Giant Purple Mustard Life-Cycle

Giant purple mustard grows very quickly and will be ready to harvest before main crop of summer or winter vegetables are ready to be harvested. For continuous supply of fresh vegetables from the garden before others are ready, giant purple mustard can fulfilled that hope. It can be inter-planted with other vegetables to maximise space and productiveness of small gardens. Mustards can be treated as green manure and it is said to help control nematodes as well. Inter-planting mustard with plants that is easily effected by nematodes as companion plant will deter nematodes.Giant purple mustard is very tolerant to cool weather. Giant purple mustard leaves will turn to more purple colours in cold weather.

Giant purple mustard seedlings sown in late fall.

Giant purple mustard seedlings sown in the end of summer.

Giant purple mustard can also be grown as trap plants or sacrificial plant to attract pest to them. So that main crop brassica like broccoli, cabbage or cauliflower will be safer from pest attack. Broccoli and cauliflower takes long time to grow, inter-planting mustard around them will  give many benefits to the brassica and productivity of ones garden like deterring nematodes, act as decoy to pest that like brassica and keep soil evaporation low as ground cover. 

Purple Giant mustard ready to be harvest.

If letting them grow much bigger it will become too bitter.

Inter-planting potatoes with mustards.

Time to harvest those mustards which will give potatoes some space to grow.

Giant purple mustard can grow the same size as mature broccoli plants.

The dark purple leaves of this mustard is very striking in the garden.

Giant purple mustard starting to flower.

Blooming.

Flowers of the purple giant mustards attract bees into the garden.

Producing seed pods.

Have a nice weekend.

Purple Pleasure

About a week ago, I found some cheerful yellow things in our garden and make all of you guess what it is. So this week, I wonder if I can find purple things in our garden in this mid-winter season. Pleasantly happy that there are several purple things in our garden at the moment. Purple sunflower seeds that I left to dry (not sure whether it will properly dry in this weather though). See some gaps in the sunflower head? I was snacking on them. The seeds were fat, creamy and sweet. I was really tempted to not let them dry on the plant and have them for snack while I entertain my boys in front of the television.

Purple podded peas starting to bloom last week. I hope its not too early for them to set proper pods. The plants have climbed to 2 metres tall.

The only bloom on our tree dahlia. Many buds still but not blooming. Too cold may be.

Established polyanthus in our garden has started to bloom at the shade corner of our garden.

Sweet alyssum seems to bloom all year round here. But in winter we keep them contain in container. Because snail and slugs like to hide under bushy sweet alyssum plant during winter.

Hoping to harvest some kohlrabi next month.

Giant purple mustard which is as tall as our biggest Italian sprouting broccoli plant which is producing side shoots. We won't be eating this mustard as I don't think I will be able to swallow it because it is already very hot and bitter this big. I am going to let them flower. I like how the green stalk, vein and purple leaves look so striking against each other. This mustard is about 70cm tall now. At the back of this mustard is our more than 2 years old pepper hiding and protected by the cold wind with the help from this mustard.

Any purple favourite thing in your garden at the moment?

Mid-Winter Harvest

Two of our dragon carrot tops were almost bald so I harvested them and made it our official first harvest of dragon carrot.  Harvested the last batch of Da Cheong Chae which some were badly infested with green caterpillars. This week the garden provide us with some sweet corns, pink radishes, chillies, yellow cherry tomatoes and snow peas. This is the first winter season that we managed to have continues harvest. I am just keeping a record so I can make a note and plan for next year vegetable growing plan for continuous harvest in the cool season. Visit Daphne and watch around the world what other gardeners are harvesting at the moment on Harvest Monday.

Purple mustards.

Different colour shade and interesting looking Afghanistan carrots. The best carrot we ever tasted. In soup, this carrot tasted so creamy and different from the usual carrot taste. It does not smell like the orange colour ones compared with different variety of carrots that we grown so far. I am letting a few to bolt after this winter season to collect seeds. Lenay even put a ribbon on the biggest carrot plant at the moment so I remember not to harvest that plant.

Rainbow Chards.

Spring onions, capsicum, lemon grasses, white sweet potatoes and sweet potato shoots which we used up yesterday for cooking meals.

Cut the sweet potato into chunks and wash the sweet potato shoots to cook into coconut milk.

White Sweet potato and shoots coconut milk dish. 

Can't have enough of this dish. Rayyan favourite dish.

Giant Purple Mustard and Wong Bok Week

Well the main harvest for last week as the tittle says are Giant Purple Mustard and Wong Bok. The not so pretty wong bok are going to bolt soon so we harvested most of them. We transplanted cauliflower seedlings on the area that were growing wong bok last weekend. Giant purple mustard inter-planted with potatoes were also harvested with many holes on the leaves. In they go into Rayyan's ikea baby bathtub for a good washing to get rid of pest and dirt. Not good plastic quality as you can see the tub already broken on the sides. We recycled the baby bathtub to wash vegetables outside which is easier than in the sink.

Some rainbow chard were harvested too last week.

We harvested some Kennebec potatoes and a leek sowed last winter.

Made beef curry and cook the newly harvested potato together.

Tossed some chilies in for a good sweat in this cold winter night.

Rayyan tongue was on fire since he insisted to have a taste despite several warnings.

We have many not good looking vegetables this week~deformed Afghanistan carrot thinnings, peas that did not grow the size of usual pod, and very short sweet corns because the plants were about 50cm tall. Unattractive they look but taste good. Considering that they still managed to give us something for the kitchen in middle of winter. One long pepper bell did managed to turn red this week. Snow peas, chillies and yellow cherry tomato are still plenty to harvest which is good for the kitchen supply and at least we have something other than mustard and wong bok for last week.

For Wendy Garden To Table Challenge for this week is Anchovies Fried Rice. Since our sweet corns were not many and we have 5 people in the house so that everyone can have a taste, the kernels were taken out from the cob and toss into the fried rice.It has been such a busy week that I think we had fried rice 3 times last week. Sorry my boys, at least it is not instant food. Nothing wasted in the kitchen, having left over rice from yesterday and chopped fresh vegetables for a quick hot meal came out from the wok.

Join in Harvest Monday with Daphne as our host.