Last Harvest Monday 2013

 Yesterday, I decided to do a last posting for Harvest Monday 2013 since it has been a while we joined in at Daphne's Dandelions. Usually it is raining on the afternoon here as we are in the Monsoon season. Therefore limited time to get a lot of the 'task to do' be ticked off on the list. We rarely get to take pictures of the harvest now as it has always been a rush or me harvesting while cooking dashing in and out from the kitchen to the kebun. Here is an overview of some goods that we were able to harvest yesterday. Malabar spinaches, winged bean, various long-yard beans, and lemons. We also have cotton bolls to harvest from the garden. Instead of using tissues we can used organic cotton bolls as wipers.

 Sapodilla (ciku), and canistel fruit trees are always so generous producing all year round. In the land below the wind, Sabah state, there are many fans of canistel fruit which makes the market price at the moment according to our mother surveys RM8.00 per-kilogram (If you are interested you are welcome to contact us, too many for our small family). Occasionally we get pamelo or guava fruits from the backyard. The tree that produce tangerine-like fruit which my mother sowed from seeds from her hometown has also started it fruiting season.

 The native fruit tree called nam nam (fruit looks like brain), also never stopped producing. Many first-timers told us that the ripe ones tasted a bit like pear when we shared some.

 The passion fruit are ripening on the tree. 

 November and December months are rambutan season every year in our place. This year most of the rambutan trees bear fruits a lot. We have more than 5 rambutan trees fruiting happily.

 Cempedak is also very generous this month. 'Cempedak' is a relative to jackfruit but a smaller version of it. People like to make cempedak fritters like banana fritters from the yellow flesh that covers the seeds, a popular tea snack.

 We also have some Pulasan fruits to enjoy (a squirrel left a mark on the pulasan fruit in above photo). Pulasan is a relative to 'Rambutan'. Can you notice the difference of the hairstyle between 'Pulasan' and 'Rambutan'. 'Rambut' in Malay Language is 'hair', while 'Pulas' in Malay Language is 'twist'.

Happy New Year!

Hazy Harvest

 Haze condition in some of the places in Peninsular Malaysia is really bad. Schools has been closed now until the haze level goes down. The kids are now limited indoors and fortunately has not get bored yet on the activities they focusing on at the moment. The television has not been switched  on at all for more than a week at least. Gardeners too need to avoid not spending too much time outdoors. Hope the plants will be strong and fare well in this kind of predicament. Tuberose plants has been producing flower stalks one by one this month, I think this bulbous plant has respond the need to create offspring in giving flowers due to the drought and hot weather. It nice to get to snip some tuberose flower stalks starting to bloom bringing them inside the house for their strong alluring fragrance. Because we have haze now, harvesting the butterfly pea flowers task came back to the parents instead of the kids. The haze has kind of effected the duck and eggs production in our place too. We also harvested a tiny squash last week. Readily available to harvest last week and this week are also lemons, pea eggplants and chillies.

 Some of the fresh traditional raw salads available in our garden to eat with sambal belacan.

 We also harvested some roselles, Surinam spinaches, and a guava last week.

 Papaya fruits also some of the main harvest last week from our garden. Why are they in the plastic? This is for my next door neighbour portions.

 I just realised that the okras has already started producing yesterday and I harvested all the fruits regardless some are still small because I knew I won't be able to go into the garden in this bad haze condition today or probably tomorrow. I skipped the garden for 2 days locked up after some late night ruckus that is why I did not realised they started flowering. This is the first time I harvested 'Mammoth Spineless' heirloom okra. Quite surprised this variety okra fruit size are fatter than the other varieties that I usually grow. We also harvested some Marjerine fruits. Almost seven year old male cat 'Jack' having a nap. Jack is always a good boy towards me since I'm his adopted mom, so this is not his doing but unfortunately mine. I am sorry I am kind of slow replying comments or visiting as I am still suffering from my postnatal depression from time to time. But it does make me cheer up reading your comments or receiving your emails. I do know I need to seek professional help but I guess I got tired or couldn't be bothered anymore for trying to think how I am going to drag myself there with kids while having some session with the expert. I am still kind of lost as well where to seek the closest help I can. Enough of the rambling today and I try to keep my mind quiet, hush hush hush.

