End Autumn Harvest Note Wrap Up

Some of our summer crop season extends longer than previous year for this year. We seems to have longer warm weather this year. Furthermore this year, some of the summer loving plants were re-sown in mid-summer to replace the ones that were damaged by the summer heat. The photos will be like a note reminding me how to make the garden more productive each year. As I discovered earlier that for pumpkin/squash I can plant them twice a year but the rules must be that the first sowing I started them very early around mid-August (end winter). So pumpkin/squash plants will fruit before the extreme heat comes around early summer. Because by mid-summer most of the pumpkin/squash plants will be kill off by the extreme heat. Second sowing will be mid/late-summer and the fruits will hopefully ripen by mid-late autumn. We have many yellow currant cherry tomato volunteers plants fruiting. I am very amazed with this variety as it is very disease resistant, tolerates the extreme heat and our winter; and does well in partial shade. It just simply thrive with neglect in our garden. 

Second half of end-autumn goodies harvested from our garden.

Parsnips grown over summer in container did produce decent root size after about 8 months. I was not expecting much since the parsnip leaves got burn during summer.These parsnips were grown together with leeks and a purple skin sweet potato plant. Strange I found 3 potatoes also in the container, must have been from a volunteer plant that I forgotten. Never did I imagined that parsnip, leek and sweet potatoes grow well together in one container. One of the most productive container, as these 3 plants are plants that grow very slowly so they are a good combination.

Sweet potatoes that were grown in container.

Kangkung, leeks, chilli and white spine cucumber.

The white spine cucumber is our family most favourite cucumber. Its not bitter at all, nice flavour even in dry season. Because of this cucumber variety, Rayyan started to really enjoy eating cucumber. This means my portion will become much lesser or almost none because Rayyan will try to put all the cucumber slices on his plate.

Cherrytime capsicum has been the most prolific capsicum this year grown from our home-saved seeds. I had trouble when growing them first time from the seeds I bought, germination was very low. But germination rate was near 100% when we sowed our home-saved seeds probably the seeds has somehow adapted well with our garden climate. Baby lettuce or thinnings from home-grown seeds are generous now for picking often. Lettuce volunteers are also many living harmoniously together with weeds.

The last bitter gourd harvest for this year. Alpine strawberry has been flowering and fruiting this time around. The strawberry fruits are much bigger and sweeter compare during summer. It took half a year for this mini cabbage 'earliball' to form a 'small' head. I think I found more than 10 snails in the leaves

Our first home-grown Jerusalem artichoke (sunroot) harvest. We had only 2 plants growing in partial shade during summer growing without care. I was not expecting much tubers. I was so surprised of the yield from only 2 plants! The picture don't justify how many tubers were harvest actually because that is a deep basket. so you only see the top part. The Jerusalem artichoke tubers felt much heavier than our recent sweet potato harvest. I don't know what does Jerusalem artichoke taste like or the best way to prepare them. So I roasted some tubers together with marinade chicken for Rayyan lunch since I lack energy these days. The flesh near the skin tasted a bit salty and the inner flesh have mild sweetness. I thought it will be fun if I can think of a Malaysian dish that will go well together with these tubers. Next to the Jerusalem artichoke plant was a volunteer turmeric plants that only produce a thumb size knob of turmeric rhizomes. I don't have any home-grown potatoes in my pantry anymore and I have a craving for Malaysia ' Masak Lemak Cili Api' dish. I really don't know what this dish is usually call in English it is somewhat like yellow curry but the paste does not use any dry spices at all. The basic ingredients for this yellow curry paste are usually fresh tumeric rhizomes, shallots, garlic, onions, hot chillies, lemon grass, and add in shredded turmeric leaves, tamarind peels and coconut milk in one pot stir to mix. I made a veal 'Masak Lemak Cili Api' with Jerusalem artichoke tubers substitute for potatoes. One success experiment, Jerusalem artichoke goes well with this Malaysian traditional dish. Rayyan drop some tears after he stubbornly tasted the dish, he was warned several time but did not heed the warning due to strong curiosity. I did not realised he already dip his finger into the yellow curry. Poor boy his tongue was on fire. I used 5 chillies the one harvested in the photo.

