Purple Top Turnip

 I had so much fun growing purple top turnip this year after more than a year trying to grow them successfully but did not get much of a root to enjoy. But this year I got it right and the best thing was that I don't even took care of them, never water and feed them. The turnip plant grows only with rain water. What I did was only sowing the seeds. It was only the matter of sowing the seeds on the right time and season. To grow them easily will be early-mid autumn which is March and April. Later than that the turnip might not give me much root but will probably produce flower much earlier. Thank you to Mr. H owner of Subsistence Pattern for introducing me this beautiful root vegetable.

Purple Top Turnip Seedlings.

Sowing turnip seeds in spring for me is a bit tricky if it get stress out due to lack of water will bolt easily. We really have dry weather by end of spring so it hard to make sure the soil does not dry out quickly.

Its time to thin those plants.

Sometime I got confuse whether these are turnips or radish plants if the label gone missing. Yes, the small hands in our home love to collect these labels. I always wonder how in other gardens all round the corner of this humble earth their turnip roots develop rather quickly and some I read harvested the roots in two months. Ours turnip roots does take long time to develop in good size. Although I sow them early autumn, it usually in spring seasons that I can enjoy harvesting the root. The root starts develop in spring and not much in winter except for the leafy top.

Turnips rubbing shoulders because the gardener did not bother to thin them was on sick leave :P.

Can be grown in container.

Oh my that turnip is squashing a volunteer celery I see.

Slugs/Snails must have been having a taste of that turnip looking at those scratches.

The container I have been using is only about 20cm deep.

Yup yup yup had so much fun growing them this year.

Or should I said not taking care of them this year at all.

Back to School and Harvesting

 I have returned to school from maternity leave almost 2 weeks now and Abby is 2 months old. Hence, disappearing for a short while again from the blogsphere. I have not come in early to school yet probably around noon as it is hard to leave Abby. But then I stay at least until 7PM. I think that is an excuse I am never a morning person (another excuse low blood pressure). The Medela freestyle breastpump has been a savior as I can do 3 things at a time breastfeed, expressing and browsing the net. 

I missed Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday last week so these are the harvest summaries for the first half month of October.

 The month of October will be continuously harvesting Western Red Carrot, Boltardy Beetroot and Golden Nugget Cape Gooseberry.

 We still have some fresh lemon grass stalks to harvest after the plants stayed dormant during cold season. Peas are reducing as the weather gets warm. Harvest the last black round Spanish radish last week. Need to start harvesting Florence Fennel regularly before they flower. We kept on finding some potatoes whenever we do some weeding in the garden.

We harvested our first small red cabbage last week. No more Bloomsdale spinach in the garden as I harvested them all as some of the plants starts to form flower stalk. The last 2 touchstone gold beetroot were harvested and I left one to flower to collect seeds.

 The harvest in the photo above were growing at the back of our backyard fence on reserve land. They got trampled by the council cleaning team. My husband was shocked when one morning he wanted to harvest some veggies at the back all the veggies were almost gone and even big plants were mowed. We managed to harvest leeks that had hair cuts because the stem were planted deep into the ground and only the top were mowed.Same with the florence fennel were severed from its roots and the leaves cut , lucky that the bulb stayed intact. For 3 years, I grew veggies back there but this is the first time happened. The spring onion flowers were left drying on the plant but it got chopped so brought them in to dry.

The previous post I mentioned that I am giving-away Australian Brown Onion and Spring Onion seeds.

Winners, please send me your address so I can post it to you (kebunkmg@gmail.com).

Aussie Brown Onion and Spring Onion Seeds Winners:

> Gardenglut author of Glut: a year in my patch

> KitsapFG (Laura) author of The Modern Victory Garden

>Joyfulhomemaker author of Fhat Farmer Chick

>Ummuaidan author of Our Simple Garden

>Malar author of My Little Garden

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.

