Lemon Basil

‘I pray your Highness mark this curious herb: Touch it but lightly, stroke it softly, Sir, And it gives forth an odour sweet and rare; But crush it harshly and you’ll make a scent Most disagreeable.’ 19th Century American humorist and folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland.

If ever there were a herb for a globalised world, it is basil. For there is, firstly for Europeans, the ‘sweet’ basil, Ocimum basilicum alluded to above by Leland. But then there are at least-the very least-five others used by the Thais, Indians, Sri Lankans, Vietnamese and Indonesians. Without enumerating the botanical names of each there are also basils described as liquorice, cinnamon, clove, champor, lettuce leaf and lemon (Citation~ The roots of Civilisation;Plants that changed the world by John Newton). Lemon Basil is the main basil variety that are growing in our patch this summer. I always like lemony flavour or fragrance.

Lemon Basil seedlings.

Lemon Basil seedlings ready to be transplanted. Someone else like lemon basil as well and had a bit of a snack.

I was thinking of planting lemon basils with tomatoes but they germinate later than tomatoes as they need much warmer weather to germinate. So I decided to observe whether lemon basil and brinjal will be good buddies or not this warm season. At this stage, it is too early to conclude whether they get along or not.

Lemon Basil Flowers.

Where are the seeds?

We aim to collect some lemon basil seeds this year.

We like to put lemon basil leaves in instant noodle soup or fish soup.Instant noodle? Trying to make it more nutritious when you know that instant noodles are junk food and giving it a more lemony flavour when the soup is tasteless.. How do you like to use lemon basil?

PROJECT: Save the Bees

Holly the author of Tasty Travels…food talks, I listen blog is hosting a Project: Save the Bees on Sunday, February 6th. This is a very interesting project that I would like to participate and encourage friends to join in too.

To participate in PROJECT: Save the bees, this is what you’ll have to commit to:

1) Purchase a seed packet of bee friendly flowers & figure out how many people you'd like to share with.
2) Announce the project on your blog/website & offer seeds to others on Sunday, Feb 6th
3) Link back to Holly post (to be posted Sunday, February 6th)
4) Mail your seeds to your people
5) Update your original post with a list of places you mailed your seeds to

This time I am offering our bee friendly flower home-saved seeds to 3 people which resides in Australia only. You can leave a comment that you would like to receive this seeds and I will pick 3 blogs randomly if more than 3 people are interested.

This is our top 5 bee friendly flower in our garden last year:

Poppy

Bees really like this flower. Always buzzing around this flower especially in the morning and here a link where I capture the bees playing around new bloom of poppies to show how much bees like this flower. This is the only seeds that I am offering which is not home-saved seeds. I regret so much not collecting poppy seeds last year.

Calendula (Sunshine)

Calendula always brighten up our garden patch in winter. Since it is always blooming through spring as well, the early hungry awaken bees can sip the calendula nectar when other spring flowers is not blooming yet.

Lakspur

Blooms longer and grow majestically tall.
Evening Sun Sunflower

After all the spring season flower ends, evening sun sunflower provide many blooms for the hardworking bees to gather nectars.
Nasturtium

Not only a gardener best friend in the garden but bees as well.
What is your favourite bee friendly flower in your garden?
For more flowers on Saturday visit Simply-Life Photographs.
For Flora and cottage ideas visit Tracie at Fishtail cottage.

Forgotten Onions

We grow some store-bought onions which sprouted some shoots end of winter last year. Not me, but Ilhan and Mik who planted those onions and I am only playing a role as the harvester this time. The onion grow without any TLC and were neglected most of the time at the other side of our backyard fence. The weather had been extremely hot last week and I have not been at the other side of the fence for 2 weeks. The weather was a bit cool in the afternoon and I decided to venture at the other side of the fence. Opps, most of them had been completely dried and wilted.

I had harvested some a few weeks ago. However, today I harvested all of them.

Some of the onions don't need curing, the only one which has green colour leaves on it were left curing under the shed.

The only onion left growing in the garden is the Australian Brown onion which we grow from seeds. My mother has been helping me harvested the ones which have leaves that had completely turn brownish (dried) from the polystyrene containers. As I was busy being a research student, the onions has been in the bottom list of priority things to do in the garden.