Found some volunteer sweet potato tubers while clearing up one of the corner of our vegetable patch. We tried growing hybrid carrot for the first time (Purple Haze F1) and were disappointed with the result. It was supposed to be a dark purple carrot variety but most of the carrot roots were orange and smallish size after 7 month. Shockingly, some carrot plants did not even produce any roots.

Mid-Autumn pickings

This month harvest is all rather quick process of picking what I needed while cooking so did not taken many photos of our harvest this month. This month available harvest in our kebun (garden) are mainly consist of...

Some of our banana capsicum is ripening at the moment. Banana capsicum is not a hot but sweet variety type so Rayyan can enjoy it as well. He won't eat spicy food yet. Brought in our last batch of home-grown onion that were hanging out at the shed. Cut some Chinese celery stalk. It was growing under the canopy of our tree dahlia plants that I almost forget I have them in the garden. It does not received much direct sunlight at the moment. Harvested our first 'bari' cucumber. Its actually a melon and very mini size type. I did not realised that it is actually a 'heirloom' cucumber that is not available in catalogues. I got it from our local seed-saver group. 

With the warm mild weather, the garden is producing eggplants, cucumbers and okras. I tried to grow several variety of beans in the shade during summer as they still get indirect light. We did get some produce though not as prolific as the ones that are growing in sunny position during spring/autumn. In the basket, bean harvest from shade position.

Pull out some of our summer growing parsnips to see how they are growing under the soil, glad that they are roots to enjoy. But I will leave some for winter harvest. 'Cherokee Wax' and 'Redland Pioneer' bush bean has been the main bean that we harvested this month. I am excited with the 'Redland Pioneer' harvest because it was my first time growing home saved-seeds of this bean. The bush bean 'Redland Pioneer' produces the first batch of bean to harvest the same as the fast growth of Pak chois for fast crop. Everyweek we have some kangkung to harvest.

What amazed me is how tolerant the savoy cabbage and Italian sprouting broccoli withstand our extreme summer weather. I have one neglected happy Italian sprouting broccoli plant and still producing shoots for us at the back of our backyard fence. It only gets water 3-4 times a week during the warm season. It is already a year old.

We caught many bream fish but there are still small (mostly almost 20cm) not legal size. So have to be released back into the water. The only legal size catch that we had is whiting.

See harvest all around the world at Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday.

Early Autumn Fresh Veggies Picking

What's available in March for the kitchen from Kebun (garden) Malay-Kadazan Girls?

Not much but these are some that filled our tummy this month.

I lost my patience with the mice because they were digging holes in the newly prepared containers. So I cleared one of the sweet potato container so they don' have much place to hide and I don't think I will get any decent size of tubers because the mice were eating them as well. As I thought many of the tubers were badly eaten and thrown them in the compost. Tubers that were not touch were growing under the container  in the ground soil. It is still early to harvest them. Since I cleared this one container, the digging has lessen so I am leaving the rest of sweet potatoes to grow.

Sweet potato new vein shoots.

Baby beets, beans, carrots and pak chois.

I need to remember to sow some beans or peas this weekend.

Harvested several cucumber this month but did not took photos of it because we were too excited and sliced quickly for meals. I pull out a chard grown from last fall in shade. It took a long time to grow but good emergency food. Rather than leaving the shade unproductive, sometime we grow excess seedlings there.  In summer, did not received direct light from the sun but still have indirect light for its growth.

Onions are still in curing stage but we been taking some for cooking.

This basket feels closer to home~brinjal (eggplants/aubergine), lady's fingers (okra), bitter gourd, angled luffa and beans.

Kangkung (water spinach) loves the March weather. They have quick growth after we cut them. We have at least one bunch of kangkung to harvest each week for this month. Its been a long time since we had dragon carrot harvest and finally a few made an appearance in the kitchen.

Visit other's gardeners sharing their harvest in Daphne's Dandelions: Harvest Monday.

Early Fall Container Garden

I have not posted about our container garden at our small backyard since last year. Well nothing really nice to see last summer. The plants were struggling to survive back then and not much growth. It still not very nice to look at even now. The mild weather has made some of the plants grow crazy and now they grow wild. The plants have a mind of their own now. For example this spot, I have to scratch my head trying to remember what is growing here~watermelon, capsicum, parsnip, lemon basil, purple sweet potato, okra, kailan and jicama. Can you tell which is which? If you have a small place or even garden on a balcony, this kind of gardening is still possible. This is about 1 metre X 1 metre. Suits for a location that received at least 6 hours of direct sun.

