Our First Sunroot Malaysia Harvest

 We are doing a trial growing sunroot (Jerusalem artichokes) this year in this hot and humid tropical weather and one plant had died off which was planted last November. So we dig in and see what the results are from the spot we tried to grow the sunroot plant. The plant was only about 2 feet tall so I was not expecting much of it. Surprisingly the plant did yield several tubers, although not as many as we used to harvest from one plant. The location was in full sun. At the moment, I am contemplating to regrow the tubers again in different location. As I don't have much tubers to experiment on, probably most will go to re-planting them again rather than cooking the tubers.

 Our main harvest last week were sweet leaves (star gooseberry), chillies and butterfly pea flowers. I am not sure what this fruit is called but it is not a mango fruit. My mother gave most of the sweet leaves plants a hard-pruning 3 weeks ago and now new shoots are quickly growing. She pruned those sweet leaves plants to half of its original height.

 We also harvested some pattypan squashes, cape gooseberries, sweet basil leaves, cucumber tree fruits, sponge luffa, calamansi limes, soursop, nam nam fruits, purple plum radish, snake beans and pea eggplants. We made juice with the soursop fruit. I have been harvesting while doing some other gardening task and kept the harvest in the pocket. So this picture above summarise what we got to harvest from our garden last week.

 We only got a few mulberry fruits to harvest this week. Rayyan has to wait for the fruits ripening on the trees at the moment. Lemon fruits are not as many as previous to harvest since some got a hard-pruning so waiting for new shoots to grow. But we do have a few lemon trees fruiting which is still green not ready for harvesting. I think it is better to have them not ripening at once so we have a succession of harvest. We managed to prune a pamelo, calamansi lime, wax apple and nam nam tree last week. Last Saturday, my husband managed to give a hard pruning on this mango plant that we did not realised had 2 passion fruit plants climbing on it. No wonder we had ripen passion fruits under the bushy mango trees. Not only that we discovered so many orchids on the tree as well which has not seen light for some time I reckon. The passion fruit will flower much better now as they will received more lights and we can also spy whether the plants are fruiting or not.

 This is another mango tree that had a hair cut as well and we can now see the sky in any angle or corner of this tree. This is the mango that my mother pruned almost 2 years ago and she fell from it. Hopefully tomorrow when she returned she will be happy to see the mango plant had a hair cut.

 My husband in the mood to do some tree hard-pruning and has been asking me which tree next. I think it is time to give the sapodilla fruit trees a hard pruning. The sapodilla fruit trees bear fruits almost all year round. But the problem the plant is too bushy now and I can't see the fruits clearly except the ones facing outside. So I think better to give the sapodilla tree a hard pruning.

Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions. 

Spring Cleaning

 We did a little bit of spring cleaning around our container garden at the backyard on this long weekend. The last year and autumn sowed plants are going to flower any moment, so it is best to harvest them ASAP or it will become woody/bitter once the plants starts to flower. Most of the rainbow chards in our garden is flowering, same as kohlrabi. We harvested some red romaine lettuce, purple top turnip and leek. All of these veggies were given to young student friends visiting Abby last Saturday.

 We also give-away these root crop vegetables- carrots, boltardy beetroots and black spanish radishes to Abby's young bright scientist visitors.

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 Our Italian sprouting broccoli and peas still continue to supply food for our kitchen supply. We harvested all Western Red carrots grown in the same polystyrene box this week. I am quite satisfied with the number of carrot that we get from only one small container.

It is ranunculus blooming season in our garden at the moment, cut some to bring inside. Surprisingly, found some ripen capsicum cherrytime fruits on the plant hidden surrounded by beetroot leaves. Florence fennel bulbs are also good size ready to be pick in the garden. It is exciting at the moment to pick cape gooseberry fruits and eat them straight away in the garden. 

Enjoying fresh pick chamomile for tea almost everyday now. 

Our 7 weeks old Abbiyana is also putting on weight nicely and chubbier.

Join in Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday.

Watermelon Radish Life-Cycle

 Watermelon Radish looks like a fruit when you cut it into half as the bright reddish colour under the skin show itself. I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. H at Subsistence Pattern for introducing us to this gorgeous radish and the precious seeds we received. I miss Subsistence Pattern posting as their passion of growing their own food and saving seeds is always so inspiring. Surprisingly, this radish variety does not have the pungent radish smell like the other varieties in the radish group. Watermelon radish resemble turnip at a glance. But it can grow much bigger at the size of  my palm remaining juicy without becoming woody. Compared with other radish variety that we have grown in our garden, watermelon radish root growth is rather slow. However, we are very fond of this radish flavour compare with other radish. This is one of our favourite radish to grow in the garden list after the heat waves has gone and the weather turns milder.

 But in our climate, sowing watermelon radish in spring just make the plants bolt early without producing much root. This is similar case with daikon (Japanese radish) and some other varieties as well. I am not sure the reason why but I was thinking that some radish varieties might be sensitive to the longer-daylight hours.  The best season in our garden for sowing watermelon radish or daikon will be end of summer or early fall for producing nice size of roots. We also extend the sowing season up till June/July (early~mid winter) for succession sowing just to replace other veggies that have been harvested.

 Watermelon radish can be grown well in container. Just make sure the soil does not dry out, keep moist. If the part top of the root or shoulder is well-exposed to the sunlight, this part will turn green but still edible. I frequently make mistake with the watermelon radish spacing and sowed to closely with each other. I forgot that watermelon radish does seems to have larger size of leaves compared with the other radish that we grow. So more space in between is required to harvest bigger roots. 

Unintentionally, some watermelon radish starts to flower and it was nice timing at that time since no other brassica veggies were producing flower so it was a chance to collect seeds. I never can catch up in each spring with harvesting before the plants starts to flower. Letting one plant flower for collecting seeds is more than enough supply for a few years. The watermelon radish flower resembles daikon and kailan (chinese broccoli) closely. The watermelon radish seed pod is roundish at the bottom and with a long pointy end. Last end summer, we sowed some of this fresh seeds just to confirm whether the seeds is pure or not. We were happy that no cross-pollination occurred and we managed to harvest pure seeds.

Sorry, I have not been a good blogger friend this few months.

Since last Sunday Rayyan has not feeling well maybe caught some bug.

He transferred it to me, so I started not feeling well today.

Getting rounder and 37 weeks pregnant already, waiting for baby to decide her date of birth.

Its getting harder to fall asleep, feel like a zombie.

Hope to catch up.

Sesiapa yang berminat untuk cuba tanam watermelon radish lawatilah laman ini (klik ayat ini).