Pepper Tracking Heritage

 I got this pepper seeds from saving the seeds from the fruits that I got from our local seed-saver group meeting last year because I knew that this was heirloom seeds, true seeds. However, I forgot the name of this pepper and the generous seed-saver member that grew this pepper. Got distracted easily when there are so many new things to learn during meetings. So I have been trying to get the name of this pepper by google image. The saved seeds really grows well in our garden and thrive with neglect. Perhaps due to the origin of the pepper parents from the generous gardener garden has similar micro-climate like us. So its one of the pepper that has make into our easy to grow list in our garden. At first, I was not sure whether this pepper will be in the same group with chilli or capsicum? I am thinking more towards chilli because when I was harvesting the seeds this week, I feel my hand sting a little but not as strong as our chayenne. I would say the heat level is low or moderate. I really appreciate if anyone can give me some ideas what type of pepper is this. To me it looks like pimiento or topepo pepper. Dear pepper guru and pepper fan please help me.

This plant is really compact, does not seem to take up much space. The fruit seems to be not following Newton law of gravity slightly because the fruit bottom faces upward. The fruit size is slightly smaller than the cherrytime capsicum, we usually grow about 3~4 cm in diameter. But it was easier to differentiate between the two as this pepper plant fruit is more roundish and the fruit is facing upside down. A very drought and heat-tolerant plant. I don't know how it manage to survive heat waves when I just abandoned them. I am very cruel with my plants this year, all must survive by their own without care. Tsk...tsk...tsk....yet the plants still give rewards to the lazy gardener.

 This photo is taken last week. How nice that this pepper seems to cope well in our mid-winter as well. Pepper picking time. Hopefully the plant will fruit earlier when the weather starts to get warm again. Its officially end winter here now.

Celebrating Chilli 2nd Birthday

I can't understand these chilli plants of ours which have live through 2 winters and surprisingly still standing tall. This is what these chilli plants look like early winter this year. Its home is under our porch shade. As you can see the clay soil condition is terrible and need some improvement. Moreover, this area is totally unkept and neglected by us. We don't even feed this plants that much, rarely received liquid fertiliser. We tried growing many different type of plants (extra seedlings) here but none grow that much.

This is how one of the chilli plant look at the moment. I just realised that it has grown new baby leaves to replace the ones that died in winter on the branches. Sometimes it does received some sun but only for a few hours (<2hours?).

Not just new leaves but flowers too. 

These twins are also celebrating their 2nd Birthday. They received full sun. This is how it looks like last April (mid-autumn). These plants starts to fruit late because it was too hot for them to have blooms. Each year to protect these twins, next to them I usually plant cool season vegetable that will grow taller than them .

Planting these plants closely will help to shelter our chilli plants from chill winds and keep them warm like a blanket at night. So this is how the area looks like last August (end-winter). I did a mistake, one of the twins are safely tucked behind these big brassica plants but the other twin was exposed in front. The exposed twin at the moment looks like it is trying its might to revive.

I observed that our chilli plants fruit more in its second year. This is because I think on its first year, we have to wait for the plants to mature (starting from seeds) and when it starts to fruit its already close to autumn. However, treating them as perennials it will start to fruit soon after the weather is warm enough for them. Chilli for thoughts.

Mid-Winter Fresh Food

Every day as August come closer, I get a bit worried that the amount of vegetables that can be harvested from our garden decreases. Well, that would be expected its already middle of winter. Moreover, I sowed and transplanted cool season vegetables rather late this year compared to previous year. But we should count ourselves lucky as we still have fresh harvest flowing to the kitchen as we have not even rely on our frozen vegetables as yet. We still have peppers slowly ripening for us which is a nice treat. Little Rayyan broke one of our capsicum branches so we had to harvest 3 green capsicums. Cherry capsicum managed to mature, although it hardly received any suns at the moment. We got to harvest some sprouting broccoli too this week. There are still some yellow cherry tomatoes from the garden.

Some of the greens that were harvested last week~Baby kailans, purple mustards, loose-leaf lettuce and self-sowed cos lettuce. I did not noticed at first that some of our garden containers had self-seeded lettuce seedlings popping out. I thought it was weed at first until those seedlings grow bigger. Harvested some tatsoi, but it look really bad almost bald without leaves. We inter-planted tatsoi with cauliflowers. Those cauliflowers were saved from having the same fate as tatsoi which has been sacrificed to pest.

I got some mandarin from my backyard neighbour who grows vegetables and have some olive trees in his garden. He makes his own olive oil and every fall I watched him gather olives with his family from inside the house. Sometime, if he is alone I worry he will fell down from the tree. I was surprised last week he invited me to see his garden. We are usually shy and won't go out to garden at the other side of our backyard if anyone is there. But I have overcome my shyness a little bit and greet him whenever he come to visit his garden.  When I visited his garden, he offered me some mandarin and at first I was too shy to accept. Since he insisted and I was curious (malu-malu kucing) how fresh mandarin tasted like, I took some back home. Those mandarin was so juicy. We harvested our last wong bok (Napa cabbage) that was grown in container last week.  It was about to bolt.

