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?

Daikon thinnings

I was a bit worried during the second half of April whether the garden will have any fresh vegetables for the kitchen. Fortunately, daikon seeds that were sowed around middle of March were growing really fast. Daikon seeds were sowed very closely, I have been putting root vegetables seedlings thinning task at the bottom of list to do in the veggie patch. As daikon grows really big root compared with other radish, our daikon thinnings were already the same size as white icicle variety radish. Daikon thinnings have been the main fresh harvest in the kitchen together with chilies. Okra is loving the warm weather we had last week and we spied many promising pods that can be harvested this week. Once again, I forgot to harvest bittergourd growing in the front yard, some fruits have over ripen.

Glad I did not gave up on the white spine cucumber plants that have been growing since spring but were only producing male flowers. As the day is becoming shorter, it starts to produce female flower. Now, it is the main cucumber variety that is producing for us in fall. After second year of growing this cucumber variety, I now understand that this is a very sensitive day-light hours cucumber plant. Some cucumber variety don't produce female when the days are getting longer but the shortening of day-lights will trigger the female fruits to form. Some carrots that were growing in containers sowed in January were harvested.

I was clearing some veggie patches and harvested leeks that were planted in spring. Using some of this harvest (leeks, cucumbers, capsicum, chinese celery cut in bite sizes), prepared Sweet and Sour Tempura coated Salmon dish.

Different variety of capsicum plants are producing in our garden. However, it makes us wait a long time for it to ripe. I am so tempted to harvest these capsicum when there are green several times. Results of waiting until last weekend got to harvest 2 purple bell and banana capsicum. Spied some banana and golden bell capsicums which is ripening and might be ready for picking this week. Lenay fried the eggplants with tempura. Probably this was our final chance harvested 3 varieties of cucumbers (apple, green gem, white spine) in one day this fall.

We don't have much luck with melon family this year compared last year. Last year we have many big honeydew melons and watermelon to harvest. This year we only had some small melon harvest. The biggest melon this year did not even matured to the size of smallest melon harvested last year. Honeydew, Rockmelon and Turkish Leopard melon plants were fruiting but I discovered too late last week that cucumber beetles have make a grand nest on one of the veggie patch. The plants died when the fruit were half-way developing . Although the ripe melons were small this year, it tastes much sweeter than the big ones.

What is your most favourite melon?

Visit Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday.

Over ripe Bitter Gourd / Melon

Bye-bye Ilhan and Rayyan! Mama going to school...Alamak, wait a second, why is that bitter gourd have a hole at the bottom.

I forgot all about bitter gourd plants in the front of the house because they just started to produce end March unlike the ones growing at the backyard. My plants don't like growing at the front yard because the soil are unbearably hot and they receive afternoon sun.

 This bitter gourd fruit is over-ripening. The next day much more bigger hole at the bottom and you can see red flesh covering bitter gourd seeds. If you leave it longer on the plant, the seeds will drop to the ground. Ants sometime help to clean up the red flesh and leave clean seeds for you.

A closer look...

Inside...

Lenay had a bite and she said it does not taste bitter anymore. I take her word this time around.

This is what bitter gourd inside look when I harvest them for cooking. If you see some reddish skin inside it means that it is starting to ripe. Bitter gourd brownish colour seeds at this stage can be kept for next-planting.

ACAR lagi

Made another ACAR dish again this week on my cousin Lenay request as a side dish with Chicken Rice. Don't have to use the stove to prepare this dish just cut bite size of chili, capsicum, carrot, red onion, pineapple and cucumber . Then add in vinegar, sugar, salt and lemon juice, mix well, its done. Less cleaning up to do in the kitchen.

Harvest some carrots (Topweight variety) that were growing in clay soil look kind of pale but surprisingly it did managed to grow through that compact soil. Early Long Purple Eggplant start to produce prolific now. Last year this eggplant plants managed to produce until Early winter.

Last week, I did said that I would like to try P.F.Chang's Stir-Fried Spicy Eggplant dish which I saw in Kitchen Flavours with my next eggplant harvest. It was so delicious, a must try recipe and it only take less than 15 minutes to prepare the dish (including some distraction from the kids). Thank you Joyce for introducing this recipe to me, my next harvest will be this dish again. Minimise cooking time for other agendas.

Cleared up some patch for fall planting and harvested some baby size leeks planted in spring. One of the leek were so long, plus the top leave will be almost the same height with Rayyan.

Harvested some kangkung (water spinach), capsicums, beans and volunteer potatoes. Cucumber early gem season is almost over for us.

Finally after weeks of waiting, I got the chance to eat some kacang panjang (yard-long bean/snake bean). Just a simple dish with the beans, fried them with a little bit of soy sauce thats all. Another round of bitter gourd and apple juice anyone? Run out of apples, my husband keep on forgetting to buy them every time he went to the market (on purpose?).

