Butterfly Pea (Seeds Give-Away)

 The butterfly pea or Clitorea ternatea is named by some taxonomist as having the shape of 'ahem' women private part. The butterfly pea flower is a plant easily grown in the tropical region all year round. This is a wonderful plant not only providing us continuous beautiful blue bloom but also helps nourishes the soil. A plant that thrives in any type of soil and will bloom more profusely in poor soil. A low maintenance plant that does not require the gardeners to feed the plant but generously makes the soil become more fertile and also provide food. In abandoned mining area in Australia to make the soil healthy again, butterfly pea plants are planted for re-vegetation. 

 Buttterfly pea seedlings. I think it will also grow in temperate region if there are four months in the year of hot/warm season. I would imagined if I live in Adelaide, I can sow some seeds in August-September (spring) indoors and planted the seedling out by October (late spring), I would have some flowers to harvest in summer till autumn. But don't worry if you fail first time before the flower bloom. You can make high quality pea straw/hay from the butterfly pea plants. To make high quality pea straw from the butterfly pea plants, cut down the plant before they start to flower  or produce seed pods and dry them. You can have your own home-grown mulch to protect your plants during the dry season from becoming thirsty easily or warm the soil during cold season. Butterfly pea grows very fast, it can starts to produce flowers in 10 weeks if weather is preferable to them. Said to withstand minimum of 15 degree Celsius and grows robustly in weather above 25 degree Celsius.

 The butterfly pea plants is a vigorous climber. Plants can climb at least more than 2 metres high and can help you cover up old rustic fence. Butterfly pea plants self-seeded readily. It has now become a weed in our kebun (garden). Can be use for livestock food.

 You can pick the butterfly pea bloom and eat them raw or as a salad. Will definitely make a nice colour mix in salad. Rayyan likes to eat the bloom raw. Sometime I also give our 9 months old Abby some butterfly bloom to munch while we harvest them. Abby has a blue lipstick on her lips.

 Butterfly pea flowers and seed pods. You can dry butterfly pea flowers and save them for tea. Will be nice to have some dried butterfly pea flowers in the pantry for warm tea in raining or cold season with cakes for tea times. Butterfly pea is said to be good for the eyes. 

 In this corner, they are actually 2 sets of bamboo stick tepee. But the tepee has become the leaning Tower of Pisa week by week. This is the corner which we usually harvest the flower since it is closer to the house compare to other butterfly pea plants at the backyard.

 You can make fritters with butterfly pea flower or Japanese kakiage.

 Or magic smurf drink which slowly turns to pink if added lime/lemon (citrus) juice into the drink.

Almost everyday, Ilhan after he returns from Kindergarten will help harvest the butterfly pea blooms and also helps to take out the sepals from the flower before boiling the flower with water for their own smurf drink. The picture above is our usual morning scene in the weekends where our children have fun making their own smurf drink still in their PJs. As a parent, I hope this is not only imprinted in pictures but also in their mind when they grew up, this way of life making their own drink is imprinted in their mind and living a healthy life. 

 There is not only a single layer petal of butterfly pea flower. But there is also a double/multiple layer bloom type of butterfly pea flower. I received this double/multiple butterfly pea flower seeds from a generous Sabahan Sister. The multiple layers petal butterfly pea flowers has just started to bloom profusely in our garden and add some more blooms to harvest into our basket. There are actually several colours too of butterfly pea flowers like white and lilac which I have received from a Doctor that has a herbal garden in Langkawi Island.

 This week we would like to share some single layer blue butterfly pea flower seeds with five gardeners which will randomly pick from the comment box. The boys will write the names on the paper and fold. Then randomly from there the give-away winners will be selected. Will announce the Butterfly pea flower seeds winner in the next post.

Have a lovely weekend.

Saturday Spotlight at Suburban Tomato.

Our First Sunroot Malaysia Harvest

 We are doing a trial growing sunroot (Jerusalem artichokes) this year in this hot and humid tropical weather and one plant had died off which was planted last November. So we dig in and see what the results are from the spot we tried to grow the sunroot plant. The plant was only about 2 feet tall so I was not expecting much of it. Surprisingly the plant did yield several tubers, although not as many as we used to harvest from one plant. The location was in full sun. At the moment, I am contemplating to regrow the tubers again in different location. As I don't have much tubers to experiment on, probably most will go to re-planting them again rather than cooking the tubers.

 Our main harvest last week were sweet leaves (star gooseberry), chillies and butterfly pea flowers. I am not sure what this fruit is called but it is not a mango fruit. My mother gave most of the sweet leaves plants a hard-pruning 3 weeks ago and now new shoots are quickly growing. She pruned those sweet leaves plants to half of its original height.

 We also harvested some pattypan squashes, cape gooseberries, sweet basil leaves, cucumber tree fruits, sponge luffa, calamansi limes, soursop, nam nam fruits, purple plum radish, snake beans and pea eggplants. We made juice with the soursop fruit. I have been harvesting while doing some other gardening task and kept the harvest in the pocket. So this picture above summarise what we got to harvest from our garden last week.

