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.

Perch steamed with Lemon Basil and Ginger for Good Friday

We have many lemon basil volunteer plants sprouted from last spring. Sometime when I pruned them to make them bushier, I bring  those pruned stems in the bathroom as they have very strong lemony scent. The lemon basil are flowering and bees really like the flowers.

How was your Good Friday day?

We bought a perch on Thursday and I saw this nice recipe from CikManggis~jom masak, jom makan-makan blog and adapted her recipe with what I have in my garden and pantry. Terima kasih (Thank you) CikManggis, we really enjoyed it, especially Rayyan who was really greedy. It was only 3 of us for dinner on Good Friday, me,hubby and Rayyan. So I thought one medium perch will be enough but next time for greedy Rayyan will have to steam 2 fish. A good protein source and a very healthy dish.

Perch steamed with Lemon Basil & Ginger

(Recipe adapted from CikManggis~jom masak, jom makan-makan blog)

It was really quick dish to prepare if you already have a cleaned fish ready. Took me less than 45 minutes to prepare this dish.

While preparing ingredients you can warm up your steamer.

Ingredient (A):

1 cleaned medium size perch (or any other suitable fish)

3 garlic cloves thinly sliced

3 shallots thinly sliced (or a quarter of red onion)

5cm of ginger - julienne

1 pepper-sliced

2 lemon grass stalk- bruised

a handful of washed lemon basil leaves (or 3 kaffir lime leaves)

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

1 or 1/2 tablespoon of soy sauce

about 3 spoon of water

(you can season it with white pepper, sugar & salt, but I did not put any seasoning for my toddler)

To make it more spicy add some chillies (did not because of our toddler).

Put the fish and all of the ingredient (A) into a suitable container and steam for 15 minutes.

While waiting prepare ingredients B.

Ingredient (B):

1 tomato-cut

lime or lemon juice from 2 fruits

1 carrot-julienne

can garnish it with coriander, chinese celery and spring onion leaves.

Add ingredients B after ingredients A steamed 15 minutes.

Steam for another 15 minutes and done.


Join in Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

We found this video today and was reminded of Rayyan's cardiac surgeries in the past. Rayyan was lucky to have a gifted cardiac surgeon for his first and second surgery with Prof. Igor whom is featured in this video. He has created many miracles for us and hope. We hope that Rayyan will be 3rd lucky to have the same surgeon again for his pending 3rd surgery this coming May.

Chervil Life-Cycle (Seeds Give-Away)

Chervil is a new herb to us. I was introduce to it by our local seed-saver group meetings. Chervil belong to the same family as carrot. So, last fall was our first time growing them. Although, I am still not quite sure what type of dish is best to use chervil with. I would really be happy to receive advices regarding this. We had so many seedlings last fall because the seed germination was really good and did not encounter any problem transplanting chervil seedlings. Like coriander, I think it is best to start growing chervil at the end summer away from the heat which usually just make them flower really quickly here in Adelaide plain. For summer, probably will be best growing them in shade with moisture which we plan to try.

Chervil seedlings.

I think I read somewhere in a book about herbs that we can enjoy quiche with chervil. I have to borrow that book again because I forgot to copy the recipe.

An attempt of using chervil as a border or confusing pests with its aroma.

A few weeks/months later.

Well, by now I don't think you will be surprise to see how close I grow my vegetables together.

Chervil has grown nicely and plenty available for use.

But I keep on forgetting that we have chervil for use.

So, flower those chervil did when spring came.

After other vegetables were harvested, only savoy cabbage were left for company.

Chervil flower resembles coriander closely.

I did not noticed there was a bug on the flower.

Good or bad bug?

Chervil seeds.

Does chervil seeds are use for cooking as well?

So new to us.

Many questions.

We had at least 15 plants growing last cool season.

Most of the seeds are dried and collected.

So this weekend, we have chervil seeds give-away for 3 gardeners around the world. Our babies will pick the winners randomly from seed sowers of this post.