What is growing in this 30 cm X 40 cm polystyrene container?

Cucumber plants climbing on the trellis, banana capsicum and carrots.

Not supposed to be there beetroot also wants to grow there.

Half of our backyard receive morning sun and the other half received afternoon sun.Took the photo in the morning and you can see the clear line light and shadow separation.This is the spaggetthi squash that I sowed last January in container to replace the ones that died due to the extreme heat. Very happy with the attempt because we already have squash in March, did not expected that it will give us fruit so fast. Its actually 2 plants in the same container and each plant has fruit on it. One is hiding somewhere in the long grass. Hopefully this weekend, I have time to spend in the garden to cut the grass and sow some seeds.

The different length of the trellis? We pick them up from hard waste during spring cleaning week in our suburb. At the back, I have cleared some of the containers and sow some seeds for cool season vegetable here. There is one long dangling angled luffa can be seen at the background. Sweet potato harassing lemon grass plant. Sweet potato are becoming invasive as they start to sprout in many different places in containers and on the ground. Lemon basil also growing as they please.

It might be hard to believe but these sweet potato plants are actually growing from containers. There are a row of 4 containers. Now they entered other plants territories. This section has given me much headache and cause the biggest problem for other section of the container garden. Because of this, we have trouble with mice. The mice took shelter here from the heat. They come out during night and dug up holes all around the container garden which have cause many young seedling uprooted and direct-sowed seeds failed to germinate or possibly lost. I don't think I have much to harvest here since the mice might enjoyed some of the sweet potato tubers. But I will wait perhaps until May before I clear up this place for good.

Let me think what plants are growing here ( 1.5 metre X 1 metre) ~ okra, jicama, capsicum, bush bean, parsnip, purple sweet potato, water spinach (kangkung), carrots and bitter gourd. The jicama seems to like the mild weather now. But I must remember to harvest them next month because the edible root will rot when the weather drops below 15 degree Celsius in consecutive days. The jicama tuber won't be big cause they don't have enough sufficient growing time and those plants are just starting to produce flower bud. Last year the bud did not managed to bloom but let see will it bloom this year or not.

Hope one day we see many green balcony from tall buildings.

What's growing in your container garden?

Cucurbits Catching Up

The cucurbit in our garden~cucumber, squash, melon, bitter gourd and angled luffa could not produce proper fruit during summer as it was too hot for the flower to set fruit properly and lack of pollinators. Did my best to hand-pollinate them. But the fruit just shrivel under the hot hot hot sun. The plants growth were also stunted, they were struggling as best as they could to just survive until the milder weather comes. Now came March and some rain, we see that the cucurbit are now promising us some reward. 

The green gem cucumber plants starting to bear some fruits.

Hoping for our first watermelon harvest this year.

Hope the temperature and sun is enough until it is ready to be harvested.

About a hand size now.

Other cucumber varieties that are still growing in the garden and waiting for them to produce are lemon cucumber, white spine cucumber and bavi cucumber (pic below). Last week, I sowed some lemon cucumber and suyo long cucumber, and the seeds has geminated this week. It is trial to see whether it will grow quickly and make it up to harvest stage before the weather is too cold for them. Since many of our cucumbers died in summer.

Our second year of growing banana rockmelon. Last year was a failure, it was cooler last year and maybe the location I chose for them to grow was not suitable. Now we grow them at the spot where we had big success with honeydew melon 2 years ago. Three plants are growing in partial shade. Some fruits are growing and already more than 10cm long. Inter-planting them with pepper plants. The banana rockmelon foliage that sprawled on the ground help to prevent the loss of water from the soil which benefits the rockmelon and pepper.

In January I tried direct-sowing for spaggetthi squash and watermelon to replace the plants that died due to the extreme heat we had. Lucky that they grow well in containers and this week I have spied some female flowers on the plants. Hopefully next week, we have our first 2012 official angled luffa and bitter gourd harvest. Hoping that this month, we finally have some cucurbit harvest. We only had a few odd-looking cucumber shape harvested in summer.