Happy Harvest Monday.

Drought Fruit Season Harvest June

 I was competing with the squirrel this morning for Sabah's Honey pineapple (Nanas Madu Sabah) fruits. I was weeding one of the section of the veggie patch at the backyard and on my way to the house checking how the kids are doing because Abby was still sleeping before I started weeding. Just when I was heading to the house on the corner of my eyes I thought I saw a tail wiggling on one of our pineapple patch that we have been waiting patiently for the fruits to ripe. I quickly ran towards the pineapple section and one squirrel was running away. I have been checking on the pineapple everyday because the squirrels has already stolen one last month. So this time, as you can see one pineapple has been chomped by the squirrel. I quickly harvest the ones that quarter of it has been shared with the squirrel. I checked the other fruits and luckily it wasn't stolen yet and it is much riper. Because I just had to snap the branch and easily it came off. Collecting side-shoot pineapple top at the moment to increase the number of plants in the garden, one of the aim for this year. Harvest some star gooseberry leaves for tonight dinner.

 Last week the hens and ducks were laying quite a number of eggs, shared some with friends.  I think we collected at least 15 duck eggs last week. Lemons are also readily available last week.

 Butterfly pea blooms never disappoint us. Instead of harvesting the whole plant, we just bandicoot some ginger rhizome when we are out of stock in the kitchen.

Tumeric bandicoot harvest.

 The roselle plants that we sowed in March has now started its fruit season. Roselle plants is doing really well without any help of watering since we transplanted the seedlings. All the roselle plants are more than 5 feets tall and waiting the buds to bloom. We also harvested calamansi limes, bird-eyes chillies, pea eggplants and cucumber tree fruits last week.

 We finally decided to dig up the Mexican Turnip (jicama) that we sowed the seeds last end December which has been left pretty neglected from the start. We did not expected to find one jicama that is over 1kg and it took me more than 20 minutes to carefully dug it out. I think that location we grown jicama is a good soil to grow root crop, rhizome or tuber plants which we will sow some seeds again on that area after the drought season end. I am not planning to water that area which why will wait when the rains come often again. One papaya tree snap so many of the fruits were all over the ground.

 It is drought season now this time of the year, we have not had any rain for almost 2 weeks now. But surprisingly we have been able to harvest a few varieties of fruits last week. Jackfruits are often harvested which has been enjoyed by by squirrels first. Even the fruits look like that, half of it still edible and really sweet.

 Papaya and sapodilla fruits is also harvested from the garden. We managed to harvest several papaya fruits last week because there were plenty to share with the birds and squirrels.

 I am not sure what is the name of this fruits in the weave basket above but we just called it marjerin fruit. Many of the fruits are ripening on the same time. It is more golden in colour but with the lighting it looks paler than it is.

I am trying to make our tropical garden here a sowing schedule like the one I did for our Adelaide garden. I found that sowing the right plant seeds at certain months makes gardening much easier and less effort every year. Recording the harvest by monthly will make it easier to estimate which sow to seeds later on as reference.

Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday.

Returned after 2 weeks

 Actually we just returned from our trip to Sabah for about 2 weeks last Friday. The whole family went this time leaving the garden to look after itself. I thought that there was a period went without rain looking at the garden surrounding but I might be wrong because the weeds were hiding a lot of plants. Three separate section of veggie patches that I did direct sowed some seeds the day before our departure surprisingly were doing fine and I found many heat-tolerant seedlings. I should be happy looking at many new seedlings that does much better when we are not around. I was so surprised the home-saved angled luffa seeds from Adelaide that I direct-sowed 2 weeks ago, now has grown more than 40cm tall! Today harvest summary is what needed to harvest quick after we returned last Friday. I am not sure what variety this banana that we harvested last Saturday. I am glad that the banana is still there after I returned since I have been waiting to taste the fruit. We were not sure of the harvest timing. But when I did a quick tour at the back, I found some of the bananas the skin has started to split. In contrast to the usual ripe yellow banana in the market, this banana variety when young is brownish red which turns to green when ripe. Not sure how to enjoy this banana yet, still sitting on the kitchen counter top. Maybe try with fritter first?

