Late Warm Harvest Continues

Our warm season vegetable/fruit harvest were late this year for picking.

For example, we usually don't harvest any cucumbers in May.

But our white spine cucumber and lemon cucumber has just started to supply our kitchen.

I don't have much luck with lemon cucumber.

The lemon cucumber in our garden is not very prolific.

I am hoping I have success collecting white spine cucumber seeds this year.

Eggplants harvest still continues here in May.

Cherrytime capsicum is the most prolific in our garden this year grown from our home-saved seeds.

We harvested several Turkish Leopard Melons.

I think this melon is very heat-tolerant as they survive with neglect and little watering.

The white flowers are weeds growing between the melon plant.

Show how lazy I have become and not caring much about the plant.

Da Cheong Chae thinnings.

Earlier this month, I was a bit impatient and I harvested chocalate capsicum while they were still green or not fully ripen but left some to ripe. Last weekend some has ripen for picking. 

Big surprise from the garden is that we got a cauliflower harvest from a one year old plant left growing at the back of our backyard fence. The plant had survived our extreme summer heat without much watering. Amazingly the cauliflower was one of the tastiest home-grown cauliflower I have ever tasted so creamy and sweet, pack full of flavour. I thought it was going to be bitter as the cauliflower curd form in warm weather. Other harvest last week was summer grown carrots, beetroots and eggplants. Finally some of our long chilli has also ripen was so spicy.

We also have some fresh salmon trouts last weekend.

Our house fisherman learn a few trick from his friend and found a new good spot for fishing.

I probably be left alone with Rayyan each Saturday morning now this month.

Visit Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday!

Cauliflower Combo (Companion week)

Most book regarding companion planting has given suggestion to make companion planting work well is not to plant the same kind of plant in a straight row but to plant in blocks and inter-planting with other plants that give good support or compatible to grow with. Moreover, not to just focus on getting them on the same plot but grow them scatter on different place in the garden. In my first year of growing cauliflower , we grew them in 2 straight row with lack of knowledge about companion planting and it was time consuming to get rid of the eggs and caterpillars. Those cauliflower were not a beauty and the leaves were badly munched, sometime we were tempted to just give up on the cauliflowers. On top of that, some of the cauliflower plants were also badly infested with aphids which cause the plants growth to be stunted. We lost many cauliflower plant to these pests. So, on our second year we decided not to repeat the same mistake again and try to follow this simple basic rules:

1)Plant in blocks, not rows.

2)Inter-planting with other plants

3)Plant in different location in the patch. It does not matter even the patch does not look neat and organise as long we can avoid the pest (contain them in one place). Think of it as playing hide and won't be seek.

4)Succession sowing ( one of the last sowing, bye-bye butterfly mom too cold for you now, only worry about snail and slug).

Our second year of growing cauliflowers were a success, save so much time and money (don't even have to make organic spray that often). We harvested more than 50 cauliflowers which is more than double the amount of harvest in the first year from our small garden.

Here are some cauliflower combination inter-planting with other plants that we did last year. I was amazed in 1metre X 1 metre persquare plot there were so many variety of plants that we can inter-plant.

Peas growing vertically behind 3 cauliflower plants. Growing in-front of cauliflowers are leeks, carrots, corianders,lettuces and 2 poppy plants.

Peas growing vertically, 2 cauliflower plants were growing side by side with 3 celery plants, calendulas and phyrethrum plants. There are 3 sad-looking chili plants near the pathway which bravely withstand winter season which we treated as perennial instead of annual. Not a pretty sight in winter but many chilies for us now.

Coriander don't mind shade so a row of corianders at the back, 3 celery plants in the middle and poppy as a border on the front. Coriander grew taller and taller as they bolt, when they are flowering it will be most effective against pests like aphids and sap suckers.

We have fresh seeds of Zinnia (Lilliput Mix), Bitter Gourd, Leaf Amaranth (Chinese Spinach) and Portulaca (Moss Rose) that we will like to share with 3 blogs that has kindly share their experience in companion gardening by linking their post within this"Companion Week" , which will be chosen randomly.

Happy reading and hope you have a relaxing long Easter weekend!

