Karela is a popular vegetable in India. Many karela haters also het surprised to know how such bitter vegetable be such popular one. Many people will say that their parents used to force them to eat karela when they were kid. It is a healthy vegetable. It helps in digestion system as well as develop taste. It contains various vitamins as well as minerals. Many people also not aware of its English name. Not only that many English speaking foreigners do not know that what is called karela in English. It is because they do not eat karela. Do you know karela vegetable in English name?
Well, without wasting any time, I would say…
Bitter gourd is Karela in English.
Karela vegetable is also know as bitter melon in English.
So now you know what is called karela vegetable in English. Right?
Growing bitter gourd / bitter melon (Karela vegetable in English)
I love this vegetable of its bitterness. That is why, every year I grow some bitter gourd vines in my rooftop garden. Anybody can easily grow bitter gourds from seeds. As it is a climbing plant, so you needs to build a trellis to provide support to this plant. It grows very rapidly. So it also needs fertilizer time to time. As I am not an expert. But still, I am successful to grow plenty of vegetables for m family throughout the year. The key of my success is giving balanced fertilizer to my plant. I normally follow natural farming method to grow my plants.
I add enough compost to the potting mix. 25-30% good quality compost fertilizer should be added with soil. Apart from that I add handful of need cake as well mustard cake in the soil. After that, I apply liuid fertilizer prepared with mustard cake after every 10 days.
- I apply dashparni ark thrice a month. It works as insect repellent.
- Then I spray sour butter milk on my plants. That too I apply thrice a month. It works as an organic fungicide.
- I usually avoid chemical inputs. But I have approx 5 kg of NPK 18 18 18 in my gardening inventory. I got that after winning a contest. So I also NPK 18 18 18 mixed with Sagarika seaweed extracts twice a month within a gap of 10 day.
- I also use organic micronutrients on my plants for once a month.
That is my schedule for my kitchen garden. I follow the same schedule for all of my plants. I can not apply different spray schedule for different plant like an expert. I want to keep gardening simple.
It helps to grow enough bitter gourd (karela in English name) vegetables every summer year after year.
Also read:
All vegetable names in Hindi language; All sabji names in both languages
Food grains name in Hindi and English – A must read
Various types of millets in Hindi and English
All fruits names in both languages Hindi and English
Dishes prepared with bitter gourd
Bitter gourd is used to make various traditional dishes. It is often added to mixed veg. But many people try to avoid bitter gourd in mixed veg because it changes the taste of other vegetables. So I prefer to have these awesome bitter gourd based dishes – bitter gourd fry, delicious bitter gourd pakoda, mouthwatering achari bitter gourd, taste Bengali style shukto.
All these are easy to make. You just need to follow simple traditional recipes to make all of those dishes. But the most common bitter gourd based dish prepared at my home is karela seddho or mashed boiled bitter gourd vegetable. Did you ever try it? It is very delicious and it helps you develop taste. Whenever there is a digestion issue of anybody in our family, karela seddho or shukto prepared with karela is a compulsory dish in our menu, haha. Sometimes boiled potato & boiled bitter gourd are mashed together.
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