Troubled times

PML-N won last night, which is kind of a bummer (not that I particularly love Imran Khan or Zardari, but Nawaz Sharif, really?). Then I went out into the balcony garden this morning and noticed some disconcerting things were happening on my own turf as well.

The bean plants are dying, I think from poor drainage. I stopped giving them water a few days ago and the soil is still moist to the touch, which is crazy because it's so damn hot and sunny outside. Maybe I will try to repot them...but they might be too far gone. Then there is the issue that my vines are producing flowers but they all just wither and die. Why am I not getting any fruits, with the exception of one little bitter melon? It could be any number of things...poor soil, too hot, not enough room for root growth, or maybe I need to water twice a day instead of just once? I repotted my celery and parsley because they weren't growing very well at all, and they seemed to wilt really quickly, so hopefully mixing more compost and a bit of coconut husk into the soil will help the moisture remain more consistent. I also moved my parsley into a sunnier spot which may be a gamble but it's barely grown since I repotted it the first time over a month ago. I'll just have to be extra diligent with water there as well.

Then there are the herbs. The basil is doing well and seems to be flourishing since I repotted it. The oregano is coming along slowly but surely. But the rosemary...whatever seeds I planted from the packet of "rosemary" seeds germinated like crazy and are growing well, but they are definitely not rosemary. It's a plant that looks sort of like flat leaf parsley, but I can't really tell what it is. Sort of a disappointment, I had high hopes for the culinary possibilities that a bunch of fresh rosemary would offer. At some point I'll post a picture and maybe someone can help me identify the mystery sprouts.

With all of this in mind, I think it's time for a consultation with the mali; the next day that he comes I'll make sure to catch him and get his advice!

Election Day!

This is not really related to gardening but it's just so exciting right now. Today is the election day and last night the whole city was having a party. Every car had flags on it, kids were driving around singing and shouting slogans. ("Jitega sher, ik vaari fer!" or "Dekho dekho kaun aaya, sher ka shikari hai!") Most of the kids seemed to support PTI (although it didn't seem like most of them were even old enough to vote), with a substantial number of PML-N supporters. I only saw one of two PPP cars...they must know how outnumbered they are in Punjab. The party atmosphere continued late into the night and it took us nearly two hours to get home from Gulberg just because of the traffic. The girls' school across from our house is a polling station, so there should be lots to see today. I might go visit a friend who is administrating a polling station over in Cantt as well. I have absolutely no predictions about who will win, and can't say I personally particularly like any of the major candidates, but elections are fun! I get a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington sort of thrill every time election day rolls around and even though I'm in Lahore and nobody is handing out "I Voted" stickers the thrill is the same. Who knows what's going to happen!

Here are some pictures of the commute home last night:

Also, here is a picture of my okra harvest that Mushtaq Sahab cooked. It was delicious!

Bhindi ka saalan

Mushtaq Sahab making roti

Joshanda and the importance of medicinal plants

I have a cold again; I woke up feeling tired and with a tickle in my throat and then it hit me like a truck this afternoon. I was in a meeting at NCA and so on the way home I stopped at Hafiz Juice Corner, one of my favorite spots along the Lahore Mall, and had some fresh grapefruit juice for the vitamin C. But a three hour nap later I still feel exhausted and scratchy-throated, so it's time to bust out the joshanda again.

I wanted pomegranate but they were out. :(

I'm fascinated with joshanda. When I had a cold a few months ago (not long after arriving) Shahzad suggested I try it and I found it to be very soothing and helpful. It's an herbal preparation that was developed in Unani medicine (traditional Graeco-Arabic medicine, traced back through Avicenna, Galen, and Hippocrates). It comes as small brown crystals in little foil packets which you dissolve in hot water. And it is delicious!

