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Monday, January 31, 2011

January second-half harvest

From Mid-January till this end of January, we harvested several first harvest warm-loving vegetables for this summer season. Since we are into Mid-Summer, the tomato harvest is reducing due to too hot weather for them to produce proper blooms. Although it is still enough for our kitchen used. The yellow cherry tomatoes seems to like this very hot weather compared with other tomatoes. I am glad we planted several variety of tomatoes this year to determine which does well with the climate here.First capsicum harvest for this year, but the size were less than half size of last year. We freeze all the lady fingers (okra) and beans harvest. Button Squash has been one of the big producer in the garden constantly supplying the kitchen table its produce.
Not a really suitable time to grow Pak Choi's. I harvested most of the Pak Choi's before I lose the leaves to the heat waves. Our newcomer for this warm season, Green Gem Cucumber is also helping us to keep cool with constant supply, an early producer and long harvesting season. Green Gem Cucumber is suitable to grow here in Adelaide, it is heat tolerant and grow quickly even in cooler weather. I need to decide what cabbage to grow next autumn. I won't but any earliball cabbage variety, not a reliable producer.
I tried growing turnip in spring but it grow so slowly. After 4 months, turnip still does not produce fat root. I will attempt to grow turnip again this autumn. Any tips for growing turnip?

Harvested potatoes, red onions and brown onions that were grown from supermarket which sprouted shoots before we can cook it.
We cut the come again vegetable leaves~kang kong and amaranth before they got sun-burned since it will have to endure 40 degree Celcius for several days. We also harvested our first apple cucumber.

Which vegetables has been you main supplier in the month of January?

Sunday, January 30, 2011

“Seed Week” Home-saved seeds Give-Away Winner!

First, I would like to thank everyone of you that has participate and share their experience during “Seed Week”. I have learn so much during “Seed Week” reading through all your inspiring posts and your comments. I hope all of you had a fun reading as well. From the year of  2011, I believe all of us will have more home-saved seeds in our collection. There are 54 submissions from 25 bloggers.

Here is the compilation of inspiring post links from around the world:

HERB FLOWER FRUIT
VEGETABLES

PROPAGATION

SEED SAVING
OTHERS

I will try to make a special button for this “Seed Week” on the side bar later, so it will be an easy access for anyone who need to find some information that available in this “Seed Week”.I mentioned that I will pick 5 winners randomly. Instead we picked 11 winners since we just enter the year of 2011. I heard that we can use some program to generate random picking on the internet but I am not that internet savvy. Maybe you can teach me how. Since yesterday until tomorrow we are experiencing more than 40 degree Celcius, I need to distract the kids with something fun to do indoors. So we write each submission on a small piece of paper and put it into a bowl. Shake the bowl, and pick the winners with Ilhan help, the old-fashioned way. Here are the blog winners:

Moj Vrt

Bonnie Lassie

Subsistence Pattern

Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment'

My Little Garden in Japan

Appallachian Feet

Milka’s Jishiben

Africanaussie

My Garden Haven…A Fine Romance

My Little Potted Garden

My Obsession, My Compulsion

Please email your address to me: diana.demiyah@gmail.com
 
 

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Kitaran Hidup Peria (Seed Week & Seed Give-away)

Peria (Malay Language) or known as Bitter Gourd in English or Goya in Japanese are warm-loving vegetable. Although it is known as a bitter fruit, in South-East Asia, peria is believe to help women maintain her appearance and internal youth/health/vitality (awet muda) which make this vegetable/fruit a very popular dish. I don’t think it will give eternal youth though. What I mean is it is good for women health. You might think due to its bitterness, it is not an expensive fruit. Wrong! Prices for this vegetable goes up every year. To be honest, I don’t really like to eat this vegetable when I was a child. I start to like this when I became a young adult. How young is young I wonder? I guess it is an acquire test. Personally, I think when cooking bitter gourd, it combines well with chilies. I think bitterness and spicy combination create a new craving taste.Do I have weird taste bud? For Bitter gourd stir fry dish, I usually pound some dried shrimp,hot chilies, shallot and garlic saute together. Previous warm season was the first time I grown bitter gourd here in Adelaide, and we managed to save some seeds. Germination was very late last warm season, we succeed germination when it was end of Spring in November. But last year was awfully hot, we even had heat wave in November. This year is a bit cooler, we were surprised that the home-saved seed germinate in October. Due to the number of seeds that I have collected last season, I dare to do some sowing trial even it was still not that warm enough for peria. It is simple to say that I was impatient. I guess our home-saved seed has adapt a little bit with cooler condition ( based on speculation no scientific evidence).