Hope we are lucky for another round of Snake Bean harvest next week.

What is your favourite dish with Kacang Panjang?

Visit Daphe's Dandelion for Harvest Monday!

Bitter Gourd and Apple Juice

Before we left for Melbourne our bitter gourd was starting to produce many female flowers. For UV protection we recycled papers to wrap those small babies. Too much expose to strong UV rays is not healthy. We teach our children to wear hat, protective clothes and put on sunscreen lotion whenever they go outside, so bitter gourd babies need protection as well. Bitter gourd plants have grown more than 3 metre tall, I can't reached the one at the top.

The paper wrap also shelter other beneficial predators in the garden.

Because they are so many other visitors admiring bitter gourd flowers. It help balance the eco-system in our garden.

The weather is mild now and bitter gourd really love it with so many lush growth and produce. We don't have to wrap the fruit at the moment as it has been a wet week. Don't want the fruit to catch cold wearing wet cloth.

Thanks to Cik Manggis (Madam mangosteen) author of jom masak, jom makan makan..for bitter gourd and apple juice recipe. I discovered that you can make a healthy juice from bitter gourd.
Ingredient: 1 apple, 1 bitter gourd , half a lemon, 3 glass of water and ice cubes (optional sugar or honey if you are not counting calories).

Washed and slice the apple and peria and put into the mixer with 3 glass of water.

Squeeze lemon, stir and add ice cube.

After all the process, add some ice cubes and ready to drink. Rayyan and Ilhan had the honour to taste this juice first while my cousin and I supervised them. Since children at their age don't lie, look at Ilhan expression closely.

Bravo! Ilhan finished a glass of bitter gourd and apple juice.

Instead of half a lemon, I used more than one lemon and add some sugar since I like sourish taste more.

What do you think?

A very healthy juice in the morning.

1st half of February harvest

Main fruit or vegetables that were harvested in the first half of month February has been the yellow pear cherry and yellow tiny cherry tomatoes. Other tomato varieties and cucurbit produce has been decreasing since we had extreme hot weather. But last week the weather has cool down a little bit, all the effected or burned leaves has been pruned and new shoots has started to grow. The first week of February harvest there were many of tomatoes top that has been burned in the harvest photos. Bitter gourd unintentionally were harvested a bit mature with the sign of yellowish bottom. Australian Brown Onion grown from seeds had to be harvested even smallish size due to extreme hot weather that cause the plants to wilt.

Harvested 3 sweet corns but only Ilhan ate them all. Ilhan really like sweet corn and always wanted us to harvest the one still developing on the plants like to eat them fresh.

Harvested earliball small hybrid cabbage variety, Chinese broccoli, apple cucumber (had to harvest them early as the weather was so hot it ripen to quick turn yellowish) and some leeks (clearing the pot to sow another batch of Chinese broccoli).

I harvested some carrot that were growing in very heavy clay soil and was surprised to see that the roots can grow longer than I expected. Carrots that were grown in clay soil is so much paler than the ones grown in containers. We managed to hand-pollinated some zucchinies this month. I observed that leaf amaranth bolt very fast during extreme hot weather so have to harvest them frequently before it bolts.

There are some vegetable that were grown over winter that we can harvest this month such as leek, Chinese Celery and spring onion (the bulb has grown looking like white onion).

We are thankful with the opportunity of harvesting different variety of cucurbits this month such as button squash, zucchini and apple cucumber.

The ever reliable cut and come again KangKung (water spinach) that we grown in polystyrene containers. We have 4 polystyrene container that we used to grow KangKung to supply our kitchen. I would love to collect KangKung seeds this autumn but I wonder if it will ever flower here.

From ocean to our kitchen last Saturday are 9 squids that were caught by my hubby. We have better luck this year catching squids. I deep fried them with lemon basil for lunch.

What is your main harvest this 1st half of February?

Visit Daphne Dandelions for Harvest Monday.

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?

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”? 

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

• 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

FLOWER

• Bellis Perennis (English Daisy)
  
• Carnation
  
• Evening Sun Sunflower
  
• Gloriosa Daisy on snow ~Master Propagator at Work
  
• Nasturtium
  
• Sunflower ~ Subsistence Pattern
  
• Viola
  
• Zinnia~Onenezz

FRUIT

• Currants, Gooseberries & Josta Berries ~ Subsistence Pattern
  
• Fruit & Nuts ~ Subsistence Pattern

OTHERS

• 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

SEED SAVING

• On Saving Seeds~Sweet Rock Farm
  
• Home-Saved seed and Blue potato~Aux plaisirs du jardin
  
• Saving Seeds ~ Moj Vrt
  
• Storing seeds ~ Subsistence Pattern
  
• Why save seeds ~ Subsistence Pattern

VEGETABLES

• 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
• Zucchini ~ Subsistence Pattern