Flowering Harvest

 Many of the autumn-sown veggies are starting to flower so its a chase to harvest all those veggies ASAP. We harvested all of our Florence Fennel bulbs and carrots last week. Our pea season are ending this month. From self-sowed autumn tomato plants we get to harvest some ripe cherry tomatoes.

 The warm weather this week has hastened tatsoi to flower and got to harvest them. We harvested a few left overs chiogga beetroots.

Our only surviving chamomile plant is still producing flowers which we welcome very much.

 We also harvested boltardy beetroot last week. The last edible purple vienna kohlrabi was harvested. This kohlrabi has very long-ish thick stem but still edible.

 Golden nugget cape gooseberry and alpine strawberry fruits are still in season here in our small garden. We had volunteer garlic small bulbs sprouted in container last autumn and I pull them out all for immediate use in the kitchen.

Join in Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday.

Back to School and Harvesting

 I have returned to school from maternity leave almost 2 weeks now and Abby is 2 months old. Hence, disappearing for a short while again from the blogsphere. I have not come in early to school yet probably around noon as it is hard to leave Abby. But then I stay at least until 7PM. I think that is an excuse I am never a morning person (another excuse low blood pressure). The Medela freestyle breastpump has been a savior as I can do 3 things at a time breastfeed, expressing and browsing the net. 

I missed Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday last week so these are the harvest summaries for the first half month of October.

 The month of October will be continuously harvesting Western Red Carrot, Boltardy Beetroot and Golden Nugget Cape Gooseberry.

 We still have some fresh lemon grass stalks to harvest after the plants stayed dormant during cold season. Peas are reducing as the weather gets warm. Harvest the last black round Spanish radish last week. Need to start harvesting Florence Fennel regularly before they flower. We kept on finding some potatoes whenever we do some weeding in the garden.

We harvested our first small red cabbage last week. No more Bloomsdale spinach in the garden as I harvested them all as some of the plants starts to form flower stalk. The last 2 touchstone gold beetroot were harvested and I left one to flower to collect seeds.

 The harvest in the photo above were growing at the back of our backyard fence on reserve land. They got trampled by the council cleaning team. My husband was shocked when one morning he wanted to harvest some veggies at the back all the veggies were almost gone and even big plants were mowed. We managed to harvest leeks that had hair cuts because the stem were planted deep into the ground and only the top were mowed.Same with the florence fennel were severed from its roots and the leaves cut , lucky that the bulb stayed intact. For 3 years, I grew veggies back there but this is the first time happened. The spring onion flowers were left drying on the plant but it got chopped so brought them in to dry.

The previous post I mentioned that I am giving-away Australian Brown Onion and Spring Onion seeds.

Winners, please send me your address so I can post it to you (kebunkmg@gmail.com).

Aussie Brown Onion and Spring Onion Seeds Winners:

> Gardenglut author of Glut: a year in my patch

> KitsapFG (Laura) author of The Modern Victory Garden

>Joyfulhomemaker author of Fhat Farmer Chick

>Ummuaidan author of Our Simple Garden

>Malar author of My Little Garden

Spring Cleaning

 We did a little bit of spring cleaning around our container garden at the backyard on this long weekend. The last year and autumn sowed plants are going to flower any moment, so it is best to harvest them ASAP or it will become woody/bitter once the plants starts to flower. Most of the rainbow chards in our garden is flowering, same as kohlrabi. We harvested some red romaine lettuce, purple top turnip and leek. All of these veggies were given to young student friends visiting Abby last Saturday.

 We also give-away these root crop vegetables- carrots, boltardy beetroots and black spanish radishes to Abby's young bright scientist visitors.

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 Our Italian sprouting broccoli and peas still continue to supply food for our kitchen supply. We harvested all Western Red carrots grown in the same polystyrene box this week. I am quite satisfied with the number of carrot that we get from only one small container.

It is ranunculus blooming season in our garden at the moment, cut some to bring inside. Surprisingly, found some ripen capsicum cherrytime fruits on the plant hidden surrounded by beetroot leaves. Florence fennel bulbs are also good size ready to be pick in the garden. It is exciting at the moment to pick cape gooseberry fruits and eat them straight away in the garden. 

Enjoying fresh pick chamomile for tea almost everyday now. 

Our 7 weeks old Abbiyana is also putting on weight nicely and chubbier.

Join in Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday.

Treasure Hunting

 My mental health is recovering slowly than my impatient side would like too. But it is a positive thing and something I should be grateful that I did not seem at the moment succumbing to postnatal depression while I am having mental depression and trying to overcome it.  Some days are good that I wake up and feel motivated instead of lying on the bed and not looking forward to anything. Its still a fragile thing and could be a false feeling so I am taking tentative baby steps not to be overdoing myself with too much planning or multitasking. There is still many unsettled things which worries me so I need to remind myself to not set unrealistic goal or dealing with high expectation. Sigh, one step at a time. I need to learn how to enjoy doing one thing at a time instead of doing so many things at once. For example, on my good days I can cook while washing dishes, clean the counter top, laundry and I can also do some weeding or sowing seeds in between waiting for the dish to cook or stirring. But my husband he does one task at a time even though he have some breaks in between. It is no wonder I make myself crazy while doing tasks at hand my brain also seems to be planning what to do ahead running into different direction planning non-stop, can't control and it goes chaotic. It made me think that I have some kind of mental disorder. I struggle to focus on one thing at a time. Physically I feel much better and more energetic after postnatal birth from last week. I am urged and advise to go out and socialise a bit to prevent me being isolated and fall to depression by professional help. Yet, I don't feel like going out at all. The only place I will go out to is the garden. Since I feel physically better now, we have been clearing up the garden bits by bits and found lots of treasures or basically free food last week. 