 We only got a few mulberry fruits to harvest this week. Rayyan has to wait for the fruits ripening on the trees at the moment. Lemon fruits are not as many as previous to harvest since some got a hard-pruning so waiting for new shoots to grow. But we do have a few lemon trees fruiting which is still green not ready for harvesting. I think it is better to have them not ripening at once so we have a succession of harvest. We managed to prune a pamelo, calamansi lime, wax apple and nam nam tree last week. Last Saturday, my husband managed to give a hard pruning on this mango plant that we did not realised had 2 passion fruit plants climbing on it. No wonder we had ripen passion fruits under the bushy mango trees. Not only that we discovered so many orchids on the tree as well which has not seen light for some time I reckon. The passion fruit will flower much better now as they will received more lights and we can also spy whether the plants are fruiting or not.

 This is another mango tree that had a hair cut as well and we can now see the sky in any angle or corner of this tree. This is the mango that my mother pruned almost 2 years ago and she fell from it. Hopefully tomorrow when she returned she will be happy to see the mango plant had a hair cut.

 My husband in the mood to do some tree hard-pruning and has been asking me which tree next. I think it is time to give the sapodilla fruit trees a hard pruning. The sapodilla fruit trees bear fruits almost all year round. But the problem the plant is too bushy now and I can't see the fruits clearly except the ones facing outside. So I think better to give the sapodilla tree a hard pruning.

Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions. 

Butterfly Pea KakiAge and Smurf Drink (Garden Gobble)

 This Thursday we are participating Garden Gobbles hosted by Veggiegobbler. I am always amazed on how creative Veggiegobbler at producing amazing vegetarian dishes from her garden for her family. The garden produce that is daily available to us is the Butterfly pea flowers and Surinam Spinach or also known as Javanese Ginseng. When I first came back, I seriously thought that Javanese Ginseng was a weed plant before I knew what it was. Well, it grows like weed even now in our garden, self-seeded readily and they thrive any kind of weather here in our garden without any care. But Javanese ginseng leaves have a lot of health benefit for the whole family. One of the benefit for children eating Javanese leaves is that it helps boost appetite. So I always sneakily add some Javanese leaves into the dishes for my underweight kids so they eat more. For example, whenever I cook pasta or fried rice/noodles, I will add some Javanese leaves. Our Rayyan who is 3 and a half years old is only 11 kilogram.

 Butterfly peas is good to harvest daily as the blooms only open per-day and it promotes the plants to produce more flowers too. I was thinking of another way to enjoy our butterfly pea harvest and got the idea to fry it like Japanese kakiage style. Kakiage are often set on top of a rice bowl or Japanese soup like dishes that contain udon or soba noodles. Kakiage is usually a mixtured of julliene carrot and onions mix together with tempura batter and fried deeply in hot vegetable oil until you get a crunchy texture. Basically, it is a very easy to prepare kakiage, you just need tempura flour, vegetable oil, veggies and water for the basic ingredients. I tried mixing with sweet basil leaves before too which is also ok.  However, we made a fusian dish, we enjoyed the crispy kakiage together with pasta which contain Ginseng Jawa leaves harvest from our own garden.

Butterfly Pea Flowers Kakiage ~ Butterfly pea blooms, carrots, onions, tempura flour, water, vegetable oil.

Butterfly pea kakiage lifted our from the hot wok.

 Do you know you can create magic show for your children with the smurf drink? The smurfy blue colour drink with lime/lemon juice added to it will slowly turn to purplish ~ pink depending on how much you add. Scientifically its like a pH indicator of acidic or alkaline of a way to explain to your student. To make the smurf drink is easy, just boil water together with the blue part of the flower only. Traditionally it is boil with pandan leaves (screwpine leaves) but if you don't have it don't worry it is not necessary. Add sugar according to your taste. We usually harvest more than 50 butterfly pea flowers which can get me more than 3 Litres of smurf drink. Don't worry if you don't have much butterfly pea flowers you can adjust the water volume bit by bits. The more flowers, the more bluish it is. After cooling the smurf drink you can squeeze some lemon/lime juice according to your taste.

Smurf drink ~ Butterfly pea flowers, pandan leaves (optional) , sugar, water and lemon/lime juice (optional) . 

 Due to the weather change each week with one hot weather than the week after thunderstorm, many people got sick near Klang Valley area. So do take care. I am still having a fever.

Marching into March Harvest

 Since we came back last November lemon harvest season has been very long or continue until now in our garden. Lemon trees has been fruiting very well and lemon fruits has been dominating some space in the wet kitchen. When we have several days of warm weather, I really have to harvest the lemon quite often. Passion fruits also has been making its way back to the kitchen this March as some fruits are seen ripening up on the tree and some has drop for picking.

Other small fruit harvest this early March is velvet apples, soursop and papayas.

Okra fruits also growing long so fast in just 2 days it can be more than 15 cm. Need to check on the okra plants almost everyday to pick the fruits. Butterfly pea blooms are generous everyday.