The ingredients on the package are listed as:

• Malabar nut tree leaves (Barg-baansa, Adhatoda vasica)
• Licorice root (Mulethi, Glycyrrhiza glabra)
• Hyssop (Zufa, Hyssopus officinalis)
• Licorice extract (Rubb-us-sus)
• Ephedra (Soma kalpa, Ephedra gerardiana) 
• Poppy seeds (Khushkhaash, Papaver somniferum)

It seems that different companies use different combinations of herbs in their preparations, although this seems to be a pretty general recipe. Traditionally joshanda is made by boiling the herbs down, but now it comes in these convenient little sachets like instant coffee.

David Arnold argues that "modernity is not a single entity, patented by the West and and retailed across the globe, but is capable of multiple forms and any number of cultural and political variants which, while inevitable drawing on the science, technology, and medicine of the West, also incorporate indigenous traditions and local systems of knowledge, thus enabling a country like India [or, obviously, Pakistan] to forge a modern identity appropriate to its own cultural legacies and specific needs." (2000:17) A fairly recent pharmaceutical study in the Pakistan Journal of Pharmacology (Azmi et al. 2010) found significant antimicrobial activity in certain ingredients commonly used in joshanda, thus legitimizing indigenous medicine through Western-style scientific techniques. The joshanda packet (by which I mean its formal qualities; mass-produced, sterile, printed in Urdu and English, etc.), and the discourses around joshanda (see this article in Time, or this article in Dawn, for example) provide a small but interesting example of embracing the symbolic value of traditional medicine while at the same time adopting certain trappings of the modern Western medico-industrial complex.

In other news, I repotted my small basil plants, my vines grow bigger every day, and my zinnia is blooming!

Tiny tiny basil plants

Zinnia

The bitter melon vines have made it all the way to the top of the railing.

REFERENCES

Arnold, David
2000 Science, Technology, and Medicine in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Azmi, Abdul Azim et al.
2010 Antibacterial Activity of Joshanda: A Polyherbal Therapeutic Agent Used in Common Cold. Pakistan Journal of Pharmacology 27(1):25-28.

Harvests large and small

It's almost the end of the wheat-harvesting season in Punjab, and I've been fortunate to take a few trips out into the rural areas (Gujrat, Pindi Bhattiyan, Okara) where I could see the wheat harvest in process. Mostly the fields are filled with beautiful golden wheat although there are sugarcane fields, cotton, buffalo fodder, potatoes, and other crops.

Wheatfield in Gujrat, just as a rainstorm was about to blow in.

So golden!

Women glean the wheat after the field has been cleared and keep it in their homes. Some people still grind their flour by hand.

Cut and ready for the thresher

Tractor ride!

Most of the wheat is still harvested by hand, then mechanical threshers are brought in to separate the grain from the chaff. The straw is baled and kept aside to give to the livestock, and then the wheat is either stored in small earthen silos or taken to be sold or ground. The fields are cleared of the remaining stalks by burning them, and the earth is prepared for rice cultivation (a much more labor intensive crop).

Wheatfield near Pindi Bhattiyan

Fodder for cattle

Meanwhile back in the city, this morning I had my own little harvest! Seven perfect little bhindiyan (okras). I brought them downstairs to hearty congratulations from Shahzad, Amjad, and Muntasir. Tomorrow I'll have the cook make them into something tasty and feed it to everyone. It's a small harvest, everyone will only get a little mouthful, but the point is to share what I've grown. Such satisfaction! Supposedly the plants will continue producing for several months yet.

My first harvest!

