Sabah Honey Pineapple (Nanas Madu Sabah)

 We enjoyed the pineapple fruit above yesterday and it was very sweet like honey. Much much much sweeter than the pineapple slice syrup liquid in can. So much different than the common variety ones sold in the market to this honey pineapple from Sabah state the original plant came from my aunt. If you visit Sabah, don't forget to ask the farmers whether they are selling Nanas madu or the common one. 'Nanas' is pineapple and 'Madu' is honey in the national language of Malaysia. The Nanas Madu Sabah will be more expensive than the common one but worth it. I asked some middleman in one  of the farmer market I went looking for some pineapple, they said they can't afford to sell them as it is expensive, a luxury item.

Pineapple flower.

 Anticipation for the coming harvest. Ours are actually growing in partial shade and they seem to be doing fine even lack of full sunlight. The fruits takes more than 2 months to ripe from flowering stage. You spent time to peel the skin and take our the 'eyes'. Then finished eating it faster than peeling the skin. However, the sweetness of Sabah Honey Pineapples lingers in the mouth.

 Sideshoot underneath the ripening pineapple fruit can be used to grow a new plant which gives you much faster harvest compared recycling the pineapple fruit crown top.

 One of the funniest Sabah Honey pineapple fruit I found in my aunt's small pineapple farm in front of the house. I planted some Sabah Honey pineapple plant last month before I went to Sabah and they are doing well without any care or watering. Also, planted a few plants this week too.

Have a lovely weekend.

Saturday Spotlight ~ Suburban Tomato.

Drought Fruit Season Harvest June

 I was competing with the squirrel this morning for Sabah's Honey pineapple (Nanas Madu Sabah) fruits. I was weeding one of the section of the veggie patch at the backyard and on my way to the house checking how the kids are doing because Abby was still sleeping before I started weeding. Just when I was heading to the house on the corner of my eyes I thought I saw a tail wiggling on one of our pineapple patch that we have been waiting patiently for the fruits to ripe. I quickly ran towards the pineapple section and one squirrel was running away. I have been checking on the pineapple everyday because the squirrels has already stolen one last month. So this time, as you can see one pineapple has been chomped by the squirrel. I quickly harvest the ones that quarter of it has been shared with the squirrel. I checked the other fruits and luckily it wasn't stolen yet and it is much riper. Because I just had to snap the branch and easily it came off. Collecting side-shoot pineapple top at the moment to increase the number of plants in the garden, one of the aim for this year. Harvest some star gooseberry leaves for tonight dinner.

 Last week the hens and ducks were laying quite a number of eggs, shared some with friends.  I think we collected at least 15 duck eggs last week. Lemons are also readily available last week.

 Butterfly pea blooms never disappoint us. Instead of harvesting the whole plant, we just bandicoot some ginger rhizome when we are out of stock in the kitchen.

Tumeric bandicoot harvest.

 The roselle plants that we sowed in March has now started its fruit season. Roselle plants is doing really well without any help of watering since we transplanted the seedlings. All the roselle plants are more than 5 feets tall and waiting the buds to bloom. We also harvested calamansi limes, bird-eyes chillies, pea eggplants and cucumber tree fruits last week.

 We finally decided to dig up the Mexican Turnip (jicama) that we sowed the seeds last end December which has been left pretty neglected from the start. We did not expected to find one jicama that is over 1kg and it took me more than 20 minutes to carefully dug it out. I think that location we grown jicama is a good soil to grow root crop, rhizome or tuber plants which we will sow some seeds again on that area after the drought season end. I am not planning to water that area which why will wait when the rains come often again. One papaya tree snap so many of the fruits were all over the ground.

 It is drought season now this time of the year, we have not had any rain for almost 2 weeks now. But surprisingly we have been able to harvest a few varieties of fruits last week. Jackfruits are often harvested which has been enjoyed by by squirrels first. Even the fruits look like that, half of it still edible and really sweet.

 Papaya and sapodilla fruits is also harvested from the garden. We managed to harvest several papaya fruits last week because there were plenty to share with the birds and squirrels.

 I am not sure what is the name of this fruits in the weave basket above but we just called it marjerin fruit. Many of the fruits are ripening on the same time. It is more golden in colour but with the lighting it looks paler than it is.

I am trying to make our tropical garden here a sowing schedule like the one I did for our Adelaide garden. I found that sowing the right plant seeds at certain months makes gardening much easier and less effort every year. Recording the harvest by monthly will make it easier to estimate which sow to seeds later on as reference.

Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday.