More babies & Feb Home-Saved Seed Winners

Rayyan is recovering well no more fluid around the heart. But the doctor did caution us about his arteri pulmonari is still narrow and leaking. At the moment, I am so happy to see Rayyan very cheerful after what he has gone through. His personality dramatically changes after recovering from surgery more cheerful, happy, chatty and more confidant. He used to be very anti-social and so serious face most of the time, always hiding his face to other people. We were struggling on putting him weight as he don't have that much energy to eat and usually vomit during his feeds. It must not be pleasant experience for him because of that he don't enjoy food. Now he begin to like food and always ask you he wants the food you are eating which can make mummy cries tears of joy. Hooray, no more vomits but he must learn how to chew. We hope he gain weight and thrive after surgery or else we have to feed him through tube again as supplement in 2 weeks time.

 Finally we got around choosing which garden will our February home-saved seeds travel randomly. I written the name on the paper, roll them, shake and my 3 assistants chose~
Rayyan pick ONE ~ Onenezz (I had difficulty coaxing him to give me take a look at the paper, its mine he said).
Ilhan pick Bangchik ~ My Little Vegetable Garden (absorb watching in the night garden, picking more than one not listening).
Lenay pick Catmint ~ Diary of A Suburbun Gardener

Autumn is near and we feel like we have second spring at the moment. Plants are loving the weather showing fast growth and hopefully giving us more produce. I have also noticed many self-sowed seedling around the garden. Self-sowed flowers that I had planned to sow like calendula and nasturtium. Maybe I don't have to sow them now just scoop these seedlings and rearangging them with brassicas later. We have one periwinkle plant which have been in the garden before we moved here, its perennial and very hardy survived through each season by it ownself. This month I found many of perwinkle babies around the garden. Catmint has made a recent post which is very interesting about 10 invasive weeds in Australia and one of it is periwinkle! A very nice read so hop to her blog from the link above.

 March is also the month to sow herb. We have many varieties of herbs to try this year~chervil, dill, fennel,ect. Hopefully with all this herbs in my hands, I will try new recipes and skill up my lack of culinary knowledge in using herbs. I can thick off sowing lemon basil this month as I found several seedlings in one of the containers. This year we collected some coriander, celery and parsley seeds. The bolted plants flower on different time so I did not have to worry about cross pollination. However these plants were growing approximately close to each other less than 50cm apart. Now in this patch, I have hundreds of self-sowed seedlings which look almost similar to each other and I cannot identify which is which as these 3 plants are umbeliffers. Umbellifers (coriander, celery and parsley) seedlings at early true leaves stage development does look similar to each other. I have to be more patient and wait for them to grow before making a decision about these babies.

Self-sowed tomatoes and pumpkins seedlings are also growing in the garden. I may keep tomatoes but not pumpkin. Let see if we get lucky this year with harvesting tomatoes in winter. We were lucky with chilies fruiting in last winter. Sunflower seedlings also popping out from compost. If they bloom will be very excited , if not chop as green manure.

Any self-sowed plants in your garden at the moment?

How about a "Companion Plant" week somewhere in the month of April?

It will be nice to share some ideas about maximising the use of space and crops with companion planting and, less energy, time and money to deal with pest.

New plan for the other side

And he gave it for his opinion, 'that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where one only grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together'.

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, 1726

We always struggle growing sweet corn here due to limited water which why we can't indulge sweet corn very much and always unlucky with timing! Sweet corn not that hard to grow up till the stage they are producing ears. At the moment they have tassle and silky ear, mother nature has other plan. That is the period of time heat waves come to visit and bring along 40+degree Celcius scorching those dear sweet corns interupting the process of mating. We tried succession sowing but to no avail. So this year, I decided to try sow sweet corn at the time we are going to enter end summer which is end of February. Hopefully sweet corn will be in time to produce before we have really cold weather. 
While we were away, Ilhan get his hand dirty with sowing sweet corns, sunflower and soy bean. This is 'Ilhan veggie patch'. Sweet corn germination rate at Ilhan patch was 100% after about a week. Oh-ho a bit hesistant to ask Ilhan do some weeding on his patch,  imagine lots of stomping there (dinosaur?). It only has been just over 2 weeks since Ilhan sowed seeds in this patch.