Baby cats and baby veggies

Exciting morning; my okras are abundant and I think I'm going to start harvesting them tomorrow. There will only be a handful but I'll fry them up with tomatoes and onions and masala and make sure everyone at the house tries them. Additionally, I've found my first tiny tiny karela! It's only an inch long right now but hopefully it'll grow large and delicious. I love bitter melon, it's probably my favorite vegetable of all. Yesterday I was in my friend's village and had a delicious traditional Punjabi preparation of them; they are slit down the middle and the insides scooped out, then they are stuffed with a spicy mixture of mincemeat and chana dal, then tied with a string and cooked slowly in spices, dum style. I've never had karelas that good, they were so tasty! Maybe if I get enough of my own I will try this style.

yummy okra

get in my belly

baby karela <3

Additionally, this morning as I went out to water, I heard a noise in the vine on the rooftop, a loud rustle and a squeak. I crouched down and saw movement, and then I saw Charles trotting out along the roof with a tiny white kitten in her mouth. I didn't have my camera but the kitten was adorable. I believe there may be another one as well, although it seems she's moved them. Hopefully in a few weeks they'll be big enough to play on their own and there will be further sightings.

Norman Gill and Gollan's Indian Vegetable Garden

The weather is getting hotter, plants are blossoming all over the place, and I'm really pleased with how big my vines are getting.

The current setup

Okra flower

Bitter melon flowers

A baby okra!

The zinnias I planted are going to bloom...finally a flower success!

Maintaining this blog is a bit of a challenge because the simple fact that gardening is a slow hobby, one of small degrees. The drama unfolds bit by bit before your eyes, and so from day to day there are few changes to report. The plants grow. You give them water, you give them sun. They get bigger, bit by bit. Essentially it's always the same story. And for the gardener, that is, for me, this small and somewhat predictable drama is still perfectly thrilling. But trying to write about it is a completely different thing. So my challenge is to find a way to use this writing as an arena for exploration and discovery, looking to cultural practices here that might be different than my own, to local flora and fauna that are unusual to me, and to thought-provoking textual sources.

Today I started reading the 1920 fourth edition of Gollan's Indian Vegetable Garden, an early 20th century colonial treatise for the British home gardener in India. It was edited by horticulturist Norman Gill (1878-1924), a "genial Cornishman" (Briscoe 1920:494) who was apparently responsible for introducing avocado cultivation in India. This effort alone makes me respect and admire him, even if the avocado somehow didn't catch on in the subcontinent. It seems that Gill made quite a variety of contributions to botany and horticulture and yet because he didn't publish much in academic journals he is now largely forgotten; a lesson to all of us would-be scientists. Shah (1996) describes in glowing terms his efforts to promote the cultivation of plants as varied as strawberries and belladonna.

Anyway, I look forward to reading Gollan's; so far even the front matter and advertisements for other books are interesting from a social history standpoint, e.g. the ad for The Indian Cookery Book, available numbered in English and Urdu editions so that "The Housekeeper who cannot read Urdu has only to turn up the number wanted and hand it to the cook who can either read it or get it read to him" (how convenient!). I'm sure there will be many more such gems of colonial life to come in the actual text. There are so many interesting questions that rise up out of a text like this one: who was the audience of this book? Who was actually doing the chores and tasks of gardening? What was at stake for the British colonial powers in promoting vegetable gardening and Western-style agricultural science in India? How do imperialist ideologies permeate even something as mundane as growing a cucumber? Because I am certain that they can and do.

More to come.


REFERENCES

Bricoe, T.W. 
1920 "Two Years' Sojourn in India." The Journal of the Kew Guild 3(27):493-495.

Shah, N.C.
1996 "Norman Gill--The Pioneer Horticulturist of the Hills of Uttar Pradesh--A Tribute." Indian Journal of the History of Science 31(4):383-390.

Rainstorm

Woke up this morning to the sound of a light drizzle; everything is cool and shiny-slick. I went out to check on the plants and found a little present tucked up under the parsley: a neatly folded ten rupee note!

Sweet! It's raining money!

The herbs seem to be really coming along, and the squash and cucumber are starting to trail up the lattice.

Basil starting to look like basil

Squash blossoms

Another exciting thing I noticed today was my first okra blossom, about to pop. My only concern with the okra is that the plants are still quite short. When I've grown okra in the past the plants were at least a couple of feet tall. These are only about eight inches, and they've already got buds! Will they get taller? Is this some kind of dwarf variety? Did I screw up the planting of them? I suppose if they're producing fruit I should have nothing to complain about.