 We managed to harvest a few papayas to our surprised since we always have many competitors. The long switch period of drought and shower causes a few lemon fruits to crack on the plant. Not only the lemons are effected but other fruits such as Jackfruit as well as we observed in the garden which tells a story about how the weather has been these last 2 weeks in our area.

 These few days, my husband has been clearing up an area at the backyard in the afternoon because we found many group plants of bananas dried up suddenly and a coconut plant dying. In the process of clearing up that area, cassava plants were also taken out. So we had some cassava tubers. Monday main menu was 'cassava', lunch we made cassava fries like the French fries and dinner we boiled the tubers and ate with sambal. Out of curiosity, I added a few butterfly pea flowers into the boiling water and the tubers flesh soaked the blue natural colouring. Instead of white tubers, we got bluish tubers. The area which is in the proses of clearing up, we thought of transplanting snake fruit seedlings which the seeds I have grown from my father-in-law plant end of last year. We already have a big mature male snake fruit plant but not female. I don't think my parents realised before that snake fruit plant has separate male and female plant when they grow them at first. I am thinking of growing the snake fruit some of it along the fence to hinder trespasser from easy access because snake fruit plant is very thorny. In the plan, we also like to grow sugarcane, ginger and pineapple. The ducks starts to lay eggs again.

 Some chicken eggs to collect when we returned. Mulberries for Rayyan. The calamansi lime that I gave some goat manure last month seems to be producing more flowers this week.

Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions.

The Butterfly pea flower seeds Give-Away winner :

Kak Zie 

Liz author of 'Surburban Tomato'

Gina Marna ~`aku punye suke'~

Simple Living

Sue ~ Our Plot at Green Lane Allotment

Please send me your address details for the seeds at this email address (kebunkmg@gmail.com) .

Our First Sunroot Malaysia Harvest

 We are doing a trial growing sunroot (Jerusalem artichokes) this year in this hot and humid tropical weather and one plant had died off which was planted last November. So we dig in and see what the results are from the spot we tried to grow the sunroot plant. The plant was only about 2 feet tall so I was not expecting much of it. Surprisingly the plant did yield several tubers, although not as many as we used to harvest from one plant. The location was in full sun. At the moment, I am contemplating to regrow the tubers again in different location. As I don't have much tubers to experiment on, probably most will go to re-planting them again rather than cooking the tubers.

 Our main harvest last week were sweet leaves (star gooseberry), chillies and butterfly pea flowers. I am not sure what this fruit is called but it is not a mango fruit. My mother gave most of the sweet leaves plants a hard-pruning 3 weeks ago and now new shoots are quickly growing. She pruned those sweet leaves plants to half of its original height.

 We also harvested some pattypan squashes, cape gooseberries, sweet basil leaves, cucumber tree fruits, sponge luffa, calamansi limes, soursop, nam nam fruits, purple plum radish, snake beans and pea eggplants. We made juice with the soursop fruit. I have been harvesting while doing some other gardening task and kept the harvest in the pocket. So this picture above summarise what we got to harvest from our garden last week.

 We only got a few mulberry fruits to harvest this week. Rayyan has to wait for the fruits ripening on the trees at the moment. Lemon fruits are not as many as previous to harvest since some got a hard-pruning so waiting for new shoots to grow. But we do have a few lemon trees fruiting which is still green not ready for harvesting. I think it is better to have them not ripening at once so we have a succession of harvest. We managed to prune a pamelo, calamansi lime, wax apple and nam nam tree last week. Last Saturday, my husband managed to give a hard pruning on this mango plant that we did not realised had 2 passion fruit plants climbing on it. No wonder we had ripen passion fruits under the bushy mango trees. Not only that we discovered so many orchids on the tree as well which has not seen light for some time I reckon. The passion fruit will flower much better now as they will received more lights and we can also spy whether the plants are fruiting or not.