Now this is my project in middle of February, growing sweet corn and soy bean. Not sure soy bean will produce but at least it can play a role as green manure. Found many self-sowed evening sun sunflower on this patch. 

This patch is 'Lenay patch', my cousin transplanted self-sowed tomatoes  to this patch and sowed some bush bean seeds.

Daikon planted in spring bolted, so Lenay & Ilhan try growing daikon end of summer at the other side of the backyard fence. Lenay direct sowed radish seeds all germinated. I was kind of surprise to see 3 rows with roughly about more than 30 seeds in a row of daikon seedlings when we returned from Melbourne. Lenay was happy when she saw the seedlings pop out in just 2 days. I worried what we are going to do with so many daikons if we successfully grow them this time around. Lenay promptly said bring them to veggie swaps weekly. If that happens we are going to be known as the daikon family.LOL.

Parsnip and carrot seedlings are popping out very fast this month.

Feels like second spring this time.

March 1st half Kutipan Sayur

Main harvest for the first-half of March are cucumbers, tomatoes and beans. Lenay managed to freeze more than one bag of beans while we were away. All of the kailans were harvested and sowed some seeds yesterday. Those kailans were caterpillars playground.We plucked our first golden bell capsicum but it looks kind of wierd only one side turned yellow while the other side was still green. Perhaps due to only one side were facing the sun. Purple King bean grown in partial shade was generously producing purple beans for us early this month. Earliball cabbage was the same size as capsicum bell when we harvest this vegetable.

I was clearing up some small area of patch and found some spuds that I have missed, Lucky! Challenger tomatoes have turn red but due to rain the skin split. I was craving for some snake bean but before I can cook it, Lenay keep them in the freezer. So they will be staying there until we have no fresh veggies from the garden. I am already counting how many snake beans (@yard-long bean,kacang panjang) on each plant to satisfied my craving for snake bean. Second harvest of Angle Luffa from the same plant, so soft in the mouth. Steal a tiny leaf from one of the turmeric plant, several stalk of lemon grass, chilies and bitter gourd to cook with dried-salted fish in turmeric soup. Ilhan had his first taste of bitter gourd this month and from what I heard, he was not enjoying it but as he promise to behave while both of the parents were away, he made an effort eating it by breaking it to small pieces. Tsk...Tsk...Tsk...Lenay made him try it;-)

I have been taking division of chives and using them as a border for autumn planting. It has been a good companion plant with kang kong (entsai).

Clearing up some pots that contain leafy vegetables that will be good for quick fried rice or noodle. Cucumbers for Nasi Lemak that I cooked for breakfast this morning.

So much to do this month in the garden, some of the tasks; morning~harvesting, clearing up some patch, manual fruit pollination, sowing, stem propagation, pruning, collect seeds. Then afternoon~transplanting, re-potting, prepare veggie patch with manure and compost, wrapping cucurbit with paper and weeding.

Visit Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday.

Cucumber Recovery Power (review)

This warm season, we grow three cucumber varieties; Apple (Phoenix seeds), Green Gem (Eden Seeds) and White Spine (Greenpatch Organic Seeds). Last warm season was not a good cucumber season for us and we only grown White Spine cucumber. This year cucumber has been one of our main harvest so I am making notes on each variety that we grow this season.Although they share the same general name “cucumber”, they have different characteristic like each siblings in one family. Furthermore, we like to make notes on how each variety cope with heat waves and their recovery after that,

Apple Cucumber

Mid-bearing and I think it is high-yielding variety since there were many female fruits. However, heat waves came when it just started early-phase of fruit production and left them in no good shape anymore. Not resistant to disease and takes a very long time to produce fruit again after heatwaves. It is almost 2 months now since heat waves and just started to produce again. Some seedlings dislike transplanting and some don’t mind. If the fruit is expose too much strong sun, it will ripen too quickly when the size of fruit is still very small that you have to harvest them quickly before it turns really yellowish.