How was your weekend?

Off to fishing now.

Rose geranium

Feeling stress or depressed? This plant has chemical properties that will enhance your mood to relax and stimulate your emotion to feel good again. Our rose geranium plants starts to bloom end of winter through spring if we frequently prune spent blooms.

A very drought tolerant plant.

Grows very well in pots.

Plants dislike wet feet.

Must grow in very well-drained soil.

Good companion for certain fruit tree.

Easy to grow new plants by cuttings.

Propagate new plants at the end of summer.

Rose geranium oil uses:
Aromatheraphy, anti-depressant, anti-septic, mosquito repellent, get rid of ticks, anti-inflammatory and used to control bleeding.
(Caution: Not suitable for pregnant woman, seek doctor advise)
Other application includes (from wikipidea):
Natural insect repellent, Cake ingredients (flowers and leaves), Jam and jellies ingredient (flowers and leaves), Ice creams and Sorbets ingredients (flower and leaves), Salad ingredients (flowers), Dietery supplement (Methylhexaneamine), Sugar flavoring (leaves).
A page on the website that have many interesting recipe to use your rose geranium for cooking-link.

When touching the plant, the scent of it is so strong that it lingers on your hand for a while. At the moment, rose geranium is an ornamental plant at our garden. Hope one day, I will try some of the useful benefits of this plants or use it in cooking.

Have a nice weekend!

Flowers on Saturday

Massey Pea First Harvest

Main harvest for last week was mainly chillies, tomatoes and giant purple mustards. I tried to pull out one carrot to see how much the oldest sowed-batch have grown. The upper part of the carrot is medium size but still very short. I think one of the main reason is the carrot roots are having a hard time to push into clay soil. We harvested our first Massey peas last week and the boys were so excited. Kept asking for more. See Rayyan hands reaching for more peas while the photos are being taken.

Found some self-sowed tomatoes has ripen in winter and some does not look that good. But they tasted good. Pruned some laksa leaves (Vietnamese Mint) to cook with sardines.

Last sunny Saturday we finally tidied up and organised all our backyard garden containers. Summer plants which are no more productive were pulled out. We got to harvest 2 pumpkins that were grown from containers. This is the first time we harvested Queensland Blue pumpkin, although it is smallish compared to the shops. Found 2 inches of fresh ginger rhizomes from one of the containers. We grow turmeric for it leaves as well, so we freeze some leaves to use later to make rendang. Starting from early June, we had a new target trying not to buy any potatoes from the market. Thanks to Berry Gnome for the pink fir-eyed? seed potato we received a few months ago, we got to taste our first home-grown pink-eyed potatoes last week. We saved some of the potatoes to plant back and some were used to make beef korma. We also cut some rainbow chards stems.

Snowball turnip is not something that I can grow well because I don't lavish them with enough water. Yesterday, we harvested a yellow bell pepper and our first cherrytime capsicum. We waited that cherrytime capsicum to turn red since last April. All those red chillies were given-away to my husband friend for the nice traditional cake that were shared.

Visit Daphne's Harvest Monday and see other gardeners interesting harvest all around the world.

White sweet potatoes and shoots with coconut milk dish

This winter we are growing many vegetables that are new to us and we don't have any idea on what best cooking method to prepare them. Any advise are most welcome and will be deeply appreciated. We harvested our first rainbow chard and baby beets (thinnings) last Monday. Both of these vegetables are new to us and will be our first tasting experience. There were 2 rainbow chards growing in the same pot, so I harvest one because it is getting crowded. Other vegetables that were harvested was tomatoes, giant purple mustards, snow peas, capsicums, chilies and corianders. Join in and see what other gardeners are harvesting all around the world in Harvest Monday hosted by Daphne.

