Fenugreek’s journey – Week 2

The rapid growth of the plants was very heartening to see. Assuming this kind of growth, I started
thinking too far into the future.

On Day 9, when I again thought of taking pictures, this is how the plants looked:

Most of them were around 2” inches tall. All the stems looked pristine and we can also see the tiny
green leaves developing well. I also checked upon the root growth. It seems the aeration was
proper. There was no root damage. You will also notice that I have removed the wooden stick which
was there before to prevent the roots from too much water. Since the plant was growing well, I
assumed that if somehow the roots weren’t getting enough nutrients, it may hinder the growth.

However, if you look closely, two issues seemed to crop up. The first issue was that some of the
shoots started drying up. You may see them in this picture:

On analysing deeper, I found that some of the roots weren’t able to reach the water level and these
were the shoots which actually dried up. This was the first lesson I learnt – Plant nutrient is
extremely crucial. If the roots don’t get access to them, there is a high chance of the entire crop
dying extremely soon.

Another noticeable issue which I felt as the week progressed was that some of the plants started
tilting towards one side. Initially they were 100% straight but now you can see them in a lot of
shoots.

I tried thinking of the possible causes. The only thing which seemed probable was that since I wasn’t
growing them on soil, the plants weren’t firmly rooted and hence they started tilting because of the
weight. Again, at that point of time, this was the only thing which seemed the most possible cause of
tilting to me.

On the whole, the plants seemed to be coming up really well with no major issues. However, the
plant growth seemed to slow down considerably or at least it wasn’t up to my expectations. With
the kind of growth in the first week, I expected them to grow up to at least 4” but baring a few which
looked to be around 3”, rest of them remained almost the same. Then I thought probably this is how
it actually grows – a rapid growth post germination followed by a period of normal growth.

Also, since I read that Fenugreek/Methi can be harvested in 3-4 weeks, I started planning a little
ahead. I thought of growing some coriander after harvesting this bunch of Methi. So I prepared
another set of 12 net pots, filled them up with a combination of cocopeat and clay pellets. There was
lot of literature on how to seed a coriander. All of them invariably instructed to break the seed into
two, soak it in warm water and then seed. I didn’t want to soak them in water so I started breaking
the seeds into two. However, after breaking a few seeds, since I could not see any further smaller
seeds, I stopped breaking the other seeds in the fear that I was doing something wrong. Here is a pic
of the net pots post the seeding:

So except for two net pots where I sowed the broken coriander seeds, the others were seeded with
the full seeds. Also, since I thought that the methi plants were tilting because the cocopeat was not
firmly pressed, I ensured that I pressed the cocopeat in these net pots a tad harder. The coriander
seeds normally take 7-9 days to germinate, so I assumed that by the time they germinate, I can
harvest methi and put these coriander net pots in the nutrient rich water filled container.

I somehow felt that in spite of the late night sittings at office, these infused a fresh sense of energy.
On the whole, it was a very eventful week to watch the plants grow.