHER; yesterday it was raining so much we couldn’t work and last night there was a very fierce thunder storm. The rain had finished by the time we started working, but everything was soaked and underfoot it was very squelchy. Very unusual weather for this time of year.

VOLUNTEERS; Dorito, Edward, Rujitha, Tanvi, Joshua with Priya

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We picked bassella spinach, beans and papaya.
  2. We finished composting and mulching the intermittent bed in the Wild Orchard that we started on Wednesday and then planted it with brinjal.
  3. We weeded a very weed infested bassella bed in Le Jardin.

 

Monday May 18th

WEATHER; still very soggy although no more rain despite heavy cloud.

VOLUNTEERS; Rishi, Spiros, Dorito, Edward, Rujitha, Tanvi, Joshua, Elumalai, Mahendran, with Priya and Pierre

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We picked basil, bassella, beans, snake gourd and lukki.
  2. We weeded a ladies finger bed in Le Jardin and re-mulched it.
  3. We cleared a bed in Le Jardin which we will plant tomorrow with either roccolla or bassella spinach.

Tuesday May 19th

WEATHER; damp underfoot but the sun is back so hot and humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Rishi, Spiros, Dorito, Edward, Rujitha, Tanvi, Joshua, Vineeth, Vijaykumar, with Priya and Pierre

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We cleared and composted a bed in Le Jardin which we planted with roccolla seedlings.
  2. We finished weeding a very weed infested bed in Le Jardin which we started weeding last week.

Wednesday May 20th

WEATHER; hot and very humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Rishi, Spiros, Dorito, Edward, Tanvi, Joshua, Luca, Niteesh, Elumalai with Priya and Pierre

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We picked beans, pumpkin, roccolla, tandakeerai spinach, snake gourd, lukki and cashews.
  2. We composted and mulched a bed in Le Jardin that we cleared a few days ago and then planted with bassella spinach.
  3. We weeded a very weed infested ladies finger bed in the Pryog garden and then re-mulched it.

 

Thursday May 21st

WEATHER; hot and very humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Rishi, Spiros, Dorota, Edward, Tanvi, Joshua, Rujitha, Elumalai with Priya and Pierre

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We mulched all the guava trees. This involved cutting the glyriciedea, stripping off the leaves and mulching around the trees and then topping that with brown leaves. We managed to get the whole area completed and it looked really good.
  2. We took all the sticks from the mulching and other material that we didn’t want down to the Jalabhoomi area where we spread it over the eroded soil to help stop the erosion.
  3. Rajan and a volunteer built a very secure fence for one of the growing amla trees. We will eventually have such a fence around all the amla trees that we plant in that area.
  4. We are having the second volunteer cabin built. The foundations have been dug and today all the metal was painted.

Friday May 22nd

WEATHER; hot and humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Rishi, Spiros, Dorota, Edward, Tanvi, Joshua, Rujitha, Elumalai, Mahendran with Priya and Pierre

WORK COMPLETED

 

  1. We picked bassella spinach, beans, snake gourd, lukki and a few papaya. We have a huge amount of pumpkins ready to pick and Pierre is going to investigate who might want them.
  2. We cleared composted and mulched a bed in the Pryog garden that we then planted with the last of the brinjal and some proper sweet corn seedlings.
  3. We weeded two beds in the Pryog garden so with having had the grass cut it now looks very good.

 

Monday May 25th

WEATHER; very hot and humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Rishi, Spiros, Dorota, Edward, Tim, KandeElumalai, Mahendran with Priya, Rajan and Pierre

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We picked bassella spinach, surprisingly large amounts of snake gourd, beans, papaya and pumpkin. We also picked the cashews – again a surprisingly large amount with quite a lot still to come.
  2. We weeded a basil bed in the Souryan garden and then mulched it.
  3. We spent some time sit down jobs in the shade as it is so hot at the moment. These included taking bean seeds out of their pods and winding up string.

Tuesday May 26th

WEATHER; hot and humid, but with a breeze and feeling cooler than yesterday.

VOLUNTEERS; Rishi, Spiros, Dorota, Edward, Tim, Elumalai, with Priya, and Pierre

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We spent the whole morning clearing, composting and then mulching a bed in the Souryan garden.
  2. We sieved some earth and made nursery mixture. We intend to plant a lot of seeds for plants that will be needed in the next few weeks. While the weather is so hot we are going to plant seedlings in the afternoon, as we recently lost a whole bed of roccolla that we planted out last week in the morning.

Wednesday May 27th

WEATHER; hot and humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Rishi, Spiros, Dorota, Edward, Tim, Elumalai, Mahendran with Priya, Rajan and Pierre

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We weeded and composted a maize bed in the Souryan garden. This took up most of the work time.
  2. A group of volunteers helped Spiros set up protective fences around the amla trees. Some of the trees have done quite well and should be out of reach of goats in another year.
  3. Rajan and I wound up some string. We did it really quickly because Rajan used to help his mother do this with wool when she worked knitting at a local Auroville unit. Some of the volunteers find it a really difficult job that takes them ages to do.
  4. We will be planting seedlings this afternoon because it is so hot they get fried up by the sun if we plant them in the morning.

Thursday May 28th

WEATHER; very overcast after a fierce wind and thunderstorm last night. Brightening up a bit later.

VOLUNTEERS; Rishi, Spiros, Dorota, Edward, Tim, Elumalai, Mahendran with Priya, Rajan and Pierre

WORK COMPLETED

  1. Once again we weeded a bed, this time of beans, in the Souryan garden. Because of the rain the weeds came out easier than yesterday although there was a lot of grass that had to be dug out.
  2. We de-seeded the basil in the Souryan garden.
  3. Since there was quite a fierce wind last night we checked that the fences we put around the trees in Jalabhoomi yesterday were still OK. Apart from two slightly wobbly ones the rest were rock solid. Very good work and hopefully they will last a long time.

 

Friday May 29th

WEATHER; sunny and humid.

VOLUNTEERS; Rishi, Spiros, Dorota, Edward, Tim, Elumalai, Mahendran with Priya, Rajan and Pierre

WORK COMPLETED

  1. We did a lot of picking today – beans, maize, pumpkin (some done yesterday), roccolla, papaya, bassella spinach.
  2. We weeded and re-mulched two beds in the Pryog garden.
  3. We started to work on one of the intermittent gardens in the wild orchard as Pierre wants to plant roccolla there. I am not too keen as I thought that on the intermittent beds we were not going to grow anything that needed a lot of work to keep it going – and roccolla needs a lot of work. But Pierre is adamant that we grow roccolla there because it is shady and so the seedlings won’t get burnt up like the last lot did in Le Jardin.
  4. We picked cashew. There seems to be a lot with yet more coming.