Treasure Hunting

 My mental health is recovering slowly than my impatient side would like too. But it is a positive thing and something I should be grateful that I did not seem at the moment succumbing to postnatal depression while I am having mental depression and trying to overcome it.  Some days are good that I wake up and feel motivated instead of lying on the bed and not looking forward to anything. Its still a fragile thing and could be a false feeling so I am taking tentative baby steps not to be overdoing myself with too much planning or multitasking. There is still many unsettled things which worries me so I need to remind myself to not set unrealistic goal or dealing with high expectation. Sigh, one step at a time. I need to learn how to enjoy doing one thing at a time instead of doing so many things at once. For example, on my good days I can cook while washing dishes, clean the counter top, laundry and I can also do some weeding or sowing seeds in between waiting for the dish to cook or stirring. But my husband he does one task at a time even though he have some breaks in between. It is no wonder I make myself crazy while doing tasks at hand my brain also seems to be planning what to do ahead running into different direction planning non-stop, can't control and it goes chaotic. It made me think that I have some kind of mental disorder. I struggle to focus on one thing at a time. Physically I feel much better and more energetic after postnatal birth from last week. I am urged and advise to go out and socialise a bit to prevent me being isolated and fall to depression by professional help. Yet, I don't feel like going out at all. The only place I will go out to is the garden. Since I feel physically better now, we have been clearing up the garden bits by bits and found lots of treasures or basically free food last week. 

 A small spot in the garden was sprawled with autumn self-seeded tomato plants overlapping each other. These tomato plants flower during winter but I don't think with the cold temperature it will set fruit. However, after I made an effort to stake these tomato plant last weekend and gave some pruning found some ripened tomatoes and there are already producing fruits. I guess the warming temperature has able those flowers to set fruit. One of the plants has actually grown more than 5 feet tall when I pull it upright and tied it on the emergency support. I was not sure how many tomato plants before and now it is 3 tomato plants on that spot. Some of the cape gooseberries fruits has also matured and drop to the weeds underneath hiding these golden fruits. If my boys are here with me, I don't think mama and papa will have their fair share of these delicious golden fruits. I think they would certainly enjoy these golden 'berries' very much. I did not realised how many self-seeded tall red celery have grown among our backyard container gardens in between other plants and they sure have grown. The celery stalk surprisingly juicy when relying on rain water only. We also harvested some peas and broccoli shoots last week. We harvested all of our Early Horn carrots last week grown in container.

 Here is half of the patch in front of the kitchen window that I have cleared on the weekend. Everything on this patch are self-seeded plants except for 2 foxglove plant which has been completely   hidden. Most of these volunteers are celery and chervil.

Celery from the patch above.

I remembered we had several self-sprouted potato plant on the front yard in different places. However with weed competition and pest attacking the plant many plants got lost while they were growing around 20cm tall. Last weekend while my husband cleared up the front yard and pulling out all the weeds he found several small sizes of potatoes from the potatoes that perished early and lost in sight. Surprisingly, one self-sprouted Royal Blue potato that got lost under sunflower and rose geranium plant has produced decent harvest. The Royal Blue potato plant was not there anymore but somehow I remembered there was a potato plant growing on that spot. So lucky we blindly dug around that area an hit a jackpot.

We are blessed with many volunteer rainbow chards plants  last autumn and this spring I found several new seedlings as well while clearing up and left them undisturbed. Hopefully these seedlings will provide us harvest during summer. Summer month is actually the season which we don't really have much to harvest compared to other season. Lettuce are also plenty still to pick around the garden. But it will be time to say goodbye to lettuce by next month if I don't sow a new batch of lettuce this week.

We also harvested some florence fennels, beetroots, top purple turnips and kohlrabi this week.

There are still many spots to clear up.

Join in Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandellion.