Bhindi about to blossom

Other plants are blossoming too; the Chinese honeysuckle on the tree in the front yard is dripping with sprays of pink and white flowers, and the neighbor's frangipani tree is also covered in creamy fragrant blooms. Both of these plants had been dormant (and I presumed dead), but suddenly sprang to life over the past few weeks.

There are always tons of birds hanging out in the honeysuckle, I think they must have nests there. There are mynahs, bulbuls, and common sparrows as well. No sign of the kittens yet, perhaps their mother moved them?

Blossoms and sprouts

Is it possible to be terrible at growing flowers and decent at growing vegetables? I feel more invested in my vegetable crop than in the flowers I bought, and maybe that shows. Maybe it's because the vegetables I have nurtured from seed. Who can say? But the truth is that the flowers are as lackluster as ever, while the veggies and herbs are growing like gangbusters. I have sprouts of all my herbs, and the basil sprouts are even growing their first true leaves. Meanwhile, my big squash vine is covered in flowers and all three bitter melon vines are also blooming. The bean plants are coming up strong and the cucumbers are looking good as well.

Bitter melon flower

Bean sprout

Herbs germinating

On an unrelated note I was told by one of the staff that a cat has had kittens in the glorybower vine, so hopefully I'll get to see them soon as well! I think it's one of these two cats:

Snoozing on the neighbor's wall

This one's name is Charles (pronounced in the French way). Charles is looking a bit pregnant.

This one is Harriet. Some evenings she sleeps on a chair by my front door.

The Gardener

Garden updates in brief: yesterday by evening I decided that two of my cucumbers had not survived the transplant, so I pulled them up and started some more cucumber seeds in their place. One appears to be ok, the other in critical condition. I also sowed some more herb seeds, as apparently rosemary is ridiculously hard to start from seed, and repotted the other sad geranium. I am considering repotting the chrysanthemums as the leaves seem to be quite dry. Damn that clay soil.

Another thing I picked up on my outing to Oxford University Press was this gem of a book: The Gardener: Horticulture in Pakistan. It's written by Abdul Karim Khan, who founded the Horticultural Society of Pakistan in 1948. I came across a lovely interview with him that appeared in Dawn a few years ago, in which he explains his love for gardening: 

"We are after all the children of Adam and Eve, who were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. All our life we strive to do good in this world in the hope of reaching that garden. I have only decided to grow flowery gardens in this world also."

The book is fairly straightforward, beginning with a foundational yet detailed chapter of basic plant biology and gardening principles. The remainder of the book is divided into sections based on type of plant (flowering plants, shrubs, orchids, trees, etc.) with technical information about a wide variety of species, and then a chapter on lawns ("the heart and soul of the garden") sections on garden planning, plant diseases, pests, etc., and a month-by-month calendar. It's very much organized like an encyclopedia, but Khan's thoroughness and care shine through the entries. Take for example his scathing opinion on bonsai: 

"I personally feel that it is torturous for a plant to be stunted, turned rickety, abnormal and retarded to please the human eye. To achieve this it is undernourished, tied with wire to stop the circulation of food in order to famish the leaves; the branches are pruned to control its growth at a whimsical height, and the roots are pruned to minimise the intake of food and to enable the use of shallow containers to control the root spread." (315) 

If this isn't love for plants, I don't know what is. I'm not sure I can ever look at bonsai trees the same way again!

Adorable tiny tree or freakish casualty of human whimsicality?