Clockwise: Bitter gourd home-saved seed, Bitter gourd seedlings from direct sowing, Bitter gourd in pot, Bitter gourd growing on the veggie patch.

Peria

I was excited that this year our bitter gourd plant bear fruit early and we already have a taste of it. The older the bitter gourd fruit be, the more bitter it become, it is better to harvest when it is young. At first, even when I hand-pollinated the bitter gourd, the female fruit is growing so slow. Then my cousin wrap the fruit with newspaper and it grows very fast. I wonder why. Below mosaic, from clock wise an experimentation we did fruit wrap with newspaper and not wrap (star~wrap, moon symbol~ not wrap). We tested on several other fruit as well and got the same result. Can you see the obvious result. I tore open the newspaper on the upper part a bit to show the fat fruit compare with the unwrap one. Did you notice that the centre of male and female flower has actually different colour, female is yellow where as male is more orange in colour.

Bitter gourd

Bitter gourd growing in the veggie patch, has not given me any harvest yet. On the other hand, bitter gourds growing in polystyrene boxes has given us harvest and many fruits are dangling on the tree tempting me to pluck them early. I am glad I collected bitter gourd seed last season.This season, bitter gourd is one of the priority in warm-vegetable seed-collecting list. Because I am running out of this seeds.

Peria (2)

What is “Seed Week”? 
Sharing our own experiences and gain knowledge about collecting, propagating, growing seeds, bulbs, tubers, rhizomes, or cuttings and can be about how to keep them in top shape. The wonderful thing about collecting seeds from plants that thrive in your place is that each year and the next year, the seeds will become more and more adapt to your garden environment. It will also save money, instead of buying the same seeds every year, you can try a new variety or trade seeds with other gardeners. Sharing is a wonderful thing. Please join us for this seed week. I will randomly choose 5 participants for home saved-seeds give-away. I like to share my home saved-seeds to you.  There is a linky to link your post at the bottom of this post. It can be a new post or and old one, also not limited to one post only.
Here is a compilation of inspiring post link from around the world since my previous posting:
HERB
FLOWER FRUIT OTHERS

PROPAGATION

SEED SAVING
VEGETABLES

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Evening Sun Sunflower Life-cycle (Seed Week & Seed Give-Away)