Tree Dahlia (Dahlia imperialis)

I got 2 long flower stem which I have no idea what it was from Barbra when I joined our local fruit and vegetable swap for the second time last year. She tried very hard to explain what it is and how to propagate it but I still can’t imagine what the flower will look like. So she told me it look daisy like? I even misunderstood how to propagate it. You are supposed to propagate this stem horizontally but this novice gardener did it vertically. No easy task digging in clay soil for 50cm depth to stick in these stem which Lenay had to help as I was busy in school. Shhh…she does not know yet that it is suppose to be horizontal as I just read about it today. Lenay thought I brought back sugar cane at first. Well I thought the same thing too when I saw this stem at first. The stem is bamboo like but look similar to sugar cane if you spend your childhood in the tropics that will be first thing on your mind. How nice will it be to bite and munch on sugar cane.

So for future reference, here is a link on how to propagate tree dahlia. But we were lucky even we propagated it totally in the wrong direction, the plant did sprouted new shoots.

New shoots sprouted from the nodes.

If we had grown the stem horizontally, we probably have a clump of tree dahlia now. Oh well, there is next time.

The plants grow very slowly at first. This is how they look last March since grown from September last year.

A month later in April, it shoot up very fast.

Early May we see the first batches of buds appearing.

The first bloom in middle of May. I was so excited because it is mauve my favourite colour like the colour of my wedding dress. However, I can’t really see how the bloom actually look like since it is facing my neighbour backyard. Coincidently, that week we have local fruit and vegetable swap meetings and I had the chance to tell Barbra about her wonderful gifts blooming in our garden now. How I finally know that this is tree dahlia blooming in my garden? I borrowed some last year May gardening magazine publication from our local library and it had an article what kind of flowers usually bloom at different region in Australia in May. The tree dahlia photo in the magazine is very familiar to my eyes now.

This tree dahlia is facing our kitchen window, so we have a nice view while cooking. Notice why I am cooking more lately. A very tall plant more than 3 metre tall. Glad that the fence will help protect from the winds.  I read it continuously bloom in winter, I dearly hope so. A very nice colour to have in the garden during winter even on cloudy days.

We are not the only admirer of this tree dahlia. Bees love them too. We have so many bees busy buzzing around this tree dahlia to sips its nectar before the weather gets really cold. We are so delighted that we still see so many bees buzzing in early winter. We don’t see any bees last year in end autumn or early winter when we did not have this tree yet growing in our garden.

I hope this week I have convinced you more thinking about local swap group in you area. See what wonderful gifts that I had received and learn so many new plants from so many generous gardeners.

Linking with Tracie Cottage Floral Thursday at Fishtail Cottage.

Ewa likes purple so linking with Flowers on Saturday for this week.

Japanese Radish Cake

I was worried at first with so many daikon seedlings that Lenay sowed while we were away for Rayyan surgery almost 3 months ago sprouted. Germination was 100%. I don't think we can possibly harvest them all. I was only planning a row of daikon but Lenay made 3 rows. She and Ilhan must be very bored while we were away. Now I have stop complaining because it has help fill in the gap until other winter vegetables are starting ready to be harvested end of winter or early spring. What is wonderful about daikon compare with other radish variety is that it does not need to be harvest quick because it does not become woody quickly. Moreover, it grow so big very fast. If you have a pet and worried about them trampling on daikon seedlings, don't worry, they are almost stomp-proof. We grow daikon at the back of our fence on a reserve land and one day a driver who wanted to test his car during dusk drove through those young daikon seedlings which just sprouted true leaf. Those seedling look pretty bad and I thought they won't survived as some were totally squash out. I don't say those word out aloud because Lenay is having tears in her eyes since it is her project patch. She planted and hill up the ones that were uprooted. Surprisingly they did grow pretty good (photo as evidence).

I have only started growing plants on this area last August so the soil is still very hard. Since I can see white roots on top of the soil, I reckon those daikon is already having a very hard time to push into the soil for bigger and longer root growth. I pull several out last weekend and it was not an easy thing to do. We have to be careful or the roots breaks in the soil and you have to dig out the rest part of the root which is not easy since the soil is very hard. Avoid pulling the top but hold on to the roots and try to turn them right and left gently to pull them up. Some of the daikon has reach their limit to try breaking the soil to grow some roots and start to become forky. Daikon can grow at least 40~50cm long and like potato, it is a good soil-breaker. Because of that, I have already planned to grow garlic on this row of daikon after I finished harvesting this long white root.