 This is another mango tree that had a hair cut as well and we can now see the sky in any angle or corner of this tree. This is the mango that my mother pruned almost 2 years ago and she fell from it. Hopefully tomorrow when she returned she will be happy to see the mango plant had a hair cut.

 My husband in the mood to do some tree hard-pruning and has been asking me which tree next. I think it is time to give the sapodilla fruit trees a hard pruning. The sapodilla fruit trees bear fruits almost all year round. But the problem the plant is too bushy now and I can't see the fruits clearly except the ones facing outside. So I think better to give the sapodilla tree a hard pruning.

Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions. 

Grand Election Week Harvest

We have been staying with my parent in-laws for several days for the grand election at East Coast Malaysia. So the garden has to fend for themselves. We don't have to worry much about watering the plants because almost every day this week the plants received some showers from mother nature almost every afternoon. Due to the rain I have to check on the mulberry plants often as some time during heavy rain the fruits fell from the tree before it turns fully ripe. But Rayyan seems to like sweet sourish fruit so he does not mind even if the mulberry has not turn blackish red in colour. One of the patch that was overgrown with weeds after clearing up salvaged some Asian greens like kailan to harvest. Basil plants are very at the overgrown stage, plenty of pestos can be made from them. We usually harvest them right before we need some basil leaves while cooking.

 This month of May will be the month for hard pruning for some big fruits trees in the garden at the back before we enter hot and dry season. Last week, hubby managed to give a hard-pruning to one very old tall mango tree. Some of the fruits are not reachable even using a long bamboo stick to poke the fruits so they fall. Hubby has to climb the mango tree using a ladder and stand on the tree to chop many branches. After most of the branches were chopped off, Ilhan and Rayyan helped his father to collect the fruits on the chopped branches before their father disposed the chopped branches. The mango tree bears small egg size mango fruits type which commonly used to make pickle when the fruits are young green. I hope my mother will be happy when she returned for a few days next week to see the mango tree has been pruned. She used to prune the mango tree until almost 2 years ago she fell from that mango tree from a high position. From the accident unfortunately she can't moved or used much of her left arm to lift things and has to meet up regularly with physiotherapist. She will celebrate her 60th birthday at the end of this year, so with age will take time to recover and doctor said she exceed her limits using her arm muscles to do stuff. Nope not listening, she still do a lot of hard-pruning (more like whacking) with her right arm each time she returned when she sees her plants competing with light again because I had to pretend not seeing them growing robustly (excuses busy with the 3 kids again). To be honest, looking after an acre land including the house, the TV is hardly switch on. We even had a period where the TV was not switch on at all more than a week. 

 Alternate days through month of May, pea eggplants, bird-eyes chillies, snake beans, calamansi limes and butterfly peas are available to harvest.

 Pattypan squashes has also started to produce. But I am so clumsy each time when I touched them to help with the pollination I broke the stem. Not just pattypan squash but also other squashes growing in the garden.

A few chicken and duck eggs.

Harvest Monday.

April2013 Harvest Monday

 It has been just a few days since I returned and the garden has given many nice surprises. Mulberry trees that were just starting to fruit when I left them has provided sweet fruits which Rayyan really enjoyed as his snack while waiting for the parents to prepare lunch. I am relief to see that the butterfly pea plants keeps on providing pretty blooms everyday. Did not noticed a volunteer snake bean plant growing on one of the raised bed and suddenly found long tangling beans on the cage. Bird-eyed chillies and some juice from calamansi limes for our traditional 'sambal belacan' dipping, very nice pounded together with the fresh shrimp paste (belacan) that I brought back from my recent trip. So happy looking at our cucumber tree (tree sorrel) starting to bear fruits.