Rainbow chards and other vegetables were chopped. They danced in the wok for the making of salted dried mackeral fried rice dish. We like rainbow chard and will plant some more again in spring. I still don't know what suitable dish for beetroot and how to prepare it since it really bleeds. Boiled those baby beetroots together with Rayyan's porridge. It was a really bloody dish especially after using the mixer to chopped them into pieces. We tasted Rayyan red porridge and it was sweet with beetroot blend together. 

We grow dill for the first time and I keep on forgetting that I planted them. Out of curiosity, Lenay keep on reminding me of those dills because we never used dill in our cooking before. So snipped some for the kitchen. We also harvested some baby leeks, capsicums and chilies last Saturday.

I was clearing up some containers and areas in the veggie patch. From that we got some onion leaves which did not bulb last year, ginger rhizomes and our last beans. Our wong bok were looking really bad with caterpillars and snail attack that we harvest some of it. It took a lot of washing to get rid of snail and slug hiding in between these wong bok leaves. We have not enjoyed any wong bok since last year and Lenay was really missing it. After she experience growing brassicas especially wong bok and cabbage and know they are so difficult to grow 100% organically due to pest, we keep on reminding each other never to buy brassicas again in the market. When we passed by organic market, we still see sign of minimal spray used on those cute cabbages. Ours might not be a beauty but at least it does not contain hazardous chemicals. Cut some of wong bok and onion leaves to make a vegetarian fried rice noodles for Saturday breakfast.

With the newly fresh harvested ginger and dill, I made stir-fried ginger chicken for Saturday dinner. Usually we used boneless chicken meat for this dish but they were only chicken wings in the freezer so we had to improvise.

Last weekend we harvested all of our daikons. The ones which is not forky or broken due to digging it out were shared with other generous gardeners. I did not preserved any daikons this time.  Hopefully there will be another empty space in our veggie patch this month to sow another small batch of daikon. We also harvested some chilies, peas and sweet potato shoots.

We harvested some white sweet potatoes this month and I wasn't sure how to prepare it since I never tasted one before. Cikmanggis my cooking guru gave me some nice tips. So with her help I cook the sweet potato and sweet potato shoots with coconut milk. In Malaysia, this kind of dish is commonly known as masak lemak putih.

Ingredients (this is roughly what I did)

White sweet potato (one bowl cut into chunks)

Sweet potato shoots (one bowl-washed)

4 medium size garfish (boil in 1 litre water with just a little bit of slice ginger, keep the boiled water)

Red onion/shallots (I used 1 Red onion)

Black pepper

150ml coconut milk

Salt

Take only the meat from the boiled fish and in a mortar mash it with red onion and black pepper.

Heat the boiled water again and add in coconut milk, the mashed fish with red onion and black pepper and white sweet potatoes. Frequent stirring.

When the sweet potato is almost tender, add sweet potato shoots and stir well. Add salt to taste. Done.

It was really delicious, I had many servings and I was a satisfied cat.This will be my comfort food. White sweet potato has the sweetness that I like and it is a bit starchy. It reminds me of young tapioca that I had in my childhood. Hopefully with our next white sweet potato if we have good harvest, I would like to try Cat-in-Sydney suggestion of making pengat (Malaysia traditional cake). But I need some lesson on how to make it. I think mama showed several time how to make banana pengat a long long time ago but I forgot. My knowledge in making traditional cake is very limited.

Join in Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

More babies & Feb Home-Saved Seed Winners

Rayyan is recovering well no more fluid around the heart. But the doctor did caution us about his arteri pulmonari is still narrow and leaking. At the moment, I am so happy to see Rayyan very cheerful after what he has gone through. His personality dramatically changes after recovering from surgery more cheerful, happy, chatty and more confidant. He used to be very anti-social and so serious face most of the time, always hiding his face to other people. We were struggling on putting him weight as he don't have that much energy to eat and usually vomit during his feeds. It must not be pleasant experience for him because of that he don't enjoy food. Now he begin to like food and always ask you he wants the food you are eating which can make mummy cries tears of joy. Hooray, no more vomits but he must learn how to chew. We hope he gain weight and thrive after surgery or else we have to feed him through tube again as supplement in 2 weeks time.