Visit Daphne for Harvest Monday.

What vegetables is popular in your kitchen at the moment?

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?

Pumpkin Rice and Pumpkin Soup

Although I harvested a pumpkin last weekend, I still have not use it. I am trying to finish up pumpkins that I got from our local fruit and veggie swap earlier this month. It was cold and raining heavily yesterday so I had some time in my hand to search for pumpkin recipes that I can make with things that I have in my fridge and pantry. It has been such a long time that I have not spent much time in the kitchen experimenting, all thanks to the rain yesterday.

Our weekend harvest were sweet corns, chilies, beans, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, baby beetroot, snow peas, first harvest of snowball turnips and might be the last okra burgundy for this year. See what other gardeners from all over the worlds are harvesting this week in Harvest Monday hosted by Daphne's Dandelions.

With all those chilies and tomato harvest, we had sambal belacan everyday. Hope it keeps the flu bug away from this cold weather.

I have to say that I don't grow up eating pumpkin that much. I rarely saw pumpkin in my mama kitchen. I know she probably used a lot of pumpkin for puree and feeding me when I was a baby like I do with my sons. But other than that it is very rare that we have any dishes with pumpkin on it or I was not fond of pumpkin during my childhood and teens. I gave some pumpkin to my vegetarian friend and she said she used them for pumpkin soup. She says her mom used to make pumpkin rice. So I decided to have a go of making pumpkin rice when I remember that A Nyonya' s Kitchen...for all seasons blog shared her pumpkin rice recipe, end last month. This is not vegetarian dish but Ilhan likes to eat chicken nowadays so perhaps I can coax him to have a taste and he won't have a big fuss. Petite nyonya used dried scallops, shitake mushrooms and teriyaki sauce but I don't include this because it was not available in our pantry. Furthermore, we used 2 cups of rice instead of 3/4cup rice .This is because instead of small bowl diced chicken meat, someone use big bowl. I skipped the 'small" when I was reading the ingredients. We add in sliced capsicum, turnips and snow peas into this dish. I like this dish it was easy and did not take much time prepare because the rice cooker will help with the cooking afterwards.

I have always wanted to make western style vegetable soups but I always don't have some of the ingredients in our kitchen when I have the time. For example, for a South-East Asia kitchen any kind of cream, sour or full or light is not a common thing that I would have in the fridge except if I have been planning ahead for some certain dish, this include natural yogurt for cooking too. Sometime I buy them on impulse, maybe this weekend thinking I can try new dish...most of the time it got expired. While waiting for Ilhan selecting his books at the local library, I saw one of Masterchef judge new book~ Gary Mehigan's Comfort Food. I borrowed it for Lenay because she likes to watch Masterchef. I took a peek when we are back at home, Gary's pumpkin soup recipe ingredient are things that we have in the kitchen. So my mission for Sunday dinner preparation was making pumpkin soup.

Gary's pumpkin soup is for 4servings (I only made for 2 serving half of the ingredient below. But it was still too much and we even freeze half of the cooked soup).

Ingredients:

~1X1.6 kg jap pumpkin, peeled, seeded, cut into manageable chunk for grating (I used 3 different type of pumpkin because I am trying to finish off the pumpkin we got from the swap JAP, butternut and that giant pumpkin. Moreover I cut it into small chunks and did not grate.)

~125 g unsalted butter, chopped.

~50ml vegetable oil

~1 teaspoon table salt

~1 litre milk

~Freshly ground black pepper, crusty bread or garlic toasts to serve.

Heat butter and oil over medium heat. Add the pumpkin and sprinkle with salt. Cook the pumpkin, covered, gently over low heat for 8 minutes, stirring occasionally until it is soft. Stir in the milk and bring to boil.

Blend the pumpkin mixture in a food processor or blender until creamy and smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

My first home-made pumpkin soup. I am participating Wendy's Garden to Table Challenge.

Another few days, it will be officially winter here. Do you think two of our pumpkins down here will make it until they are mature enough to harvest?

I don't like or hate pumpkin. I don't know much about cooking pumpkin. So I need some motivation and learn more about pumpkin. I know it is a very healthy and nutritious food. Any advice on pumpkin?

Hoping you make it...