 Two of our veggie patch got invaded with volunteer Javanese ginseng plants also known as Surinam Spinach. So I pulled out most of the Javanese ginseng plants to grow other edibles. I won't be surprised if many volunteer Javanese ginseng seedlings sprouted in a couple of weeks. In a month, I will probably be pulling them out again. We harvested the roots from the Javanese Ginseng plants. The Javanese ginseng root is as potent as Korean/Chinese ginseng. Boiled Javanese Ginseng roots for my hubby almost everyday so he can work hard on the garden clearing up all the weeds to atone for his neglect.

 Like the bird-eye chillies that birds helped distributed the seeds in our garden, this pea size eggplants also grow wild in our garden. In the Malay language this eggplant is known as 'Terung pipit'. Terung in Malay is eggplant while pipit is sparrow. Therefore literal translation will be sparrow eggplant. This is due to birds that also helped distributed this eggplant. We have hundreds and hundreds of wild pea eggplant seedlings sprouting everywhere in the garden. One of the turmeric plant produce a bloom for us to enjoy in salad (chopped finely and mixed together other traditional herbs) dipping with sambal belacan. We also harvest a few lemons. Each time my mother returned she will bring back some lemons to where she reside now at Borneo Island.

 This week nam nam fruits is in season in our garden , this time is not just squirrels enjoying them but ants too. Nice Nam Nam fruit harvest week, many of the fruits were sweet. I wrote about nam nam plant life-cycle a couple weeks ago.

 A few passion fruits were also salvage under the mango tree. I did not realised a passion fruit plant is growing up on the bushy mango tree. I was very surprise when I saw many fruits under the mango tree and some were already chomped. We made passion fruit juice with this harvest.

Join in Daphne's Dandelions: Harvest Monday.

Lemon Tree and March Mains

 My kids and I are all feeling under the weather this week, sadly for the kids it is school holiday this week so the museum trip is being postponed for the time being. There are certain things as a parents it is not easy to explain regarding our own basic customs or culture because our children spent more living in Adelaide than here for the time being. The almost six years old Ilhan getting curious what is a Sultan and Malaysia democracy system for example. So my other half suggested probably the National Museum will be good for them. When my parents came back this month, I got to identified many plants and its origin from Mama. One of the plants that surprised me the most is her lemon plants. For all my teasing her (gulps with regrets when I was staying in Adelaide), she successfully grown so many lemons trees from the seeds that she collected from fresh lemons that we received from 'Fruit & Vegetables Swap' meetings. On top of that, the plants were bearing heavy fruits when I came back . For a fruit plant, the lemon plant my mother grown from seeds must be very young especially to start bearing fruit compared to a grafted one. I don't think I can catch up with her green thumb at growing plants. The most amazing thing I observed was the plants that she bought from our local nursery did not produce juicy lemon (mostly dried pulps), but the ones she sowed from seeds were so juicy and far better than the ones we ever bought in the market. We are so blessed with lemons since we came back, each week we will have some to harvest and sometime I got lazy to pick them.

 A few gardeners in Malaysia were a bit sceptical (just kidding, jangan marah ya) that we can grow lemons in Malaysia and asked for us to post lemon plant pictures. Well here is one of our superstar, picture taken last December. This plant height is just over 1 metre tall. There is a vine creeper plant over the lemon plant need to take it off from lemon. This is the plants that produces lemons for the heart charity event that we participated last year. Grafted plants does not have a long life at our garden especially during wet season they will be a lot of rain and our area is prone to flood. So growing fruit plants from seeds is more a good investment but rather a tricky one because it might not be the same clone as its original parents. However, if you are lucky, you get much better original new fruits. For example, the seeds sowed by mother I have noticed at least 2 different kind shape of lemons and both are good bearing trees bearing good new fruits different from the original parent seeds.

 Here is the lemon plant base, the roots has spread to more than a metre at its growing location. Chicken and ducks love to sit under the lemon tree sometime and we don't have to weed as they like to scratch the soil while leaving their poo around.

