Society Garlic (Tulbaghia violacea)

 Hello everyone its been awhile. November has been a really busy month and it is almost a month I have not done any postings. The reason being is we moved house. We are now officially not gardening in a dry Mediterranean climate garden but a wet tropical garden. Yes we have safely returned back to Malaysia since 15th of November. We were so exhausted the last week we were in Adelaide so busy with packing and cleaning our rented house. Moreover, a lot of other things needed to be organised and we have a 2 months old baby to care between me and my husband. The garden needed to be cleared and the agent wanted us to get rid most of the plants. So I decided to save or transport the plants that can be easily brought along back with me to Malaysia. It was another separate task we had to do because it will be heartbreaking to chuck the plants into the green compost bin. Most of my container garden polystyrene boxes were given away to friends, made me happy that they have an "instant garden" and a good way to spark gardening interest to friends. We managed to bring back 2 big boxes full of bare-rooted plants safely back . Well actually more than 2 boxes since I add in some plants into our luggage as well. We only brought back plants and Abbiyana stuff back with us by flight, the rest will be sent by sea shipment. I am one very crazy gardener, took me more than a week to transplant all the plants we transported back from our once upon a time Adelaide garden.

 I bought 8 bare-rooted society garlic from online and it was really cheap than buying a pot of plant from the nursery. I was also very satisfied as it was a very healthy bulbous root. The bulbous roots that I bought online came only wrap in a wet newspaper. Society garlic can tolerate a wide range of soil and it is also a drought and frost tolerant plant. The main purpose of me buying this plant is to deter unwanted creature to a certain area as many animals don't like the strong smell of this plant. An organic safe repellent plant. I was reading a forum that even big animal like deer dislike very much to come closer to this plant. If you bruised the leaves, a very nasty stinky smell will waft through your nose so be prepared. I think this work much better to repel vampire compare to garlic. Society garlic flowers are dainty star-shaped mauve in colour .

 The leaves of society garlic are edible so you can use them in cooking- stir-fry or soup or as a garnish whichever dishes you are fond of. Because I bought the bare-rooted bulbous society garlic 3 weeks before we depart, re-potted them until the day before we say farewell to Adelaide.

 I wrapped them bare-rooted again in wet tissues and it stayed more than 7 days in box before I had time to plant them. By that time new roots were growing in the wet tissues and surprise surprise some were producing flower bud! Very cool plant not temperamental plant, they are very hardy.

The plants are about 30cm tall when flowering. Society garlic has a long blooming season. When I planted one bare-rooted society garlic on this site, there were many ants around. After a few days, ants has disappeared from that spot. Hopefully this plant will multiply quickly so I can make new division of plants and allocate to other spots in the garden especially the new veggie patch project not being trampled by turkey and his friends at the backyard. The reason why we have wires around this spot to prevent turkey  or chicken from digging the newly made small veggie patch. We are living at my parents house now near Malaysia capital city as caretakers because my parents at the moment are staying in Borneo island due to my father new working place. We have at least half an acre now to grow food, plenty of space compared to our very very very small Adelaide garden. I have not been reunited yet with my 2 boys Ilhan and Rayyan hopefully early next month. Now that 5 years old Ilhan knew we are back, he wants to fly back here with us but it was so cute hearing him on Skype said "I can't board the aeroplane because I have no money and ticket". I have not finished my studies, hopefully I can focus on finishing up my thesis writing soon.

Growing Gerbera by Divisions

 I just remembered that I have not give any update the result of our adopted gerbera that we made divisions and transplanted 2 years ago. It was a success and the plants still live on till today and now we know the colour of the adopted gerbera plant bloom as well. Gerbera or also known as African daisy is a perennial plant in our garden which bloom twice a year in spring and autumn preferring the milder weather. Gerbera is a very drought-tolerant plant. Prefers well-drained soil and does not like its feet to be wet in a long period of time. Likes the sun very much, although still produce flower in partial shade not as profusely as the one receiving more sun. Needs a good air flow and dry condition in partial shade or the leaves tends to be sickly or caught some disease.

 Two years ago, my boys gave me 2 pots of gerbera plant for Mother's day. Since we will be moving by the end of this year, I wanted the plants to be in a place that I can always take some with me whenever we have to move to a new place. So the safest place will be transferring the whole plant to my parents house all the way to Malaysia. I am one crazy girl I know, probably not an expensive plant but reminds me of the difficult days of trying our best to make sure Rayyan be strong until he goes for his complete corrective surgery. Rayyan rarely goes out to public places to avoid infectious diseases. So the garden is where he spent most of his time outdoors playing when he was a baby and toddler. You can divide gerbera plants which has grown more than 2 years old especially if the pots look really crowded during dormant season. For my climate will be winter through early-spring to propagate new gerbera plants by divisions.

