SEED PROCESSING TIME THIRD WEEK IN MARCH 2024

This week we spent a lot of our time with some of our seeds as with the increasingly hot and sunny weather its a very good time to dry them. In this case beans and brinjal (aubergine). Problem is that the squirrels, rats and probably quite a few other little animals just love eating them - especially the beans.

This means that they need to be covered up every night and I keep forgetting to do it. I've therefore put the seeds right outside my house so I don't forget to cover them up. Once the seeds are dry we take them out of the pods and put them into the seed cupboard which is in the microgreen kitchen.

They stay here for a bit longer to get completely dry and then they get put in bags and go into the fridge. Although we are getting short of bean seeds so they will probably be replanted quite quickly.

Rajan says he knows where all the different seeds are in the fridge (I wouldn't know where to begin!) and so far he has been very good at finding seeds for our latest nursery planting. With several beds planting ready and and other waiting to be cleared we need to make sure that there are plenty of seedlings ready to be planted.

So we started sorting out the seedlings we already had and discarding those that obviously were not going to grow. We then filled up trays with pots of soil, planted bean and pumpkin seeds and then watered them. Note that this had to be done outside the nursery because, as usual, it is completely full with growing microgreens.

The animals love to eat pumpkin seeds as much if not more than bean seeds so it was important that all the trays were covered to keep them out. Rajan has promised that the new, supposedly animal proof nursery will be put up soon. Can't wait!

I expect its the hot weather but within three days the seeds were fast growing into seedlings. There is a bed ready for them so we can plant them out as soon as they are big enough.

There is still quite a lot of mango ginger to dig up so I was very pleased when one of our volunteers said she would develop a recipe for mango pickle. First job was to make a mango paste using this stone. You can use a machine but according to her it tastes better when its made this traditional way. Another volunteer phoned his Mum who has given us a recipe for making mango ginger powder which we are going to try as well.