 Sometime the lemon fruit is stung by that insect in the picture especially during hot weather which made me think how did the ones in the store can be perfectly unblemished. I don't really mind much as it only reduce the lemon storage time a little bit outside of the refrigerator compared to the ones that did not received kisses from them. But the ones that stung by them are actually more juicier, very intelligent insect.

 This is how the plant look last month, not much leaves compared last year. This lemon plant has spent most of its energy producing fruits in expense of leaves. Last week, my other half has helped pruned all the branches into half for the plant to be able to rest for a while. This lemon plant were given goat manure after being pruned. At the moment, we still have more than 3 lemon plants fruiting so this one was given a chance to rest and refreshed itself. After cajoling mama for the tour at the back, I was surprised we have actually many lemon plants all over the garden, perhaps more than 20 plants in various sizes. One of the main reason, the naughty butterfly pea plants and winged bean plants hide those plants and make them their trellis. Of course the Head gardener was not happy to see her lemon plants being swallowed up by that naughty naughty plants. Since the lemon trees are more precious, when I fill fit again all those naughty plants will be cleared and off into the compost bean. The head gardener is still planning to plant more lemon along the wall. Probably the thorns will put off people from trespassing. 

 Another citrus that we were able to harvest last week was a mini pamelo. Also some basil leaves, okras, bananas, soursop, calamansi limes, butterfly pea blooms, surinam spinach and a soursop.

A small papaya before the birds got to them and some green mangoes.

Harvest Monday.

Kesimpulan tuaian bulan Mac ini

 For these past 2 weeks, we had lots of hot sunny days and not much rain. Thus some plants are balking and some welcome it. Happy plant is the okra bunch.  I have to check on the okra plants every 2 days because the fruits grows so long so fast in just 2 days for about at least 10 cm. The lemons are sulking, the hot weather causes them to ripe too fast and physically they don't look great. Lemon size significantly changes on the smaller side compared to wet season.

 Butterfly pea flower plants is a very cool plant. They don't mind the wet or hot weather. So our kids continue to enjoy their 'Smurf' drink. Everyday we spent at least 15 minutes harvesting the butterfly pea flower blooms.

We harvested some turmeric rhizomes and bandicoot some young ginger rhizomes as well this month.

 I almost missed out the beginning of our burgundy okra harvest since I ignored the place that they were growing for more than a week not expecting the plants will produce anytime soon. The Sweet Large Italian Basil plants are doing very well and I was surprised how big the basil leaves were comparing to other sweet basil I have planted before.

 I was not expecting to get any decent harvest of this variety heirloom sweet corn as the male started to flower in just over a month. From experience, when the male started to poke out too early it is always a sign they are under stress. Well I do know what was the main reason why was this sweet corn batch suffered stress because it was solely depending on rain water. Furthermore, our geese managed to chomp some part of the sweet corn plants as I forgot to close the nettings properly as they were able to poke in their head and tugged the plants. This variety of sweet corn produces a lot of ears, but I decided to harvest them as baby corns because the male pollen has finished up. Calamansi limes are also available but not many. So my aim this week is to prune the citrus family and feed them with some manure or compost. 

 Entering March we started to be blessed with bananas. As we are able to harvest a bunch of bananas from one plant each week. Our cheekie monkies is very happy each time we have them in the basket on the table when they are fully ripe. We have to keep an eye on them or ended with a huge mess of bananas in the kitchen.

 Malay wild eggplants which is a very tiny over 1 cm in length and birds-eye-chillies is wildly growing all over the place courtesy of the birds that like them too. Actually the birds and our part of the share is more than we can eat them. I am very happy the first time I tried growing Baby Blue Jade heirloom corn  and have very good results with it. Although the hen below scratched out the young corn seedlings caused it to uprooted and I have to plant it back feeling no hope for it. Despite that these corn batch did very well.

 But the hot weather brings many death to our egg-laying hens in this month of March. Every week at least 2~3 hens were found dead. Sadly, we now only have 2 hens left. I really need to get more chickens now. Does anyone knows any chick suppliers close to Sungai Buloh area? We really are interested to buy some chicks, please do contact us.

Join in Harvest Monday.