It is middle of autumn now and the weather is getting colder and colder each week. The warm season vegetable is almost end of their season now. It is time to clear them up and make way for new plants that tolerates cooler condition much better. However, we are still getting a few surprises in the garden.This is lebanese eggplant that I have treated as perennial going through its second autumn. I thought it was time to say farewell to this plant earlier this month but it surprise us with blooms that actually develop some eggplants. Some eggplants for the kitchen perhaps next week. Not sure whether the new bloom will drop or give fruit now this week. I did got a question how did my eggplants survive through winter ~  This plant was growing in pot during its first summer and was moved against the brick wall which received a lot of sun during winter. I transplanted this plant on the veggie patch next spring and it grow much taller and bear more fruit in its second year. I think this eggplant was really annoyed with me because it was grown in medium size pot in the first year, a bit to small and crowded for the roots.

Capsicum, another perennial in front of the kitchen window probably will have less sun now as it is getting shady this area as winter comes near. It has been more than 2 months to wait for it to turn red, although you see it red from the front, the back are still green. Since it is growing on the patch instead of pot, I cannot alternate turn the plant to face the sun like the ones growing in container.

Mammoth sunflower has develop bud. Will the sunflower show its face in this cold weather?

Ilhan's sweet corn sowed in March has already shown its male and female organ for pollination to occur. Hopefully there will be more sweet corn on the kitchen table and some to freeze.

Waiting for these chilies to mature. This is a new plant sowed from home-saved seeds. I don't know what the variety is because it was chosen for its taste and nice smell. Under chili plants are lettuce seedlings.

This plant does not look good since it has experience a couple of 40+degree Celcius during summer and was very stressed with lack of water growing on sandy-loam soil. But it does give some long sweet capsicum to harvest. Some of the capsicum does look rather odd but food is food, cosmetic is a different matter. I think I am going to let this plant grow through winter if it survived we might have early capsicum to harvest come next warm season. So I planted 4 sprouting broccoli seedlings around this plant to protect it or blanket it from chilling wind in winter, creating a micro-climate for this capsicum plant.

Hope the weather behaves this month and prolong summer vegetable plants production for the kitchen table. Actually I feel rather guilty because I know some other temperate region or closest to us in Adelaide Hills already experience their first frost. While we near the city and coast still has summer vegetables to enjoy. Next month is another story.

Veggies for kitchen 1st half May

Bean...bean...bean...chili...chili...chili...daikon...daikon...daikon thinnings, da cheong chae and yellow tomatoes are the main harvest for the first half of May. Yellow tomatoes plant were looking sad in end summer but now it is lush again with many fruits on it. The cooler weather makes it longer for the green ones to turn yellow though. Yellow cherry tomato seems to be more hardy in our veggie patch. Mrs Bok asked me does sweet potatoes grow well in clay soil? We only got one small tubers from each plant of sweet potatoes that were growing in clay soil about 5 months. Total harvest was less than what we got from growing a plant of sweet potatoes in container which we harvested last month. Sweet potatoes not suitable to grow in clay soil in temperate region where we don't have warm weather all year round like in the tropics. Sweet potato roots did go deeper into the soil but perhaps it will take longer to form bigger tubers.

I was tidying up some container last week and harvested most of the carrots that were growing with melon plants sowed in early January. This is New Red Kuroda carrot variety, I should have let them grow more but well Rayyan not happy on having daikon thinnings for a week everyday. He missed carrots.

Harvested the last kangkung and bonito eggplants from our veggie patch last week. I am going to miss fried kangkung with chili and shrimp paste. It will be another 5 months I reckon we have another kangkung (water spinach) in our kitchen.

There are so many farewell in the garden this month.Last cucumber and snake beans were harvested last week for this year. However, there were also many exciting and new things comin in our kitchen this week, the first snow peas of year 2011 and full kernal of fresh sweet corns! My other-half said I never had success growing sweet corns in Adelaide that look almost perfect. Our sweet corn usually have so many gaps that you can count how many kernals is on the cob. This time I don't even help with pollination and mulched because I always feel dissapointed with the result. Now, I feel more motivated to grow sweet corn. Sweet corn is a heavy feeder and drinker. Feeding them with enough compost and manure is not a problem but water is something we can't give that much. Summer evoparation is so high here which is the time when sweet corn starts to produce after sowing them in spring. I think it is best to sow sweet corn end of February and early March because we have more water in autumn when they are producing cobs.

Not much time and creative in the kitchen this week as I was busy in school and Ilhan and Lenay were sick for days. Vegetables were fresh but instant pasta sauce were famous in our kitchen last week. Here is all the ingredient ready to be cook with instant carbonara pasta sauce.