Fresh home-grown vegetables are the best thing but eating daikon many times a week will probably make you wish for other stuff as well. So last weekend project was about searching and trying new recipe with radish other than soup or stir-fry daikon with anchovies which what has been prepared in our kitchen since the daikon harvest started in our garden. If you have a glutton of radish and run out of ideas to prepare it, here is a recipe that I tried from Terry Tan's The Thai Table cooking book ~ Steamed Radish Cake (Khanom Chai Tau). I am not a very good student for following step-by-step instruction in cooking but it is not difficult to prepare.

Steamed Radish Cake (Khanom Chai Tau)

Makes one 200gram cake

Ingredients:

Daikon 900gram , peeled and grated

Rice flour 400gram

Tapioca flour or Corn flour (cornstarch) 55 gram

Water 125ml

Salt 2tsp

Cooking oil 2Tbsp

Vegetable Stock cube 1, crushed

Place grated radish in a blender and blend until fine. Set aside.

Combine both types of flour and sift into a mixing bowl. Gradually add water and mix well. Mixture should be thick and moist. Add salt, oil, stock cube and radish. Mix until well blended.

Transfer mixture to a non-stock, medium-sized pot. Cook over low heat for 10 minutes, or until cake is firm. Remove from pot and steam over high heat for 30 minutes. Radish cake is ready when an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Set aside to cool before use.

A very healthy vegetarian cake.

Note: Some people needs to get used of the strong daikon flavour before having this. When I asked my husband what does it taste like? Taste like you are eating daikon...hmmm...I would probably used 2 vegetable stock cube next time. This is our first taste of Steamed Japanese Radish cake and I think it goes well eating it together with sambal ikan bilis (chili anchovies). Looks like kuih bingka when its cooked.

Wendy is hosting Garden To Table Challenge.

White Wednesday at Faded Charm.
It is the first day of winter here and it is such a fine sunny day today, although cold if you go outside.
Hazel is celebrating our first winter day this year with Winter Wednesday.

Last Autumn 2011 Harvest

I can't believe it in less than 30 hours will be officially winter season here in Adelaide. Not only that we are also almost middle of the year when I felt that we just entered year 2011. On the other hand, it is interesting that the opposite hemisphere have longer day hours to enjoy and don't need to wear jacket soon. Visit Daphne's Dandelion to see varieties of harvest from different part of gardens around the world is enjoying. We harvested our first giant purple mustard grown from Harry seeds that we inter-planted with broccoli. As the giant purple mustard grow much faster than slow-growing broccoli, it gets overcrowded on the patch so we harvested some of it. We had some sweet corns, tomatoes, volunteer potatoes and different variety of capsicum to harvest last week. Interestingly, one of the sweet corns plant had kernels on the tassel and it tasted very sweet brings back childhood memory when my aunt brought back young stalk of rice for a treat.

Yellow cherry tomatoes, pencil size leeks and red capsicum fried together with rice noodles for Sunday breakfast.

Red hot chilli harvest.

Pak Choi and funny looking root vegetables.

Bitter gourd plant is still producing some male and female flowers at the moment. But with the cold weather, the fruit won't grow that much even it is well pollinated. Will this be our last bitter gourd harvest for this year? Not sure we still have ping pong ball size of bitter gourd on the plants. More and more daikon, snow peas and chili to harvest next month.

How do you prepare your radish in the kitchen?

Autumn Visitors

We have so many creatures visiting our garden this year in autumn. Many of them, we have not seen them in previous autumn. I am not familiar with these tiny creatures, hopefully you can help me identify them which I have to watch out or welcome in our garden. We are worried that we shoo away the good guys but the bad boys have a nice home-stay with us.

This one on top of leaf amaranth look very cute but I am very suspicious of this cute bug. Let it stay or shoo it away?

Mr. Grasshopper is a childhood friend. It does not leave any obvious damage in our garden, although with many numbers can severely causes havoc in a tropical garden.

I am not really sure whats her name. But it does look one that I should let it stay as it wants in our garden.

How about this bug No.4?

This spider seems to be spunning webs to protect pumpkin behind it.

It is getting colder everyday now here.

Hope you don't catch the bug!

Stay warm.