Sun root

 The first time I saw this plant tuber in our local community veggie swap, at a glance I thought it was some relative of ginger. But it does not even belong to the same group with ginger. Interestingly, these tubers known as sun root and many other names such as sun choke, Jerusalem artichoke, or girasole belong to the same family with sunflower, globe artichoke and lettuce (Asteraceae). Sun root is not from Jerusalem but it is a native to Northern America. The reason why even you left some tubers underground through winter with heavy frost the plant will come back the next growing season, very hardy tubers. It is not a tuber you always find available in the grocery store compared to potato. But it can be used as substitute for potato and it is much much more easier to grow. Does not required care at all in our garden. When the tubers sprouted, I did not even noticed it until it has grown several leaves and I thought it was some other seeds that I was trying to sprout.

 At this stage, the sun root plant has grown resembling more to its cousin sunflower. The plant grow very well in partial shade and hard clay soil. Very convenient plant, when you have little space and you can grow them at the most unproductive spot in your garden and still produce tubers. I have experimented growing sweet potato and potato on this same spot but it never produces decent tubers or tuber at all due to the hard soil and limited hours of direct-light. During summer this spot received just several hours of direct light around noon. 

The sun root plant grows almost 2 metre tall. Sun root tubers contain no starch unlike potato. Sun root tubers carbohydrate consist mainly of inulin which the body does not absorbed so its a good healthy diet food. Inulin compound is also reported to increase the effectiveness of our body immune system and increase calcium absorption. 

Sun root flower resembles sunflower and smaller in size but looks really cute. Sun root plants once established is drought-hardy compared to potato plant in our garden. In my mind, I kind of form a plan regarding these 3 plants potato; potato, sweet potato and sun root how to fully utilise the space and rotating the harvest to keep fresh supplies going between these 3 tubers. The best time for us to grow potato is end winter and harvest by early-mid summer. We can plant potato again early autumn and harvest mid-winter ~mid-spring. We start to plant sweet potatoes and sun root in September (early spring). Sun root can be grown in the most poor condition in our garden which somewhat increase the garden productivity during summer. Sun root and sweet potatoes can be harvested by mid-autumn when potatoes supply are no more. But for sweet potato tubers we don't have to dig them out until we want to use them. The sweet potato tubers does not mind staying underground in our climate here.

Sun root flower also has seeds but smaller than sunflower seeds. Can be grown from seeds but the tuber results will be variable like potato grown from seeds after some research reading. Growing from tubers will produce the same as its original parent, basically the parent clones. After some reading about this plant, I become interested to try growing this plant from seeds. Alas, did not managed to collect seeds because I throw the debris into the compost unaware of them having seeds or I was not thinking much that time when Abby was still in the tummy growing big very fast (3rd trimester). It was a cold day when we harvested the tubers. Any gardeners on the Northern Hemisphere harvesting sun root tubers soon? Did you find any seeds on the remaining plant spent blooms?

Well as you can see this section of our garden is in shadow some part during the day. The sun root plants dying and almost the time to harvest some tubers. My husband thought all the time it was a sunflower growing, not knowing that it was actually a sun root plant before I seek his help to harvest the tubers because it is in a spot hard to crouch for a heavy pregnant woman surrounded by other plants.

I was not expecting that much harvest because from previous experience growing potato and sweet potato on the same spot yield almost nothing. Surprised me it did, it was really a nice harvest for just one plant growing in poor condition. The basket harvest was really heavy fill with sun root tubers.  The sun root tubers also helped break the hard clay soil for next plant growing there.

When I was pregnant with Abby, I enjoyed roasted sun roots and in Malaysia yellow curry very much. This post actually has been drafted since June and I just managed to post it today typing with one hand while the other hand holding Abby.

Mid-Winter 2012 Harvest Summary

The garden has been very generous in mid-winter even without care. We even did not give any watering since June so the plants depended much on rainwater. I tried to record what we harvest each month because this give me an idea for new vegetables sowing time and how early or how much I can extend the sowing of seeds for certain vegetables. It seems that I can sow broccoli seeds a month earlier than I used too. The problem with early sowing is infested by aphids, although producing head earlier to enjoy. Washing the aphids away for cooking does take a large amount of time, of course the chef complain all the time but that the reality of home-grown ones. The broccoli harvest might look like there are no aphids, don't be fool by it cos the bottom or between the stems has tons of aphids.