This is how I basically did when my sister help me transported our gerbera plants back in Malaysia last May. Carefully lift up the plant with all its root intact, washed out gently all the soil away from the root, wrap the plant gently with newspaper. Plant as soon as you reach your destination. The gerbera plant was bare-rooted for 2 days wrap in newspaper before it got planted. As you can see on the photo above, the plant on the right can be easily divided to several plants with a sharp tool (roughly about 4 plants, probably more since that is just the front). Those gerbera plants were divided before it was planted in my parents garden.

Here is one of the new gerbera plants growing a few weeks after making a new home in my parents garden. Liking the warm weather after leaving the cold winter growing really fast. Some of the new plants has already producing bloom in my parent garden. Growing gerberas by division saves a lot of money and you can also swap with other gardeners too.

Does gerbera have seeds?

Yes they do have seeds.

But gerbera is not a plant that grow easy by seeds.

Not impossible just difficult.

Need to find the right season and requirement to have successful germination perhaps.

I tried several time in my first year in gardening from the seeds I bought.

Not one germinate.

Used fresh seeds from our garden in different season still did not germinate.

I forgot to continue the gerbera seed sowing experiment for more than a year now.

Maybe someday I will continue with the experiment again.

Purple Skin Sweet Potato Propagation (White Flesh)

The third variety for sweet potato that we introduce into our garden since we started growing this sweet tuber is sweet potato with purple skin and white flesh. I wanted to grow sweet potato with purple skin and flesh, thinking of  Malaysian traditional cake when I harvested the tubers later. However, I bought wrong tubers from the market without checking the inner flesh colour. Usually I prefer to grow them from young shoots from sweet potato plants left growing over-winter in our garden. But with new variety into the garden, we have to get the new plants from tubers. When spring came, I simply just push half of the purple sweet potato tubers into the soil in container that were growing beet roots. I did forgot those tubers for a while left in the container. Snail/Slugs even munched on the sweet potato as seen in the photo. After young shoots sprouted from the sweet potato tuber eyes were big enough to cut and able to produce some root, I transplanted them in containers.

It was easier to differentiate the sweet  potato variety we grow this time. Because for this new member in the garden that we are growing have dark purple veins when the other 2 have green veins with different shape of leaves.

Sweet potato grows very well in container. I was a bit mischievous when I had extra purple sweet potato shoots ready to plant in hand that I planted one in a container that were growing leek and parsnips. I thought that I would not get many sweet potato harvest from that container since it was only intended sweet potato foliage to cover the soil like mulch. I was really surprise that among 4 containers that we grow purple sweet potatoes, the ones that were grown along with parsnip and leeks gave the biggest and most tubers compared to other containers. The parsnip roots were also remarkably decent size of parsnip root harvest. Lemon basil and sweet potato also seems to get along well together. 

Some of the purple sweet potatoes tubers harvested from our container garden.

Here are the debris of the purple sweet potato plants pull out from the containers by my husband. If you live in a frost-free area you can simply plant it back somewhere else in full sun. I have experimented with one plant last year after I harvested all the tubers and planted somewhere else in full sun. That plant still live at our backyard for more than a year now thriving without any tender loving care. We have not harvested that plant simply because we don't have the time and we still have many sweet potatoes plants sprouting from compost and growing as they please. Sweet potatoes has somehow become weeds in our garden. I won't be surprised when spring comes we got several sprouted sweet potato shoots somewhere in the garden.

Because I have many small containers at the moment, I selected some good-looking young shoots from the debris that have many strong roots attached  and planted them in containers. I left them outdoors, any plants of ours will be train to be hardy plants which is tolerant of the weather we have in winter and extreme summer heat here.

If these cuttings do well, I plan to give it away at veggie swap or seed-saver meetings.

I have received so many valuable advice and treasures from this community.

Sweet potato is one of the easiest edible plant to grow if you have suitable climate for growing this easy-going plant. Grows very well in pots like potato, not impossible even for gardeners with small space. I have a capsicum plant growing together with a sweet potato in container and the capsicum plants give a lot of produce as usual. Although, I have not yet harvest the sweet potato tubers, so I can't comment on the sweet potato harvest. A lemon basil plant was also growing together in the same pot during summer. If you can't wait for the harvest, you can snip some young shoots to enjoy while waiting for tubers.