Ilhan with his single layer onion that he planted mimmicking his favourite monster book 'Gruffulo". We had some onions which only have one leaves on it. For an onion, the number of leaves will determine the number of layer inside the onion.

 I had fun growing allium last winter. I don't have to worry about pest and watering for them. They are a very independent bunch. It will be fun to try growing early variety onion in autumn to get the supply going as I don't know how long this new harvest will last us. I hope this year, I can get some supply for shallots to grow in our garden.

Single female

I don't know why but this summer, many of our female cucurbits are very shy maiden. The male and female timing bloom does not synchronous with each other. When the male bloom, not a single female bloom to pollinate. The female are so late bloomer this summer, they bloom when the males have tired waiting. The pollinator (mainly me) will be sighing a lot waiting for the moment when both male and female are blooming.Button squash produce many females but I had to harvest when they are small in size sometimes because I knew they were not pollinated. 

I was so excited when my first angled luffa female flower bloom. But no male flower blooming in sights.As I thought, no angled luffa heading to our kitchen.

 The zucchinies too play with my feelings like button squash. Sometimes the cucumbers and melons also having a difficult time too synchronous. But they still managed to see each other sometime.

The bees at the moment has abandoned me due to extreme weather. So I am left alone to be matchmaker to the male and female flower of cucurbits.

Tanaman ubi kentang merah

I wonder if anyone notice that in my recent harvest post, I harvested potatoes. Did anyone wonder where I got the potatoes when I have not said anything about growing potato this warm season after my first attempt at growing potato, the  plant leaves were badly burned to crisp in November. Really, I did not intent to grow potato for this warm season, as I know it won’t survive the extreme hot weather here in summer. However, in the end of September last year, supermarket bought potatoes in my kitchen were sprouting many “eyes”. I had problem germinating chili seeds so I borrowed the space that I allocate for chili to potato. I did not think that the potato will give me anything, it just for fun. It is growing in a very partial shade area and as you know potato needs  a lot of sunshine.

A few days later, potato baby plants pushing its way out from the soil.

Early November, our sowed chili seeds have not yet germinated for us and the potato plant has grown very fast on one row where chili seedlings were planned to be transplanted.

In early December, this patch was such a mess and potato plants start to make other plants very annoyed. Tomato and carrot need some breathing space. Coriander seeds need to be harvested and end season flowers need to be cleared up.

Potato flower bud. What colour do you think it is?

White coloured flower potato plant.

Somehow, I managed to make this veggie patch look more tidy after the big mess. Now you can see the tomatoes, carrots and rockmelon young plants.

End of January, Mr. ROCK-Melon plants are scrambling on top of the wilted potato plants. Mr. ROCK-melon is much more stubborn than potato regarding space and its trying to get my attention that I better let him have more space because some of the pregnant females are getting heavier with fruit. Fruiting in partial shade? Believe me we had success growing honey-dew melon here last summer vertically and horizontally in this patch. This year we try our luck with Rockmelon.

I was not expecting any spud. But I was really happy when I pull the wilting potato plants and saw this. My mother was also excited as she was beside my the whole time I was harvesting potatoes. I am happy that I can give her some fresh potatoes to make her special blend juice in the morning.  Do you know when I started to grow plants on this patch it was very heavy clay soil (tanah merah/laterit). It was so hard to dig in with the previous soil condition. However, every time before I grow plants on this patch I will dig in compostable things like grass clippings, kitchen and green waste into the soil. It has been one year and a half since I routinely done this and now I have a black humus soil on top. It is still not the ideal soil yet, but I was kind of surprise when I realised all the energy I spent digging in compostable stuff has actually worked with the helped of the small creatures living in the soil.

Some of the potatoes were exposed to light and they are sprouting due to my negligence not covering them with soil or straw. Do you think I can keep them until early April in the kitchen cupboard and plant them back?

I wonder if anyone is familiar with the variety of this potato?  It grows well during summer here in this patch so I am thinking of growing this variety again next spring. Nice timing, chili seeds that my mother sowed has grown to a nice size for transplanting on this patch. Last summer, chili seedlings that I grown were also the ones that my mother sowed. Does it mean it won’t work with my hand but only my mother’s?