 A small spot in the garden was sprawled with autumn self-seeded tomato plants overlapping each other. These tomato plants flower during winter but I don't think with the cold temperature it will set fruit. However, after I made an effort to stake these tomato plant last weekend and gave some pruning found some ripened tomatoes and there are already producing fruits. I guess the warming temperature has able those flowers to set fruit. One of the plants has actually grown more than 5 feet tall when I pull it upright and tied it on the emergency support. I was not sure how many tomato plants before and now it is 3 tomato plants on that spot. Some of the cape gooseberries fruits has also matured and drop to the weeds underneath hiding these golden fruits. If my boys are here with me, I don't think mama and papa will have their fair share of these delicious golden fruits. I think they would certainly enjoy these golden 'berries' very much. I did not realised how many self-seeded tall red celery have grown among our backyard container gardens in between other plants and they sure have grown. The celery stalk surprisingly juicy when relying on rain water only. We also harvested some peas and broccoli shoots last week. We harvested all of our Early Horn carrots last week grown in container.

 Here is half of the patch in front of the kitchen window that I have cleared on the weekend. Everything on this patch are self-seeded plants except for 2 foxglove plant which has been completely   hidden. Most of these volunteers are celery and chervil.

Celery from the patch above.

I remembered we had several self-sprouted potato plant on the front yard in different places. However with weed competition and pest attacking the plant many plants got lost while they were growing around 20cm tall. Last weekend while my husband cleared up the front yard and pulling out all the weeds he found several small sizes of potatoes from the potatoes that perished early and lost in sight. Surprisingly, one self-sprouted Royal Blue potato that got lost under sunflower and rose geranium plant has produced decent harvest. The Royal Blue potato plant was not there anymore but somehow I remembered there was a potato plant growing on that spot. So lucky we blindly dug around that area an hit a jackpot.

We are blessed with many volunteer rainbow chards plants  last autumn and this spring I found several new seedlings as well while clearing up and left them undisturbed. Hopefully these seedlings will provide us harvest during summer. Summer month is actually the season which we don't really have much to harvest compared to other season. Lettuce are also plenty still to pick around the garden. But it will be time to say goodbye to lettuce by next month if I don't sow a new batch of lettuce this week.

We also harvested some florence fennels, beetroots, top purple turnips and kohlrabi this week.

There are still many spots to clear up.

Join in Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandellion.

Most Anticipated 2012 Harvest

I would like to introduce you to our anticipated harvest of this year Abbiyana Ariel born on 9th August 2012 at 2 PM through waterbirth normal delivery. She is our biggest harvest for this year but she only weight 2.99kg at birth. Four hours after birth we went home. Abby face resembles her brothers when they were babies. She is the reason why there are no posting in this blog for a while. Her father wanted to name her Abigail which means a father joy but I was not keen on it. Because my husband hometown family will pronounce the name different as suppose to be due to the dialect going to sound very weird. Abbi means a father's joy. Yes, Abby father is really happy now he has a baby girl. Her middlename is Ariel is not because she was born under water and related to Disney little mermaid is just a coincidence. But Ariel was chosen as her middlename from one of the archangels. Her brothers middlename are also from one of the archangels ~ Mikhail and Haniel. According to Chinese calendar this is the year of water dragon, born in water she enjoys her bath very much.When she demands for her feed she sounds like a little dragon as well ...hehehe...

September is really a busy month for harvesting and sowing seeds. I am very behind with the sowing schedule due to postnatal birth confinement and care and could not keep up with edibles need to harvest ASAP. 

Main harvest for this early spring month from our garden are broccoli and carrot. I am hoping now that we entered spring this year carrot won't flower that quickly for us to enjoy them.

Although, we have only one Italian sprouting broccoli plant, I cannot keep up harvesting the shoots. The plant is very generous providing so many shoots to harvest continuously through this month.  I keep on giving-away the harvested broccoli shoots because we can't finish them and I can't managed time to blanch and freeze them. While I am writing this I think maybe I should make broccoli puree and frozen them for Abby when she starts to try solid food. A few of chillies were picked half ripe and brought inside to ripen them up.

Totally forgotten to harvest one Kent pumpkin last autumn. I found the pumpkin amidst the weeds at the back of our backyard fence last week. Fortunately, it was in good shape. Kohlrabi also needs to be harvested this month before it starts to flower. Noticed how long the grass on our backyard.