Particularly useful to me is the focus on plants that are grown in Pakistan, as many of these are unfamiliar to me. Upon the first casual leafing through of the book I was able to identify the red-flowered vine outside my window that has stumped me since I got here. I had decided to call it a Chinese honeysuckle (Quisqualis indica) even though I had my doubts about it. But based on the descriptions in The Gardener it's clear that this vine is a Clerodendrum splendens (aka glory tree, flaming glorybower). Where applicable, the "local" (Urdu) names of the plants are listed, extremely helpful to someone like me who, for instance, can never tell the different species of jasmine apart (juhi? motiya? chambeli?), or can never get anyone to give me a definitive answer on what that tree is that's been covered with huge red flowers for the past month (it's a silk cotton tree! Bombax ceiba or, in Urdu, simbal).

Lucky flip to this page helped me identify my vine!

So anyway, this book was well worth the 900 or so rupees. And by the author's standards, it's already fulfilling it's purpose; he writes in the introduction:

"I shall deem this book a great success, and consider my labour well spent, if it can help to make our homes more colourful, our cities more beautiful, our environment free of pollution, and Pakistan more green, and fragrant."

Garden store adventure, with unintended tragic consequences?

Yesterday I was running some errands in Gulberg (looking for the Oxford University Press store to pick up Tariq Rahman's latest) and we drove past a seed store that has caught my eye before but I've never actually gone. I got out of the car telling myself I was just going to look around. Sure.

Their website is: http://prideseedstore.com/index.html

I started chatting with Ashfaq, an employee, who gave me some advice on what things I should be planting. I ended up choosing beans (a red speckled variety) and some herbs: basil, oregano, rosemary. I've never planted herbs from seed before but I'm hopeful. He also gave me, as a gift, three little plants: an okra, a cucumber, and a vegetable called tar (Cucumis utilissimus).

The spoils...I had already planted the okra.

I also picked up some compost--real compost, not awful clay stuff--and some coconut husk stuff to mix with it, and I almost bought a hummingbird feeder but restrained myself. And good thing too, because that bag of compost cost 1800 rupees! Which is ridiculous. That's like $18. The guy gave me a nice little discount but still, DAMN. That's like half of the entire amount I have spent on my garden from day one. I almost wanted to tell him to forget it but paid up like a chump because he had been so nice. I guess quality potting medium is really hard to come by here. And it was 100 liters of quality potting medium, so maybe not a horrible deal? 18 rupees a liter of awesome, loamy, fragrant, soft black compost?

Then of course, since I had more plants to plant, I was going to need more pots. We swung by the row of nurseries at Kalma Chowk and looked around for a good deal. The first guy quoted us a price of 300 rupees for a pot similar to the ones I got at the DHA nursery for half that amount. Then he tried to convince us that we should buy these pots from Peshawar because somehow Peshawari clay was stronger...it didn't make a lot of sense, so we left. The next nursery the guy showed us the exact same pot for only 120 rupees. Sold. I got three big ones and three small ones (the small ones were only 30 rupees each). He picked them out for my by striking them with his hand. If the pot made a clear ringing sound then there were no cracks, if the sound was softer and dull then he put it back. I never knew this about pots.

Pot selection

Testing the sound of the pots

We packed up the pots and headed back to the house, where once I got everything upstairs (of course I was only allowed to carry the small pots) I started mixing soil and coconut husk and arranging everything and planting the new seeds. This is where I may have made my fatal mistake. I was so excited about the compost being better quality than the horrible clay I've been using so far that I decided to transplant my cucumbers into it. I am too much of an idiot to leave well enough alone, apparently. My beautiful cucumbers that were growing so well did not take the transplantation well, and now are droopy and sad and I am worried they will die, setting me back like a month in terms of cucumber production. Stupid. I watered everything well but as of this morning only one of them seems to be perking up.

Current configuration

I have beans in the two large pots to the left, then a pot with the cucumber and tar that Ashfaq gave me, then my sad droopy formerly gorgeous cucumbers, then two pots with bitter melon (since I still have only three plants and want four I planted some more bitter melon seeds, I can't figure out why the one spot will not produce!), then two pots with squash. In the front there are three large pots with okra plants and at the front left three small pots in which I planted basil, rosemary, and oregano. I have no experience growing herbs from seed so it may not work at all, but it's a fun experiment.