I am learning so many new things related about seeds and enjoy my time reading all the inspiring posts that have been linked during “Seed Week”. I hope other readers and visitors has benefit and enjoy this “Seed Week” as well. For the Northern Hemisphere this will be a chance to plan your spring planting and the opposite hemisphere will also have some ideas for winter planting or thinking about seed saving this year. Well for you lucky gardeners that can grow all year round in the tropics will also help introduce us new tips and warm-loving vegetables that other climates will like to try which is very popular nowadays due to globalisation. Thank you for joining in, sharing your thoughts and experiences for “Seed Week”.
What is “Seed Week”? 
Sharing our own experiences and gain knowledge about collecting, propagating, growing seeds, bulbs, tubers, rhizomes, or cuttings and can be about how to keep them in top shape. The wonderful thing about collecting seeds from plants that thrive in your place is that each year and the next year, the seeds will become more and more adapt to your garden environment. It will also save money, instead of buying the same seeds every year, you can try a new variety or trade seeds with other gardeners. Sharing is a wonderful thing. Please join us for this seed week. I will randomly choose 5 participants for home saved-seeds give-away. I like to share my home saved-seeds to you.  There is a linky to link your post at the bottom of this post. It can be a new post or and old one, also not limited to one post only.
Here is a compilation of inspiring post link from around the world since my previous posting:
HERB
FRUIT
OTHERS
PROPAGATION
SEED SAVING
VEGETABLES
FLOWER
Evening Sun Sunflower
Its the middle of the week, people are busy with office-work and housework try to juggle so many things. Sometime we need a break, so today I decided to post colourful pictures for you of my Evening Sun Sunflower photo collections. The seeds are colourful as well. I was exhausted last night because I stayed late in the laboratory after 10PM so I did not have the strength anymore to do some writing. I was more like a zombie staring at space cause my brain was still hyper functioning but the body can’t move. This morning I felt a bit energised after harvesting some vegetables. We can’t do much gardening in the morning these days as it gets warm to quick here. I have to wait for more cooler weather in the afternoon. Today, we in Australia is having a public holiday celebrating Australia Day. Here is a cheery sunflower to brighten up your day!
Evening sun sunflower seedlings Evening sun sunflower can grow very tall sometime about 2 metre tall. It is easy to differentiate evening sun sunflower seedlings than other sunflower varieties if you are growing them in the same time. Evening sun sunflower at early seedling stages have red stalk.
colourful evening sun sunflowerThe colourful shades of Evening sun sunflower.  Which one are your favourites?
Evening sun sunflower is hardy with the warm weather here and blooms longer than other variety.
harvest evening sun seedsThe deep burgundy shade evening sun sunflower bloom is a bit rare. Because of this I wanted to catalogue which seeds will give which colour at first. However, it seems that even same colour bloom will have different colour seeds too. To make sense of this we will have to refer back to our biology classes about Mendelian inheritance or Mendel Law that were based on an experiment in hybridizing garden peas that were conduct by an Austrain monk named Gregor Mendel. So to understand this, I believe the deep burgundy shade bloom have a homozygous recessive allele.In heterozygous, the burgundy colour will not show up. As a geneticist myself, the chance of getting deep burgundy shade bloom will be less than 25%. Since there are other shades as well, it will be much much much lesser than that.  Evening sun sunflower have so many blooms in one plant. If you are a beginner collecting evening sun sunflower don’t worry if you don’t do it correctly the first time, you still have the next chance. Apart from harvesting celery seeds this month, we are beginning to get busy harvesting evening sun sunflower seeds. The birds and mice have been at them. Fortunately, they are many for each one share.
Evening sun sunflower 2011 (20)
Evening sun sunflower have different seeds colours.  Our Evening sun sunflower home-saved seeds offspring from previous summer have travel as far as Malaysia now. I am happy that the seeds are growing in my blogger friend garden right now, in Kwee Peng ~Onenezz, Malar ~ My Little Garden and other friend as well. I wonder which country will our fresh home-saved seed will travel next? The winner of the home-saved seed give-away will received some of this seeds if he/she like to.
For more cottage flora ideas visit Fishtail Cottage.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Viola Life Cycle (Seed Week & Seeds Give-away)

Thank you for joining in, sharing your thoughts and experiences for “Seed Week”. Initially the “Seed Week” is held from 22nd January till 26th January. But my math calculation were wrong that is not even a week isn’t it (My apologies, math was one of my weak subject at school). So if I counted correctly, the last day should be on the 29th January. Hopefully, this will allow more post to be link in this time frame. 
What is “Seed Week”? 
Sharing our own experiences and gain knowledge about collecting, propagating, growing seeds, bulbs, tubers, rhizomes, or cuttings and can be about how to keep them in top shape. The wonderful thing about collecting seeds from plants that thrive in your place is that each year and the next year, the seeds will become more and more adapt to your garden environment. Please join us for this seed week. I will randomly choose 5 participants for home saved-seeds give-away. I like to share my home saved-seeds to you.  There is a linky to link your post at the bottom of this post. It can be a new post or and old one, also not limited to one post only.
 
Here are interesting and inspiring post link that is very helpful. 
 
HERB

FRUIT

VEGETABLES
OTHERS

PROPAGATION

FLOWER

VIOLA

The first flower seed packets that I bought was viola (cottage mixed). Actually the word viola was not even in my vocabulary back then (Brought up in tropics). I chose viola from the flower seed rack in Bunnings because it was May here (mid-autumn) and the information written about sowing time is right for this flower at that time. I am a girl, I wanted something to cheer up the garden, something colourful instead of only greens. I was a young gardener, thought I can always buy them if I want to. Now I start to change my ways of thinking. To be honest, I did not collect any viola seeds the first time I grown them. But viola made me fell in love with her, I thought I will never see her again unless I have to go shopping for viola again. I have limited budget and want to try something new, so I gave up on Viola. Sometime in June last year, I saw many viola seedling around the place where I planted viola once.  How happy to be re-united with viola again. A word of caution: After  you planted viola in your garden, you won’t have to plant them again, they will self-sowed next season and won’t leave your garden anymore Winking smile. It has become a beautiful weed in our garden. Viola seedlings scattered around the garden, I just transplanted them in other parts of the garden. I don’t know why but I found seedlings more in semi-shade rather than sunny location.