 Finally we got around choosing which garden will our February home-saved seeds travel randomly. I written the name on the paper, roll them, shake and my 3 assistants chose~
Rayyan pick ONE ~ Onenezz (I had difficulty coaxing him to give me take a look at the paper, its mine he said).
Ilhan pick Bangchik ~ My Little Vegetable Garden (absorb watching in the night garden, picking more than one not listening).
Lenay pick Catmint ~ Diary of A Suburbun Gardener

Autumn is near and we feel like we have second spring at the moment. Plants are loving the weather showing fast growth and hopefully giving us more produce. I have also noticed many self-sowed seedling around the garden. Self-sowed flowers that I had planned to sow like calendula and nasturtium. Maybe I don't have to sow them now just scoop these seedlings and rearangging them with brassicas later. We have one periwinkle plant which have been in the garden before we moved here, its perennial and very hardy survived through each season by it ownself. This month I found many of perwinkle babies around the garden. Catmint has made a recent post which is very interesting about 10 invasive weeds in Australia and one of it is periwinkle! A very nice read so hop to her blog from the link above.

 March is also the month to sow herb. We have many varieties of herbs to try this year~chervil, dill, fennel,ect. Hopefully with all this herbs in my hands, I will try new recipes and skill up my lack of culinary knowledge in using herbs. I can thick off sowing lemon basil this month as I found several seedlings in one of the containers. This year we collected some coriander, celery and parsley seeds. The bolted plants flower on different time so I did not have to worry about cross pollination. However these plants were growing approximately close to each other less than 50cm apart. Now in this patch, I have hundreds of self-sowed seedlings which look almost similar to each other and I cannot identify which is which as these 3 plants are umbeliffers. Umbellifers (coriander, celery and parsley) seedlings at early true leaves stage development does look similar to each other. I have to be more patient and wait for them to grow before making a decision about these babies.

Self-sowed tomatoes and pumpkins seedlings are also growing in the garden. I may keep tomatoes but not pumpkin. Let see if we get lucky this year with harvesting tomatoes in winter. We were lucky with chilies fruiting in last winter. Sunflower seedlings also popping out from compost. If they bloom will be very excited , if not chop as green manure.

Any self-sowed plants in your garden at the moment?

How about a "Companion Plant" week somewhere in the month of April?

It will be nice to share some ideas about maximising the use of space and crops with companion planting and, less energy, time and money to deal with pest.

Home Sweet Home

Hooray!We finally in Adelaide yesterday afternoon. There is a little bit of fluid around Rayyan heart but the medical team in RCH let us go home and WCH will follow up on Rayyan's condition. Rayyan arteri pulmonori is still narrow and there is a little bit of leak after surgery according to the ECHO results. Well before the surgery, Rayyan was mostly depending on his shunt (bypass) for oxygen to flow to the lung and his oxygen saturation was about 70%. Before having a shunt was much worse, oxygen saturation sometimes drop to 40% and frequent "tet spell". We are very aware that in a few more years, Rayyan might have to undergo surgery again although he just had complete corrective heart surgery. We really appreciate if anyone can give us advice on which health insurance company is good to have in Malaysia (just in case and it is good to be ready for anything).

Ilhan almost gave my cousin, Lenay a heart attack. He was so happy after we call to inform in a few hours will be Adelaide, he bump his head on the floor. We are not sure how did that accident happened but he must have been jumping on the sofa and slip just as I was saying goodbye to Lenay on the phone.Lenay said her hand was shaking so badly, she spilled traditional ointment (ubat gamat) all over the floor. Ouch, a very nasty bump on the forehead.