Tried growing green dragon broccoli for the first time and had success. Italian sprouting broccoli never seems to stop producing new shoots to harvest. We did not plant any new plants of Italian sprouting broccoli this year. The produce that we have each month from last summer till now were solely from one very generous plant. The shoots are much bigger in mid-winter.

Tatsoi also have plenty to offer in mid-winter, usually the chef pick em' fresh because the gardener often neglect her harvesting duty. Therefore, the Asian greens has had not much chance to join photo sessions. Although, many Asian greens were harvested just to take note.

The last cauliflower and the gardener regrets that she did not plant many cauliflower this year. Well we thought I could complete my studies on time earlier this year but too many things happened so we still stuck here (over-confidant and high expectation :p ). We usually grow more than 30 plants of cauliflower each year, sigh should just planted more. Savouring last year planted leeks cause we don't grow them this year. Chinese celery volunteer abundant in the patch for cuttings. Daikon and watermelon radish is also available in the garden for picking.

We harvested our last purple skin sweet potato grown in one container.

More variety of root vegetables available in winter~ carrots, beetroot and white sweet potatoes.

Strange but true, our peak pepper harvest this year is in mid-winter compare to other season. The fruit took a long time to ripen from the flowers blooming from autumn. Actually this is a good thing, because peppers are so expensive in winter. We also give-away to friends. Picking half-ripe pepper and leave them on the counter-top for just a few days will make the fruit become ripe. We just pick how many we need and just leave the rest on the plant rather than keeping them in fridge. We left many pepper plants over-winter this year, so we hope some early harvest of capsicum next warm season. Pink radish is also filling the basket harvest in mid-winter.

Kailan (Chinese Broccoli) also one of the main dish in mid-winter. Start to harvest peas, but not many and no chance for photo shoot because it is only enough for Rayyan to pick and eat fresh in the garden or the mother will not have some peace.

Could not keep up with the red choi harvest, growing so fast. I am guilty in leaving one container full of red choi showing sign of flowering at the moment.

38th weeks now.....still waiting for the biggest harvest for this year.

Da Cheong Chae Harvest Week

Most of the harvest last week were from our backyard container garden.

Last week, we harvested our last batch of parsnip harvest for this year after growing them for almost 10 months with the leeks. Not much parsnip this year due to heat wave earlier this year the ones growing on the soil all perished and had to be harvested earlier. Only the ones growing in container survive, although some of the leaves got burned. However, it revived. The first purple vienna kohlrabi harvest for this year for us.

Main harvest of this weeks which is almost on every harvest photos is Asian greens Da Cheong Chae from only one small polystyrene container. Da Cheong Chae has very dark green and big leaves. Since only 3 of us now, harvesting 3 da cheong chae plants each time is more than enough for one meal.

 Afghanistan carrots that were harvested this week were from our home-saved seeds collection.

Parsnip and sweet potatoes.

Parsnip for the chicken korma.

Sweet potato fritters for Sunday breakfast.

Both dishes prepared by dear hubby.

Some chillies and Italian Sprouting broccoli sprouts for fish curry. Hubby the temporary chef (I am on leave from the kitchen until not sure when) asked for eggplants or okra which not going to fruit in this cold winter. So broccoli were use as substitute for his fish curry menu. We eat what is in season and learn how to improvise. We harvested some baby kailan (chinese broccoli) because we need to thin them as they were sowed really closely to each other. Finally, for 2 years now we don't have the need to buy kailan seeds anymore as kailan seeds collected from our own garden has been sufficient enough up till now. Germination rate of these seeds is also very good so I am very happy with it. The benefit of growing non-hybrid plants. So, I can allocate my seeds shopping budget for new plants each year.

This is the dish my husband cook for us last Saturday, fresh from our garden.

This is his version of Stir-fry kailan with salted mackeral fish.

Visit Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday!