DSC08374

viola seedling

Viola has gifted me with more than 50 seedlings last spring and I transplanted them in many places to see which companion that is viola favourites. Viola look good as a border plant. It has shallow roots suitable growing in container as well. From my observation viola grows well together with beans and under chili plants.

Viola cottage Mixed

Now I have repent, I start to collect viola seeds last spring. Out of fear, that maybe someday we will moved and I have to say goodbye to our violas.  It is very easy to collect viola seeds. In the picture, you can see a fat seed pod where now can cut the stalk and wait for the seed to pop out from the seeds naturally. DSC08216

Viola seed pods almost ready to burst open.DSC08279

Viola seeds pop out from the seed pods.DSC08287

Now, whenever we have to move to a new place, viola will always be apart of us.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Komatsuna Life Cycle (Seed Week & Seeds Give-away)

Thank you for joining in, sharing your thoughts and experiences for “Seed Week”.
What is “Seed Week”? 
Sharing our own experiences and gain knowledge about collecting, propagating, growing seeds, bulbs, tubers, rhizomes, or cuttings and can be about how to keep them in top shape. The wonderful thing about collecting seeds from plants that thrive in your place is that each year and the next year, the seeds will become more and more adapt to your garden environment. Please join us for this seed week. I will randomly choose 5 participants for home saved-seeds give-away. I like to share my home saved-seeds to you:).  There is a linky to link your post at the bottom of this post. It can be a new post or and old one, also not limited to one post only.
 
Here are interesting and inspiring post link that is very helpful. 

FRUIT

FLOWER

HERB OTHERS
VEGETABLES

Komatsuna @ Japanese Mustard Spinach (Brassica Rapa) Life Cycle ~ 小松菜ののライフ サイクル

My first taste of Komatsuna was when I was studying for my bachelor degree on Environmental Science in Niigata, Japan. That will be about 10 years ago, no need to count my age now. LOL.Thinking of komatsuna bring back fond student memories when I was there. Komatsuna is one of the cheapest vegetables you can buy in Japan all year round. So as a student, this is one of the vegetables that I always buy when I have a very tight budget. It will be one of the main ingredient in my fried rice or noodles. Since I left Japan, I have not eaten komatsuna for years and I was happy that last year I found komatsuna seeds available in one of the seed catalogs that I have received. Komatsuna is very easy and fast to grow, good for beginners to try. Komatsuna seeds can germinate within one week in their very favourable environment. Komatsuna seedlings looks similar with other pak choi’s at this stage, so don’t foget to label them if you are sowing other Asian Leaf vegetables as well.

DSC08708

If you have small space to grow things, treat komatsuna as quick crop and interplant komatsuna with other plants that grow slowly. I planted them near tomatoes and eggplants and they grow really fast.DSC09192 After one week to compare with previous photo for komatsuna growth. They are taller now don’t they.

DSC09300  Quick crop of komatsuna ready to be harvest. Inter-planting komatsuna reduce pest attack. I did not look after the komatsuna when I was growing them this time and since it is in between other plant, komatsuna smell must have been masked with other plants.

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Komatsuna flower are yellow and have the same shape as other brassica like Pak Choi. When komatsuna is bolting the shapes of leaves also changed. DSC09576 The bolting plant grows really tall, at least 70cm tall. Komatsuna is very hardy in cold temperatures and I did a post of growing komatsuna in Adelaide winter. If you have a small space and worried that it will take some space away to wait for the komatsuna seeds. Don’t worry one plant will give you many seeds and it does not take much space. The komatsuna bolted plant was so tall that it flop towards the ground and I have the plant to lean against the geranium.

Komatsuna seed pods

I waited for komatsuna seed pods to turn brownish but surprisingly they did not. I even let the seeds kept in its seed pod in my kitchen shelves for 2 months and the seeds still look good when I harvest them out from the seed pods.