Second week of November harvest

It is late spring and most of the growing summer vegetables are still in the early stage of development. I am starting to worry what next week will be available to harvest from garden to kitchen for preparing food on the table. For this week, we harvested some baby potatoes (nicola variety) from potato plant grown in polystyrene containers. Some of the potato plant leaves grown in polystyrene box has turned yellowish and dying. So I pull out the plants and rummage into the soil to see how much potatoes I can get from a 2 months old plant. Surprise, surprise can get my hands on some baby potatoes.

One or two tomato from this “Stupice” tomato plant that shoot up during winter when it died from summer heatwave.

. The last cauliflower for this year. Not a beauty and big like it sisters that have been harvested a while back but nevertheless taste good like it sisters. We have to wait another 8 months to eat fresh cauliflowers again. Although we do have some frozen one if we crave some.

Some winter veggies still growing in the garden to harvest~ carrots, celery sticks, leeks and spring onions as shown in the pictures except for “Red Choi” grown from spring.

Which vegetable is heading towards your kitchen?

2010, a new record for cauliflower

I have been busy with my research update at school this week that I unintentionally left some of the cauliflowers curds grown a bit too matured when I harvested them. This year so far we have harvested from 39 cauliflower plants starting from end July till now. Some of the cauliflower parts have been munched by snail and slug.Now we don’t really mind sharing some with them.I think the snail and slug is not keen on munching the cauliflower curds that much, they already have their fair share. I think the snail and slug are nipping on the cauliflower to provoke me.

At least every 2 or 3 days cauliflower will be in our menu. Our objectives this year is to prolong the cauliflower season. Last year the last cauliflower harvested was before Mid-September came. However, it seems this year we have success in extending cauliflower season in our patch. The key factor of this success is successional sowing. The first sowing was end March, Mid-April and Mid-May. The last transplanted seedlings was in Mid-June. We still had 3 areas in our place where  cauliflower is still growing. This is one of the patch. Hopefully our cauliflower season could  be extend until this end of October.

 

September Fruit & Vegetable Swap

There was a Community Fruit & Vegetable Swap local event in West Croydon held at James and Evie place, our host for this month this morning. We brought some chilies and cauliflowers to share this time.

Year 2010 is a good cauliflower year for us. We have already frozen cauliflower stocks in the freezer.  We are nearing our objective of prolonging cauliflower season this year. There are still more than 30 cauliflower plants growing with different stages of growth at our place. This veggie patch is growing the youngest cauliflower plant in our place (seedling transplanted last June). Please ignore the periwinkle plant, I know it is still looking sad:( in early spring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our hosts James and Evie front garden greeted us with colourful flowers suitable for mediterranean climate .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gathering at the backyard where fresh produces are shared. Ilhan had a wonderful time playing with friends and getting his pants covered with mud. Our hosts has a dog and Ilhan is scared of dogs. He jumps to anyone who are nearest to him crying to be carry if the dog is near to him. I feel very sorry for people who was force to carry Ilhan end up with dirty clothes. He was not afraid of dogs before but since last year he is scared of dog and I cannot convince him not to be afraid with dog now. What should we do?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our hosts recycled oil raw drums to grow food. Interesting idea.

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We brought back grapefruits, lemons, daun kesum (Vietnamese mint) and two stems of daisy-like flower to propagate ( we been told it can grow 3~5 metres tall in a year and flower in winter, thought it was sugarcane or bamboo stem at first).

Freezing Cauliflowers

We are having excess cauliflowers this week. I only had a few minutes in the veggie patch this week before I am off to lab. This morning I see many cauliflower curds are looking very matured,

Mik helped harvest all those matured looking cauliflower today and help to keep them in the freezer today. We harvested five cauliflower curds today.

Cut into small pieces.

Blanched for about 2 minutes. The stem greenish colour is a bit different and look more softer. Before blanching it still has the crisp crunchy look.

Seal and pack ready to be frozen with label as a reminder. Five time meal for us and ready to be prepared anytime. I have not google yet on how long we could keep it frozen but I think at least 6 months should be fine.

We only had cauliflower last year in August and it was not enough to preserve them. We had to wait almost a year to taste our own home grown cauliflower again.This year hopefully we could prolong the cauliflower production in our veggie patch.

BANZAI!!! We already have frozen cauliflower pack that could be our saviour when nothing edible is in the patch or  for whenever we have cauliflower craving in summer or autumn.

I don’t have a scale to know how many kilos I have harvested so far for cold season brassicas.