There were many cucumbers that Lenay harvested while we were away, so we joined the West Croydon Community Fruit and Veggie Swap this morning. We brought cucumbers, chives and spring onions to share

and returned home with

Garlic cloves and other stuff that we ordered from New Gippsland Seed & Bulbs company has arrived which I ordered before we left for Melbourne. I can't wait to plant garlic cloves next month. I ordered 50 garlic cloves that consist variety of Adelaide Red, Oriental Purple and Italian (common). 50 cloves are not enough, so I might have to get some more bulbs. On average weekly we used about 3 garlic bulbs (3bulb X 4 weeks X 12 month = 144 bulb) which means we need to grow more than 144 cloves.

It will be our first time growing beetroot and ranunculus this autumn.

It feel so good to be home.

Rayyan had a very sound sleep last night.

Lemon Basil

‘I pray your Highness mark this curious herb: Touch it but lightly, stroke it softly, Sir, And it gives forth an odour sweet and rare; But crush it harshly and you’ll make a scent Most disagreeable.’ 19th Century American humorist and folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland.

If ever there were a herb for a globalised world, it is basil. For there is, firstly for Europeans, the ‘sweet’ basil, Ocimum basilicum alluded to above by Leland. But then there are at least-the very least-five others used by the Thais, Indians, Sri Lankans, Vietnamese and Indonesians. Without enumerating the botanical names of each there are also basils described as liquorice, cinnamon, clove, champor, lettuce leaf and lemon (Citation~ The roots of Civilisation;Plants that changed the world by John Newton). Lemon Basil is the main basil variety that are growing in our patch this summer. I always like lemony flavour or fragrance.

Lemon Basil seedlings.

Lemon Basil seedlings ready to be transplanted. Someone else like lemon basil as well and had a bit of a snack.

I was thinking of planting lemon basils with tomatoes but they germinate later than tomatoes as they need much warmer weather to germinate. So I decided to observe whether lemon basil and brinjal will be good buddies or not this warm season. At this stage, it is too early to conclude whether they get along or not.

Lemon Basil Flowers.

Where are the seeds?

We aim to collect some lemon basil seeds this year.

We like to put lemon basil leaves in instant noodle soup or fish soup.Instant noodle? Trying to make it more nutritious when you know that instant noodles are junk food and giving it a more lemony flavour when the soup is tasteless.. How do you like to use lemon basil?

Kitaran hidup ketumbar (Coriander life cycle)

^{Coriander is known as Cilantro in America and other known names are Chinese Parsley (Malay Language~ketumbar). The part that is used from this plant are leaves and fruits (seeds). Coriander are umbellifers which also include celery, carrot, parsnip and parsley. It is not ideal to plant coriander with other umbellifers closely together because they need many root space alone. Coriander thrive in mild temperature about twentish degree Celcius. In Adelaide, end of summer and autumn is the best time to start sowing coriander. Germination rate is the best this time and coriander grows well in Adelaide winter. When spring comes it will start to flower. I found that coriander is sensitive to long day-length here in Adelaide as it will bolt easily. Although early spring provide good germination of coriander seedlings, it will bolt quickly even pruning it many times. Coriander seedlings just popped up.}

First true leaves of coriander look similar like other umbellifers at this stage like celery and carrots.

Coriander ready for transplanting and the seed coat still attached. As we can see that at this stage coriander already has many roots so be careful when you prick them for transplanting.

Bolting coriander where the upper part of the plant leaves has grown looking like carrot leaves. Coriander can be grown in pots but it won’t grow as tall as the one on the ground.

Coriander can grow more than 5 feet tall.

Coriander producing many white flowers.

Close up look of coriander dainty pretty white flowers.

Coriander forming fruits.

Many fruits of coriander. When the fruits are ready, it will produce very strong smell.

Drying the coriander plants to collect seeds later.

Coriander seeds ready to be collected.

Coriander seeds that can use for cooking and planting.

We still have many dried seeds of coriander plants to collect. I need more assistants helping me out collecting coriander seeds before they all drop to the floor.

Have a nice weekend.