Fingers are crossed for the survival of my sad sad cucumbers...

Doomed geranium?

My geranium situation has gone from sad to worse. Two of them are still fine, one is looking a little shabby, but the worst one is this guy:

I know overwatering is a problem with geraniums, so first I tried giving less water and moved him into the sun. Then when there was no improvement, I tried giving more water. Now it's just a mess. I don't know if there's any hope. I have a suspicion that it's a result of the clay soil (supposedly poor drainage leads to yellowing of leaves). Googling the problem has led me to the following (unsubstantiated) tips:

• they don't like to have wet leaves even
• the soil should be perfectly dry in between waterings
• deadheading is key
• they need full sun (which mine already have)

My current plan is to repot this one mixing in more compost with the soil, and also to deadhead it and pull off the brown parts. Then we'll see. But reading about geraniums has also lead me to find out some interesting things about their history. Most of what are called geraniums are actually pelargoniums, a plant from southern Africa that was introduced to England in the mid seventeenth century. Pelargonium means stork, and it is called that because of the long, pointy fruits thought to look like a stork's bill. Their leaves kill Japanese beetles, and apparently pelargonium oil can be used to treat respiratory infections. All I really want is for it to not die, anything else is a bonus.

C.W. Ward in the 1900 "Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture" describes my problem perfectly: "While the general florist may consider geranium- culture the easiest of all gardening, the fact remains that it is as necessary to observe the requirements of the geranium as it is to observe the requirements of any other plant; in order to succeed and produce the best effects attainable. While it is true that the geranium will grow and make a good showing with comparatively little care, there is as much difference between a skilfully grown geranium plant and one carelessly grown as there is between a fancy and a common rose or carnation." (sic)

Okra Mystery

Fieldwork has been heating up, hence I've had fewer opportunities to post about my garden, but I've got a little time today to make some updates. I've given up on the zinnia/dahlia mix that I planted. They just sort of shriveled up, I don't know why. I've also been having some issues with my geraniums, I can't think why! I've always read that you need to let them dry out in between waterings, and so I've been trying not to overwater, but maybe that logic doesn't apply here in Lahore at the start of the hot season. Highs have been getting up in the 30s (celsius, 90s for my American friends) and the sun is quite bright. At least it still gets cool at night!

The current configuration of the vegetable garden

The various vegetables seem to be coming along. The remainder of my squash have finally started coming up! My plan is to have two vines in each of the large pots, for a total of four each of cucumber, bitter melon, and squash. I'm still waiting for one more bitter melon (karela) to sprout, but other than that the vines seem to be coming along nicely. I think that within a week I will probably be able to start training them to grow on the balcony railing.

Bitter melon is really a beautiful plant

Then in the okra (bhindi) pots Amjad assures me there is enough room to have around five plants in each. Which brings me to my okra mystery. The seeds I initially planted mostly came up, and I filled in the remainder with a second round of planting. Two of the pots are doing well and have a bunch of little seedlings I plan to thin out shortly. The third pot somehow only has a single sprout, despite two rounds of planting. I suspect theft of seeds by the birds, it's the only way I can account for it. Plus I saw a bird sitting in my pots the other day, I'm thinking they are the culprit. This morning I did a third round of planting of the okra seeds. I must have put ten seeds each in four holes around the sides of the pot, so hopefully at least a few will survive.

Successful okra, lots of little plants

Weirdly non-sprouting okra, with one sad plant

Okra worries aside, I was happy to find that my echeveria is about to bloom! So pretty. I'm thinking that as the flowers develop the leaves are starting to look a little bit withered, so I need to read up on succulent care. The weather in Lahore is not that different from Texas, but this still feels like a trial and error period.

Flower buds on my echeveria

I still haven't been able to chat with the mali, probably because I've been quite busy the past few weeks, but I hope to catch up with him soon.