Friday, 12 February 2021

Growing Broccoli: Expectations vs. Reality

Hey, Hi guys Good evening. I would like to share you my Experience on growing Broccoli. Avoid these mistakes i made, when growing broccoli.

Growing Broccoli from seeds

Purchased broccoli seeds from Bighaat website. The seeds are from Bejo company and variety name of the Broccoli is Lucky. Sown seeds at the beginning of October near by the raised bed of pigeon pea. At the beginning it was all growing well. I directly sown the seeds. The water irrigation is through drip. At the beginning everything was fine as you can see in the image.


Broccoli growing stages and growing seasons

 There are four stages of growing Broccoli. The Broccoli takes 50-70 days to complete from seed sowing to harvest Broccoli. Broccoli growing season is like starting transplanting seedlings from February and July. Mostly the Broccoli are grown in the months of Feb - Apr and Jul - oct. This vegetable usually planted in spring,  where the temperature is approximately about 60-65 F. It also grows well in cool-weather summer. In each stage of broccoli it requires different temperature to thrive well. The growing stages of the Broccoli are 1. Germination stage 2. Seedling stage 3. Vegetative stage 4. Flowering stage.


Broccoli after few days of sowing seeds

 I applied poultry manure when preparing raised beds. And after that I have sown the seeds. After 15 days I observed it is having stunted growth, I applied cow dung nearby saplings. It went well up to 1 month. Lately I observed yellow spots on the leaves. I just left as it is... Didn't sprayed anything. That leaf has fell down. Thought it was recovering.  


Mistakes to avoid when growing broccoli

In the plot I planted only drought resistant plants. Such as Brinjal, bottle gourd, pigeon pea, cluster beans, Malabar spinach, flat beans, etc... Hence, I didn't watered these plants very often. 

After 76 days I observed curd is forming on the broccoli. Suddenly within three days it bulged to a certain size as you can see in the image.

I thought the size will increase, but the size didn't increased. Rather the curd was turning to form seeds as shown in the image.


As you can see in the image, the seeds are forming.  The dried dots are the seeds which are forming. 

Points to remember for Broccoli growing

1. Don't plant them in shade.
2. Broccoli needs more water.
3. If you are going large scale cropping, consult broccoli farmer who already doing broccoli farming.
4. Before large scale farming, search for buy back dealers. There a firm in Bangalore who exports exotic vegetables. Farm Exim, chamrajpet, Bangalore. Mobile no: +918884111995

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Thursday, 11 February 2021

Malabar spinach seeds will be available for swap soon

Today in this Blog post, you will be knowing how to grow Malabar spinach from seeds and also you will know few health benefits of Malabar spinach.
 
Very glad to say that the Malabar spinach seeds will be available for swap soon. The seeds are swapped from one of the member. The seeds had good germination. Totally I had four seeds. In that, I successfully grown two of them. Few failed due to rats and slugs. 

Would like share my experience on growing Malabar spinach. Approximately, I sown Malabar spinach seeds on October 12th in raised beds. I would able to see the sprouts after 12 days of sowing the seeds. 



You can see the sprout of Malabar spinach above. They have grown up well. After three months it has grown so tall. As it is climber it has reached to a height of 6 feet. Now I can able to see some red colour seeds like structure forming. And the seeds will be available for swap very soon after they are turning to black colour. So wait and watch. Presently the below video shows you the Malabar spinach. In the video you can see some reddish pink bubbles which are turned to black. These are used as seeds for propagating.


Fertilizers used

To be frank, I didn't used any fertilizer for growing Malabar spinach. I just made raised bed and sown the seeds of Malabar  spinach and watered them. That's it. 

Climate Conditions

I sown seeds of Malabar spinach in october, where we received few rains. The farm is situated near Hosur, Tamilnadu. We had moderate climate.

How to use Malabar spinach

Mostly Malabar spinach leaves are used in raw salads, fruit mix, soups, etc.... It can also be eaten raw. I used to daily chew the leaves.

Pests observed in Malabar spinach

I didn't observed any pests in the Malabar spinach. 



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