But this is a harvest tally memo up till today;

Broccoli ~ 10 curds

Cauliflower ~ 10 curds

Bolted Wong Bok ~ 14 plants (sigh)

Changes in 3 months (winter growth)

Winter season which vegetables growth are the slowest.

This is both are from our veggie patch on the same location where left picture is 3 months ago and right is how the patch look now. Calendula are planted in the centre and are having many buds that are going to bloom soon. Perhaps another month or so we will start to harvest cauliflower from this patch. Cauliflower leaves are hiding carrots. This patch only received limited sunlight (at most 2hours in sunniest day) but could still grow well. So for people who has limited sunny place in winter like me to plant vegetables, we still have hope utilising them.Patch size about 100cmX150cm.

All vegetables that was planted 3 month ago is doing well. This is the most sunniest places in our patch so the vegetables has no complaint. Even Pak Choy had long been harvested and in its place now are lettuces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can’t see our red onion now when 4 broccoli plants around red onion has become so big. We peek inside to see how the red onions are growing, a bit slow but not unhappy.

Fun with container gardening early August

I am a gardener who has so limited space and currently is renting. One option I have is growing vegetable in container. Growing vegetable in container can be fun as we could change the garden lay-out anytime we want to. I am also fond of growing different vegetables in one container and observe whether they are good buddies or like cats and dogs (companion planting at work?No?). Here are some vegetables that I am currently growing in container.

In this 30cmX50cm box> 2 cauliflower, coriander, nasturtium and potatoes.

Note: I am hoping that these cauliflower will produce in 1~2months time before the potato plants grow bigger.  So far all of them are good friends.

In this 30cmX50cm box> Broccoli (head starts to grow), lettuces, leeks (growing slowly), seed potatoes (not sprouted yet recently planted).

Same strategy as above broccoli and lettuces in the near future will be harvested and leaving the will be sprouted potatoes to grow.

Polystyrene box> Broccoli, potatoes and spinach seedlings

Note: The broccoli look unhappy because not having much sunlight. Now happy in its new place.

Polystyrene box> Broccoli and Leek

Note: Planting broccoli/ cauliflower together makes leek growth slow from observation. Or could it be the broccoli leaves block sunlight for leek?My purpose at putting them together at first was to reduce pest like caterpillars using the leek to mask the brassica smell.

Polystyrene box> Broccoli, Carrots, Spring onions and Leeks.

Polystyrene box> Broccoli , Garlic and Stock

Top View: Broccoli leaves are blocking sunlight through to garlic. Stock starts to flower this week.

Side View: I am here- Garlic.

Polystyrene box> Carrot and Leek

Plastic container> 2 cauliflower, Coriander (about to flower), Spring Onions, Leeks, Viola

We harvest cauliflower, broccoli shoots, chinese celery, carrots and snow peas today. This nice vegetables were the ingredient for nice hot Tom Yum  for dinner.

In the Saturday Morning Garden

 

Finally its weekend and I can spend more time to observe what is happening in the veggie patch now. Planning which patch will provide some space first for spring planting. Few more weeks we will wave goodbye to winter and here come spring.

I planted two varieties of cauliflower this year, all year round and snowball. Below are these two varieties growing beside each other and about another week both of them will be ready to be harvest. Left picture is All Year Round and we can see the head clearly. On the right is the snowball variety and the leaves are folding the cauliflower head hiding it. I won’t know that it has start to develop head unless I peek inside.

We harvested hon tsai tai or also known as ‘Purple-flowered Choy Sum’. The purple stem of this asian vegetable is not a common thing to see.

Pull out from the patch another 4 bolted wong bok. I reckon we had a total of 12 bolted Wong Bok already. We still have more than that number growing in the patch. Hope not all of them bolted. Looking at so many hole in the Wong Bok, we found snail and slug hiding inside the leaves,

Can you see the caterpillar on the broccoli? I almost did not notice it. I did not intend to take the caterpillar picture but I was trying to get a good focus taking picture of this broccoli. When I look at the image in the camera did I notice this sneaky fat caterpillar.

I am not sure what is the yellow thing from the caterpillar.

Left are ‘sparkler’ radish. Middle and right are ‘pink radish’. I was not sure how the pink radish is supposed to look like and what is the right size to harvest them. So out of curiosity, I randomly pull pink radish out from the soil.The right one is not pink colour but deep purple. Could it be it is already too old? I have not try to eat them yet.