End Autumn Harvest Note Wrap Up

Some of our summer crop season extends longer than previous year for this year. We seems to have longer warm weather this year. Furthermore this year, some of the summer loving plants were re-sown in mid-summer to replace the ones that were damaged by the summer heat. The photos will be like a note reminding me how to make the garden more productive each year. As I discovered earlier that for pumpkin/squash I can plant them twice a year but the rules must be that the first sowing I started them very early around mid-August (end winter). So pumpkin/squash plants will fruit before the extreme heat comes around early summer. Because by mid-summer most of the pumpkin/squash plants will be kill off by the extreme heat. Second sowing will be mid/late-summer and the fruits will hopefully ripen by mid-late autumn. We have many yellow currant cherry tomato volunteers plants fruiting. I am very amazed with this variety as it is very disease resistant, tolerates the extreme heat and our winter; and does well in partial shade. It just simply thrive with neglect in our garden. 

Second half of end-autumn goodies harvested from our garden.

Parsnips grown over summer in container did produce decent root size after about 8 months. I was not expecting much since the parsnip leaves got burn during summer.These parsnips were grown together with leeks and a purple skin sweet potato plant. Strange I found 3 potatoes also in the container, must have been from a volunteer plant that I forgotten. Never did I imagined that parsnip, leek and sweet potatoes grow well together in one container. One of the most productive container, as these 3 plants are plants that grow very slowly so they are a good combination.

Sweet potatoes that were grown in container.

Kangkung, leeks, chilli and white spine cucumber.

The white spine cucumber is our family most favourite cucumber. Its not bitter at all, nice flavour even in dry season. Because of this cucumber variety, Rayyan started to really enjoy eating cucumber. This means my portion will become much lesser or almost none because Rayyan will try to put all the cucumber slices on his plate.

Cherrytime capsicum has been the most prolific capsicum this year grown from our home-saved seeds. I had trouble when growing them first time from the seeds I bought, germination was very low. But germination rate was near 100% when we sowed our home-saved seeds probably the seeds has somehow adapted well with our garden climate. Baby lettuce or thinnings from home-grown seeds are generous now for picking often. Lettuce volunteers are also many living harmoniously together with weeds.

The last bitter gourd harvest for this year. Alpine strawberry has been flowering and fruiting this time around. The strawberry fruits are much bigger and sweeter compare during summer. It took half a year for this mini cabbage 'earliball' to form a 'small' head. I think I found more than 10 snails in the leaves

Our first home-grown Jerusalem artichoke (sunroot) harvest. We had only 2 plants growing in partial shade during summer growing without care. I was not expecting much tubers. I was so surprised of the yield from only 2 plants! The picture don't justify how many tubers were harvest actually because that is a deep basket. so you only see the top part. The Jerusalem artichoke tubers felt much heavier than our recent sweet potato harvest. I don't know what does Jerusalem artichoke taste like or the best way to prepare them. So I roasted some tubers together with marinade chicken for Rayyan lunch since I lack energy these days. The flesh near the skin tasted a bit salty and the inner flesh have mild sweetness. I thought it will be fun if I can think of a Malaysian dish that will go well together with these tubers. Next to the Jerusalem artichoke plant was a volunteer turmeric plants that only produce a thumb size knob of turmeric rhizomes. I don't have any home-grown potatoes in my pantry anymore and I have a craving for Malaysia ' Masak Lemak Cili Api' dish. I really don't know what this dish is usually call in English it is somewhat like yellow curry but the paste does not use any dry spices at all. The basic ingredients for this yellow curry paste are usually fresh tumeric rhizomes, shallots, garlic, onions, hot chillies, lemon grass, and add in shredded turmeric leaves, tamarind peels and coconut milk in one pot stir to mix. I made a veal 'Masak Lemak Cili Api' with Jerusalem artichoke tubers substitute for potatoes. One success experiment, Jerusalem artichoke goes well with this Malaysian traditional dish. Rayyan drop some tears after he stubbornly tasted the dish, he was warned several time but did not heed the warning due to strong curiosity. I did not realised he already dip his finger into the yellow curry. Poor boy his tongue was on fire. I used 5 chillies the one harvested in the photo.

Found some volunteer sweet potato tubers while clearing up one of the corner of our vegetable patch. We tried growing hybrid carrot for the first time (Purple Haze F1) and were disappointed with the result. It was supposed to be a dark purple carrot variety but most of the carrot roots were orange and smallish size after 7 month. Shockingly, some carrot plants did not even produce any roots.