Autumn-sown radishes need to be pick quick this month as many of them are starting to give the sign of going to flower soon, Peas are also one of the main harvest this month, a luxurious fresh snack while in the garden. Self-sowed celery plants are abundant for picking as well.

Cherrytime capsicum and self-sowed yellow currant cherry tomato are also available from the garden.

We also have spinach and Touchstone Gold beetroot readily available from the garden this month.

This early spring is our chamomile peak harvest season. Nice to have fresh chamomile tea to make us feel more relax. I am just a bit concern whether chamomile tea is fine for breastfeeding mother.

Last Saturday, while cleaning up one of the neglected patch fill with weeds at the back of our backyard fence found some potatoes and leek. I was pruning some of our over-wintered bonica brinjal plants, surprisingly found some small fruits on the plant. We were also clearing up some containers and harvested some unnoticed bush peas and cape gooseberries. Its like treasure hunting for goodies this month with the weeds going wild everywhere.

Another face of a month old Abbiyana Ariel.

I am enjoying motherhood at the moment.
Thinking whether I should give her a first hair cut now that her hair is passed her shoulders.
Join in Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday.

Kitaran Hidup Karot Naga (Life-Cycle of Dragon Carrot)

I did not aim to collect dragon carrot seeds last year, just did not made it on time to harvest all of the carrots in spring before it came woody and starts to flower. We planted different variety of carrots last year and one of them is dragon carrot. I found dragon carrot seems to flower much faster than other carrot varieties when we entered spring season. We were lucky that carrot did very well last year. Dragon carrot top leaves stems closer to the root are purplish in colour.

Dragon carrot fern-like foliage is pretty. If you are aiming to enjoy dragon carrot roots, try to harvest it quickly in early spring. I found that purple carrots are more sensitive to the change of day-length compare to orange carrots. Last sowing month for cool season will be May or it might straight away bolt. However, it is fun to harvest different colour of carrots in the garden.

The carrot central stalk has formed a fat looking stalk.

The carrot root core at this stage will become too woody to enjoy.

Dragon carrot buds.

Dragon carrot just starting to bloom.

Dragon carrot in full bloom.

Very tempting to cut the flower and bring inside it look very cute.

More flowers.

The older flower gradually forming seeds.

Blooming together with our volunteer larkspur flower plant in container.

Dragon carrot seeds.

For us the challenge of collecting carrot seeds is when those seeds are left to dry properly on the plants because that is the time aphids came settle on the seeds. There were no aphids during any time of the carrots life cycle except when the seeds are developing. I am not sure why aphids seems attracted to infest the developing seeds. Because of aphids we did not get to collect as many as we thought we could.

Have a nice weekend! 

2012 End Summer Harvest Finale

Summer ending for us here.

I am sure many gardeners living in Northern hemisphere are happy greeting spring.

Did not take many photo lately.

But here some what we had been harvesting at the end of summer.

Sorted some of our brown onions that are left curing in the shed, brought in some onion for the kitchen use which does not going to store well.

Pak choi grown in container and miraculously survive the extreme summer heat.

We harvested our first batch of kang kong/water spinach bamboo leaves, second summer broccoli and bonica eggplants.

Mice have been nibbling on the top of our root vegetables, so we harvested carrots and beetroots.

Beans, cherry tomatoes, brown onions and shallots.

Carrots and self-sowed amaranth (bayam).

We harvested our first banana capsicum that we grown from seeds this warm season. 

Pak choi, hon tsai tai, daikon, baby beetroot and cherry tomatoes.

The weather has cool down a bit now.

Hoping that our summer veggies will set fruit well now.

It was too hot before for them to set fruit, although they have blooms.

Wishing for more cucurbit and solanum family harvest at the moment.

Visit Daphne's Dandellion for harvest monday and see what other gardeners doing with their harvest.

40 degree Celsius Baked Veggie Harvest

From the previous post, we mentioned that we lost many plants due to the 40 degree Celsius hot weather that we had at the closing of year 2011 and starting of 2012. Almost all of our pumpkin/squash plants died and we only managed to get a pumpkin each from the spagetthi squash and small sugar pumpkin plants that we were growing. The thelma sanders sweet potato pumpkin plants gave us a second one before it also died due to the hot weather. I am not sure whether we will be able to get any more pumpkin for this year, although I did sow some pumpkin seeds last weekend.

Many of the root vegetable top were burn and some don't even have a trace so I had to dig blindly to harvest those root. This is how some of those harvested roots look like before they got a scrub. Some chilli fruit were also scorched by the heat.

Above harvest after some scrubbing...

Many of the root top parts have to be cut because blackish and dehydrated.

Pak choi leaves were also scorched but I have taken out the dried leaves. Tomato fruit skin also turn brownish at the side that facing the sun.

Carrots harvested from containers because they have no more top leaves.

Visit Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday.

It will be awhile before I can blog visit again because something suddenly came up and I have to go to Malaysia for a very short trip today. It has been 3 years since I have not been back. I will drop by and reply any question if any after everything settles down.