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Monday, January 31, 2011
January second-half harvest
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- Basil and other plants~My Obsession, My Compulsion
Chives & Salad Burnett ~ Subsistence Pattern
Coriander/ Cilantro
Dill~My Little Potted Garden
Lemon Grass~My Little Garden
Sawtooth Coriander~My Little Potted Garden
- Tarragon~My Little Potted Garden
Vietnamese Mint/Laksa Leaf
- Bellis Perennis (English Daisy)
- Carnation
- Evening Sun Sunflower
- Gladiolus~My Garden Haven…A Fine Romance
- Gloriosa Daisy on snow ~Portage Perennials
- Lupine (Caffeine free Coffee)~ Portage Perennials
- Nasturtium
- Sunflower ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Viola
- Zinnia~Onenezz
- Angled Luffa (& Seed Exchange)~Africanaussie
- Carrot ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Belgian endive & Red celery ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Bitter Gourd
- Komatsuna @ Japanese Mustard Spinach
- Leek ~ Live, As I Live It
- Onion ~ Tasty Travels
- Onion & Shallot ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- Parsnip ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- Pea ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Potato ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- Rocoto Pepper ~ Potager Y@at Japan
- Spinach~ My Little Garden
- Tomato ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Tomato (and Oddball varieties) ~ Appallachian Feet
- Wild Asparagus and Fruit ~ Subsistence Pattern
PROPAGATION
- Cuttings & Home-Saved Seeds ~ Milka’s Jishiben
- Environment-Friendly Sowing Pot ~Clumsy Gardener Diary
- Seed-Starting Contraption~Bonnie Lassie
- Sowing seeds ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- Sowing spinach, Qing gen cai and komatuna in winter ~Small vege garden in a suburb
- Stem propagation and other alternatives~Go Right in…My Garden
- Transplanting ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- On Saving Seeds~Sweet Rock Farm
- Home-Saved seed and Blue potato~Aux plaisirs du jardin
- Saving Seeds ~ Moj Vrt
- Storing seeds ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Do you Know your Seeds? ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- How to trade seed~Appallachian Feet
- Queensland and Food Security~ A Green Earth
- Seeds box~ My Little Garden in Japan
- Seed Inventory, Review & Offer ~ Nyack Backyard
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
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.
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 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.
What is “Seed Week”?- Basil and other plants~My Obsession, My Compulsion
- Chives & Salad Burnett ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Coriander/ Cilantro
- Dill~My Little Potted Garden
- Lemon Grass~My Little Garden
- Sawtooth Coriander~My Little Potted Garden
- Vietnamese Mint/Laksa Leaf
- Bellis Perennis (English Daisy)
- Carnation
- Evening Sun Sunflower
- Gloriosa Daisy on snow ~Master Propagator at Work
- Nasturtium
- Sunflower ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Viola
- Zinnia~Onenezz
- Do you Know your Seeds? ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- Queensland and Food Security~ A Green Earth
- Seeds box~ My Little Garden in Japan
- Seed Inventory, Review & Offer ~ Nyack Backyard
PROPAGATION
- Cuttings & Home-Saved Seeds ~ Milka’s Jishiben
- Environment-Friendly Sowing Pot ~Clumsy Gardener Diary
- Seed-Starting Contraption~Bonnie Lassie
- Sowing seeds ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- Sowing spinach, Qing gen cai and komatuna in winter ~Small vege garden in a suburb
- Stem propagation and other alternatives~Go Right in…My Garden
- Transplanting ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- On Saving Seeds~Sweet Rock Farm
- Home-Saved seed and Blue potato~Aux plaisirs du jardin
- Saving Seeds ~ Moj Vrt
- Storing seeds ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Angled Luffa (& Seed Exchange)~Africanaussie
- Carrot ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Belgian endive & Red celery ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Komatsuna @ Japanese Mustard Spinach
- Leek ~ Live, As I Live It
- Onion ~ Tasty Travels
- Onion & Shallot ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- Parsnip ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- Pea ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Potato ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment
- Rocoto Pepper ~ Potager Y@at Japan
- Spinach~ My Little Garden
- Tomato ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Tomato (and Oddball varieties) ~ Appallachian Feet
- Wild Asparagus and Fruit ~ Subsistence Pattern
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Evening Sun Sunflower Life-cycle (Seed Week & Seed Give-Away)
- Chives & Salad Burnett ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Coriander/ Cilantro
- Dill~My Little Potted Garden
- Vietnamese Mint/Laksa Leaf
OTHERS
- Seed Inventory, Review & Offer ~ Nyack Backyard
- Bellis Perennis (English Daisy)
- Carnation
- Gloriosa Daisy on snow ~Master Propagator at Work
- Nasturtium
- Sunflower ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Viola
- Zinnia~Onenezz
Monday, January 24, 2011
Viola Life Cycle (Seed Week & Seeds Give-away)
- Chives & Salad Burnett ~ Subsistence Pattern
- Coriander/ Cilantro
- Dill~My Little Potted Garden
- Vietnamese Mint/Laksa Leaf
FRUIT
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 . 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.
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.
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.
Viola seed pods almost ready to burst open.
Viola seeds pop out from the seed pods.
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)
FRUIT
FLOWER
HERB OTHERSKomatsuna @ 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.
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. After one week to compare with previous photo for komatsuna growth. They are taller now don’t they.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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>
HERB
OTHERS
A week later and rapid growth.
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.
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.
I am curious to know what is the name of nasturtium in other language. Please teach me.