DSC00101

Do you know that komatsuna is actually a new vegetable species, it has been around like 200~100years compared with other vegetables.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Seed Week and Seed Giveaway <Nasturtium (Indian Cress) ~ Life cycle>

Its the start of seed weeks and lets get some tips and share our own experiences that is related to seeds, bulbs, tubers, rhizomes or cuttings that can be about collecting, propagating,growing them or how to keep them in top shape. For a new gardener or someone who is growing plants which is for the first time, we worry whether our sowed seed will have success in germination. Then we start to wonder how to collect the seeds when the season is over for the plants but have to guess where the seeds are. The wonderful thing about collecting seeds from plants that thrive in your place is that each year and the next year, the seeds will become more and more adapt to your garden environment. Please join us for this seed week. I will randomly choose 5 participants for home saved-seeds give-away. I like to share my home saved-seeds to you:).
Here are interesting and inspiring posts that is very helpful.
VEGETABLES
FRUIT
HERB
OTHERS
FLOWER
Nasturtium is a very popular flower plants for companion planting with brassica as a sacrifice plants for aphids. Apart from that role, the whole plant of nasturtium is edible and is a very worthy plant to grow in the garden. If you don’t have that much space to grow them it can be grown vertically or hanging as well. Nasturtium seeds germinate easily in warm weather. If you live in temperate areas, you can sow the seeds in autumn and in early spring it will give you a show of bright flowers. It can even grow in poorer soil and don’t mind staying in semi-shade area. So it is not a fussy plant to grow and have a long flowering season. It is just not an ornamental plant for the garden but provide nutrition benefits. Bees is also very attracted to the bright colour flower of this easy-going plant.
Nasturtium seedlings that has just germinated.
nastartium



















A week later and rapid growth.
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Facts about Nasturtium that I have taken from ‘Discovering vegetables herbs & Spices by Susanna Lyle’. I highly recommend this book.
FOOD
Nasturtium leaves have a peppery, often hot flavour, similar to cress. They are great in salads, and are often mixed with other greens, as some find their flavour too hot on their own. The flowers are wonderful as garnish, and are edible, wiith a milder flavour than their leaves. The seeds are spicy and have a similar flavour to capers, and can be used in the same way.
NUTRITION/MEDICINAL

The leaves are rich in vitamin A and contain good quantities of vitamin C, as well as fibre, calcium, iron and phosphates. The plant has been used to purify blood and as a tonic. It tastes is largely due to isothiocyanates, which are similar to those found in watercress and other brassicas. The indigenous South Americans used this plant to treat respriratory diseases, and it has been used more recently to treat coughs, flu, colds. These compounds seem to have natural antibiotic properties.
OTHER USES
Nasturtiums are highly valued by organic gardeners, as their presence inhibits aphid infestations from nearby plants, and when their leaves, flowers, or stems are macerated in fluid, they can repel whitefly and other pests.
Nastartium (2)
nastartium










This is how our kitchen veggie bed looks like in previous early spring. The rambling nasturtium was sprawling all over on the ground and poor other plants were suffocating. So my cousin help me made the nasturtium climb the wall with a simple trellis using rope for the nasturtium to hang on. I know this plants needs a lot of space to grow but I would like to encourage gardeners that have small plot to try and grow them as well. This kitchen veggie bed is only about 1 X 2 metre space but we have so many things growing on them. We like to mix our veggie bed with flowers nowadays. I think there are at least 10 variety of plants growing in this patch ~ 3 Nasturtiums plants, capsicum, chili, bolted coriander, komatsunas, carrots, leeks, violas, evening sun sunflower seedlings, 3 celery plants, 3 columbine plants, polyanthus, French Marigold, ect.
kitchen veggie bedThis is our  nastartium that were growing well in semi-shade area. 
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After the blooms are long gone, it is time to pick the seeds for saving them or pickling. Found many drop ones at the ground as well.
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I have not try pickling them but it is one new thing I like to do for 2011. I keep the collected seeds in the nets to dry them properly before I store them.
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Nasturtium seeds shrunk more than half of their original size. Some of the seeds also fell out from the net. Nasturtium self-sowed easily after your first time planting them. We have many new nasturtium babies emerging from our veggie patch now.
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I am curious to know what is the name of nasturtium in other language. Please teach me.