 We also harvested jicama tubers, sweet basil leaves, birds-eye chillies, pandan leaves and nam nam fruits. I was clearing up a patch and one volunteer javanese ginseng was growing on that spot. Pulled out the javanese ginseng and got a nice ginseng root. Javanese ginseng root is as potent as Chinese/Korean ginseng root.  The leaves and flowers from the javanese ginseng is edibles and I add into the stir-fried pasta for a quick simple lunch for us. We also deep-fried sweet basil leaves and butterfly pea flowers battered with tempura flour. I was surprised the boys ate them so quickly like snacks came out from the potato chips bag. I thought they won't find it interesting at first. I had to compete with the kids to have a bite or two before it finishes.

Join in Daphne's Dandelions : Harvest Monday.

Water Snake Year Harvest Kick Off

 I hope its not too late to wish Happy Chinese New Year. Here is a summary of what we have been harvesting since the Water Snake Year has started according to Chinese calendar. I have not had much opportunity to snap photos of what we have been harvesting as keeping busy with the kids. So here a few of the ones shown in pictures as a memory. We have been harvesting Butterfly Pea flowers daily to make blue syrup drinks for the kids. The butterfly pea flowers only bloom for one day, so the more you pick them the more they bloom for you. Average daily we make about 3 big bottle mineral water size for the kids. So about 5 litres a day at least. The kids play a lot outside so they have some cold water to drink. Since we came back, I am happy to report that we also been harvesting edibles from the ones we grown ourselves finally. Our first okra batch has finally bears fruits. Radishes also beginning to grow edible roots to enjoy. Assam Jawa or known as tamarind been falling from the trees to collect. Nam nam fruits also has been bearing fruit quite well. I tried cooking nam nam fruit with our traditional dish 'Asam Pedas' with stingray and it was really delicious. Ahem...had second servings.

 Ilhan and Rayyan has been helping to pick bird-eyes chillies. We never sow them, self-seeded easily in the garden everywhere like weeds, courtesy of birds.

Winged beans also added into our harvest basket this month. We also had a few alpine strawberries for Ilhan and Rayyan to enjoy. Not easy to add into the harvest basket as the berries usually goes straight into the small hand and pop into their little mouth in a blink of an eye.

 Finally we have some Asian greens to harvest like choy sum and red giant mustards. These are from the seeds we harvested from our old garden and I am very happy that they grow really well here. In fact they grow so much faster here. We also harvested some sweet leaves which is known as 'Asin-asin' or cekur manis here. Several calamansi limes for my favourite 'Sambal Belacan'. The kids going bananas over the banana harvest. We managed to harvest 2 small pamelos. 

We had rose apple and pink guava too. The kids enjoyed their first fresh pink guava juice. 

Amaranth or Chinese spinach self-seeded everywhere in the garden. We have a few sapodilla and velvet apple also know as mabolo in Phillipine are also harvested since the water snake year begun. Frangipanis have been blooming so nicely this month and I love to pluck a few bloom to enjoy the fragrance.

 So happy since December, we collect our own eggs now. The boys love to help collecting the eggs. I think they enjoyed it a bit too much. Because right after the hens lay egg, the boys go pick the egg still very warm to touch.

 Visit Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday to see other gardeners all around the globe share their harvest stories.

2013 kick off harvest

 The first garden harvest for the year 2013 and I finally managed to take some pictures what we have been harvesting in this month of January. Frequently, we harvested butterfly pea flowers to make  syrupy blue drink  (popular in Thai known as nam dok anchan) for dinner. Quick to prepare while cooking dinner.

 Our winged bean plants has started to produce a lot that we have to make sure to harvest the beans twice a week. This is the first time our boys tasted the beans, I was really surprised that Ilhan like this bean very much. It is only a simple and quick dish to prepare for one very satisfied happy customer. I stir-fried the chopped beans with fried dried anchovies and just add a little bit of soy sauce. Ilhan made his mama speechless by saying spontaneously mama cook yummy vegetables. To be honest, Ilhan mama never like winged beans in her entirely life until Ilhan convince his mama that fresh home grown winged bean is delicious. Wonders how kids can change the mind set easily.  Rose apples harvest season is back in our garden for dessert. Lemons are also very generous this month. Chicken and ducks are laying eggs so we have enough supply for the kitchen. I also started to harvest our traditional leafy vegetables known to us as cekur manis and the botanical name is Sauropus androgynus (star gooseberry/sweet leaf). I like to stir-fry this sweet leaf with eggs. 

Harvested some jicama/ Mexican turnip before it gets too fibrous.

We also harvested some cassava. Boiled and ate with sambal tumis.

 Just a few strawberry fruits available. Of course the boys wants more and I said this is not like the Adelaide garden.

 We also harvested a few sponge luffa every week. I like them when the luffa fruit are medium size or zucchini size because more tender. Big ones are sometime starting to be a bit too fibrous for my taste.

What are you harvesting this month?

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