Did not have much appetite on the weekend, so exhausted after a hectic week being a mother, student and temporary nurse. So I made my own appertiser to eat with Nasi Goreng Tuna (Fried Rice Tuna) ~ Sambal belacan. The photo look like cherry tomato mud bath because I got overboard with belacan (shrimp paste). In the mortar, put in shallot/red onion, shrimp paste, garlic and chillies and grind. Add a bit of sugar, salt and squeeze in some lemon juice. Mix well. You can add in dice tomato and coriander if you like. Since we have many yellow cherry tomatoes, I add these tomatoes in this sambal belacan. Hazel asked how we used okra, sometime we blanched okras and dip in sambal belacan as well (Cat-from-Sydney reminded me). Wendy is hosting Garden To Table Challenge.

See what other garden around the world is harvesting at the moment visit Harvest Monday with our fantastic host Daphne.

The Frontyard (四月)

Our frontyard is a bit messy at the moment. If you walk in through the driveway this is the first patch which hot fiery red chilies, bright colours of African Marigold blooms, Da  cheong chae and purple giant mustards interplanted with broccolies will welcome you.

As you walk in further...

What is covering the ground?

Sweet potato plants.

I don't really think it is still ready to be harvested,

but I might be behind schedule for growing cool season vegetables in this area.

This patch received the most sunlight compare to other areas in the garden.

Then this perennial Lebanese eggplant turn to welcome you.

It was growing in pots in 2010summer, last spring I re-planted this plant in this patch.

It grown twice taller and bear more fruits last 2011 summer than 2010.

I was thinking of clearing this patch because it was getting colder and it has stop fruiting. However, warm weather last week have trigger the plant to bloom. This week, we see some fruit developing. So the plant stays there a little bit longer.

As you near the frontdoor, this patch is growing volunteer potatoes (nicola). The plants decided for me what to grow in this patch, so I let them do what they want. I just sowed a row of bush peas at the middle which has just sprouted. At the back, hollyhocks, when are you going to bloom almost a year now? Hopefully next spring.

Have a nice week!

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.

Chili and Big Brother Broccoli

These chili plants are at least 15 months old and have survived through one winter season without any tender loving care. It is fruiting many chilies now and we can started freezing some. We are harvesting chili alternate days. These chili plant like the mild weather we are having now here in Adelaide. At my parents house, chili is always available at home because my father (Orang negeri) have to have some spicy food on the table. My mother have been controlling my father meal portion by not cooking spicy dish. Poor papa, no fun at the table and less appetite. 

I wanted to make spicy green mango salad tonight and there were no chili in the kitchen, with the help of the front door light I can see some red ones. This is a very quick dish to prepare 2 green mango thinly slice, mashed shrimp paste (belacan), pounded roasted peanut and chili (depend on you hotness tolerance), a bit of salt, squeeze one or two lime/lemon for juice and mix well. Join in Wendy's Garden to Table Challenge.

Who took good care and made sure that these chili plants survive the winter? This good buddy became a wind break, shelther chili from the cold and strong wind. It blanketed and warm these chili plants through winter. Brocolli was like a brother to chili as it grows taller than chili, it help shelther the fragile chili against the cold wind. It is difficult to see chili plants on the left and right side of the photo as the angle taken is not good. Some self-sowed blooming zinnias growing happily in between broccoli plants in winter, did it help attract predators? Did white English Daisy bloom help to confuse butterfly to lay eggs on the leaves?

Hmmm...how did this relationship began in this 1 X 1 permetre square patch? Perhaps you can spotted some self-sowed zinnia in last fall here in the picture. Red onion interplanted in the middle with 4 broccoli plants, help to reduce pest attack. Can't see the chili plant because it is supposed to be growing at the left and right sides of these 4 broccoli plants. At this stage, broccoli closely resemble Chinese Broccoli (kailan) and taste similar too because the cook harvested broccoli instead of kailan without the gardener noticing the mistake until a few days later.

Cauliflower and broccoli growing together with calendulas (Pot Marigold) which is an edible flower and make a nice border. Broccoli plants were taller than Rayyan who were 11 months old at that time.

What to do when you have excess seedlings of Chinese Broccoli? Inter-plant Chinese Broccoli with garlic to mask scent and reduce pest attack. Yes, it is very hard to produce a perfect-looking kailan. Chinese Broccoli grow fast which in 2 months it will be ready to be harvested and with it shallow and small root it won't bother the slow-growing garlic. Save space in the garden too.

When growing many variety of vegetable in a patch, I see many kind of relationship form in our garden. Broccoli giving shelther naturally to our chilis and calendula brighten the patch with special network in the soil. I am planning to grow purple sprouting broccoli side by side capsicum plants this fall and scoop some self-sowed coriander seedlings to transplant it around broccoli for safe measure. Hopefully when these corinder bolt it will help to nurse back the capsicum plant if it needs help.

Another 2 days it will be the end of "Companion Planting Week" in my blog. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and advice on companion planting. Hope more will share and give some ideas with Companion Planting.

What is "Companion Week" and Seed Give-Away visit this post for more information.