Green Gem Cucumber

Prolific producer,early-bearing and have a long harvest season. Suitable to grow in container and does not mind to be transplanted. Grow well in hard clay soil too.Sometimes has a bit more of bitter taste compared with the other two varieties. More success in getting straight form,bigger and longer fruit by wrapping the fruit with paper after manually pollinated.  Disease resistant~prune off the sick-leaves immediately and plants will be healthy again. Bounce back quickly and produce cucumber after heat waves and roots disturbed. Caution: If growing cucumber in pots, don’t move them around. This is because the roots actually grow through the drainage hole and take root under the pots to the soil. I moved polystyrene container with cucumber plants in it and heard ripping sounds. The next few days, cucumber leaves were flopping. Although container dry up easily, cucumbers have their own plan B. They were sipping water not only from container but from the ground as well. The good thing is that excess water from watering the pots were actually save in the ground and from evaporation. This answered my question about how did my cucumber plant in containers survived without 4 days of watering while we were away.

White Spine Cucumber

Very very late producer and does not bear many fruit. So far I got lucky with 2 cucumbers per-plant only. Always have so many male flowers and females are very rare.Can be grown in containers and hard-clay soil. Heat-tolerant. Quick-maturing fruit. Very cool cucumber to eat in room temperature compare with the other two. This is my second season growing them and not much improvement compared with the first season on getting more fruit from this heirloom cucumber. But I like the taste. I think this cucumber might not be suitable to grow in our weather and environment here, considering the other variety don’t have much of a problem. Two cucumber plants growing in polystyrene container together is under attack from aphids. I am letting the fruit on this plants to mature so I can harvest some seeds. Hopefully home-saved seeds will be more adapted with the environment here in Adelaide.

What is your favourite cucumber?

Home Sweet Home

Hooray!We finally in Adelaide yesterday afternoon. There is a little bit of fluid around Rayyan heart but the medical team in RCH let us go home and WCH will follow up on Rayyan's condition. Rayyan arteri pulmonori is still narrow and there is a little bit of leak after surgery according to the ECHO results. Well before the surgery, Rayyan was mostly depending on his shunt (bypass) for oxygen to flow to the lung and his oxygen saturation was about 70%. Before having a shunt was much worse, oxygen saturation sometimes drop to 40% and frequent "tet spell". We are very aware that in a few more years, Rayyan might have to undergo surgery again although he just had complete corrective heart surgery. We really appreciate if anyone can give us advice on which health insurance company is good to have in Malaysia (just in case and it is good to be ready for anything).

Ilhan almost gave my cousin, Lenay a heart attack. He was so happy after we call to inform in a few hours will be Adelaide, he bump his head on the floor. We are not sure how did that accident happened but he must have been jumping on the sofa and slip just as I was saying goodbye to Lenay on the phone.Lenay said her hand was shaking so badly, she spilled traditional ointment (ubat gamat) all over the floor. Ouch, a very nasty bump on the forehead.

There were many cucumbers that Lenay harvested while we were away, so we joined the West Croydon Community Fruit and Veggie Swap this morning. We brought cucumbers, chives and spring onions to share

and returned home with

Garlic cloves and other stuff that we ordered from New Gippsland Seed & Bulbs company has arrived which I ordered before we left for Melbourne. I can't wait to plant garlic cloves next month. I ordered 50 garlic cloves that consist variety of Adelaide Red, Oriental Purple and Italian (common). 50 cloves are not enough, so I might have to get some more bulbs. On average weekly we used about 3 garlic bulbs (3bulb X 4 weeks X 12 month = 144 bulb) which means we need to grow more than 144 cloves.

It will be our first time growing beetroot and ranunculus this autumn.

It feel so good to be home.

Rayyan had a very sound sleep last night.