I have to show my appreciation to my husband since I rarely cook these days (I only cook once a week due to my health state at the moment)...hehehe...Last week went for an ultrasound because I was a bit anxious wanting to confirm again our baby I am carrying is in good health. I am 34 weeks pregnant and baby doing good about 2.1kg now. Rayyan was born at 37 weeks with 2.3kg which was more than a kilogram lighter than Ilhan was. To be honest, I am a little bit scared and alone without other family to lean on except hubby. Hubby really happy at the moment as we might have a girl this time and I am getting more extra pampering. Baby birth estimation date is the same day as my PhD completion date (18th August 2012) in total of 4 years. Very ironic and unlucky with date I am. However, realistically I don't think I can finish before that date. In actual, I have taken more than 3 months of  leave of absence due to Rayyan medical reason. So, I should get another 3 months extra for it to be 4 years. Sigh...worry...but see how much I can do this month. Don't want to dwell too much on it yet of the uncertain things.

Purple Skin Sweet Potato Propagation (White Flesh)

The third variety for sweet potato that we introduce into our garden since we started growing this sweet tuber is sweet potato with purple skin and white flesh. I wanted to grow sweet potato with purple skin and flesh, thinking of  Malaysian traditional cake when I harvested the tubers later. However, I bought wrong tubers from the market without checking the inner flesh colour. Usually I prefer to grow them from young shoots from sweet potato plants left growing over-winter in our garden. But with new variety into the garden, we have to get the new plants from tubers. When spring came, I simply just push half of the purple sweet potato tubers into the soil in container that were growing beet roots. I did forgot those tubers for a while left in the container. Snail/Slugs even munched on the sweet potato as seen in the photo. After young shoots sprouted from the sweet potato tuber eyes were big enough to cut and able to produce some root, I transplanted them in containers.

It was easier to differentiate the sweet  potato variety we grow this time. Because for this new member in the garden that we are growing have dark purple veins when the other 2 have green veins with different shape of leaves.

Sweet potato grows very well in container. I was a bit mischievous when I had extra purple sweet potato shoots ready to plant in hand that I planted one in a container that were growing leek and parsnips. I thought that I would not get many sweet potato harvest from that container since it was only intended sweet potato foliage to cover the soil like mulch. I was really surprise that among 4 containers that we grow purple sweet potatoes, the ones that were grown along with parsnip and leeks gave the biggest and most tubers compared to other containers. The parsnip roots were also remarkably decent size of parsnip root harvest. Lemon basil and sweet potato also seems to get along well together. 

Some of the purple sweet potatoes tubers harvested from our container garden.

Here are the debris of the purple sweet potato plants pull out from the containers by my husband. If you live in a frost-free area you can simply plant it back somewhere else in full sun. I have experimented with one plant last year after I harvested all the tubers and planted somewhere else in full sun. That plant still live at our backyard for more than a year now thriving without any tender loving care. We have not harvested that plant simply because we don't have the time and we still have many sweet potatoes plants sprouting from compost and growing as they please. Sweet potatoes has somehow become weeds in our garden. I won't be surprised when spring comes we got several sprouted sweet potato shoots somewhere in the garden.

Because I have many small containers at the moment, I selected some good-looking young shoots from the debris that have many strong roots attached  and planted them in containers. I left them outdoors, any plants of ours will be train to be hardy plants which is tolerant of the weather we have in winter and extreme summer heat here.

If these cuttings do well, I plan to give it away at veggie swap or seed-saver meetings.

I have received so many valuable advice and treasures from this community.

Sweet potato is one of the easiest edible plant to grow if you have suitable climate for growing this easy-going plant. Grows very well in pots like potato, not impossible even for gardeners with small space. I have a capsicum plant growing together with a sweet potato in container and the capsicum plants give a lot of produce as usual. Although, I have not yet harvest the sweet potato tubers, so I can't comment on the sweet potato harvest. A lemon basil plant was also growing together in the same pot during summer. If you can't wait for the harvest, you can snip some young shoots to enjoy while waiting for tubers.