Growing shallots in container

We tried to grow shallot the first time this year and planted the shallot sets in May. The shallot sets that we ordered came in between medium to very small size sets. To get bigger shallots it is important to plant big size sets to ensure you get good size of shallot harvest. So when you harvest them remember to keep the big ones for next planting and use the rest for your cooking. Other than growing them in the ground soil, we also tried to grow them in container and see whether it grows well or not. We don't find any difference in growing them in container or on the ground soil. It is all much depend on the size of the sets were planted. Big sets bigger bulbs and small sets will resulted on small bulbs. So if you don't have much space, you can try growing them in containers since it takes almost 9 months to harvest them depending on your climate and location. The shallot variety we grow is matador.

Push in the shallot sets roughly this much into the soil and waited for it to sprout.

They sprout easily when the weather has cool down in fall.

Maybe leaving it in the fridge for few days can help it sprout?

After a few weeks later...

For more productivity in the garden since shallot will fill in that precious spot for sometime, don't forget to inter-plant with quick crop. For example we sowed some small globe radish type around the shallot and sowed some carrot seeds near the edge of the container. This vegetables is said to be good companion . Can you see some tiny carrot seedlings and some has not sprouted when the photo were taken.

How deep was our containers for growing shallot?

About 20cm deep.

Dragon carrots growing nicely together with shallot in the same container.

Shallots just starting to produce some bulbs.

Producing more shallot bulbs.

All the photos are from the same container to follow the shallot growing progress.

The right shallot plants are almost ready to be harvested and cured.

I am quite satisfied with my first time growing shallots. If I live in a suitable place to grow them I will certainly make sure I plant them every year. Big shallots harvest were from the right side shallot plants from photo above. There are more than 10 bulbs harvested from that plant. The small shallots were from small shallot sets planted on the ground soil. South-East Asian cooking uses shallots most frequently and that amount will probably only last me for 2~3weeks.

Shallots are commonly thinly sliced and fried crisply for garnishing dishes in Malaysia. You can easily find the ready-made fried shallots sold in shops in Malaysia. Shallot is one of the ingredient commonly use to make sambal belachan or dipping sauces for grilled fish. Shallot has very little calories that make it good for a person in diet by making his or her meal more appetising by using it as marinade. From my childhood memories, we rarely eat outside so it will be a special treat when we did that so satay was usually served accompanied with peanut sauce, rice cakes, cucumber slices and raw shallot slices.

What is your favourite shallot variety?

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

Perennial Polyanthus

The bright colours of polyanthus bloom has always reliably decorated our garden in winter each year. Since our polyanthus plants has been well-established in our garden at the moment, it bloom much earlier than previous year. This year polyanthus has started to bloom early July. Polyanthus grows very well in shade.

Visit Ewa for more Flowers on Saturday.

This year to add more brilliant colours in winter, last early April I tried to propagate new polyanthus plants by division from several old plants from last year that look a bit bushy. For example, this is one of the plants that I chose to give us more plants.

Made several division from that plant.

All of it survive, grow and are flowering at the moment.

Although it blooms later than well-established plants in our garden.

Have a nice weekend!

Winter White Sweet Potatoes

Last weekend we harvested some white skin and flesh sweet potatoes planted from tubers last November. I have no idea if it has other name or what variety it is. I bought the tubers from Gepps Cross Market. It is another new experiment in the garden and to satisfy this student gardener curiosity on growing them. See how different these white and red/brown sweet potatoes when laid side by side.

Before we harvested those white sweet potatoes the patch look like this. Now we have planted shallots and potato onions on this patch. This is the first time we are trying to grow them too. Hopefully they grow well.

This was the cut section tuber that had some eyes which sprouted young sweet potato shoots. Since it was kind of late for me to wait until they sprouted shoots to cut some slips, I just chuck in this tuber that seems to contain some eyes straight into the patch where I wanted them to grow in the warmest soil in the garden. Oh I know excuses, I was lazy. Surprisingly in less than 2 weeks young shoots have pushed it way out from the soil. Originally the tuber size was a quarter of the size from the tuber shown. It must have grown bigger. I noticed that some of my harvested sweet potatoes has big crack or split on it. Must be due to the gap of lack of water and many rains like tomatoes, just my assumption. Do you know why?

White sweet potato and red/brown sweet potato leaf shapes are very different you can differentiate them easily. On the left is red/brown sweet potato plant and on the right is white sweet potato. White sweet potato leaf are more maple-like whereas red/brown sweet potato leaf are like heart-shaped.

White sweet potato flower bud.

It was a nice surprise that white sweet potato plants produce flower in our garden whereas the red/brown sweet potatoes did not at all in any season. I did know that some sweet potato have flowers from one of this good vegetable gardening book I have read. But it was still unexpected to see them really bloom in our garden. You can even grow sweet potatoes from seeds if you managed to find them in between these heaps of leaf veins.

White sweet potato flower which resemble morning glory because they belong to the same family.

Unlike red/brown sweet potatoes which can be invasive due to their veins nodes can quickly sprouted roots to grow more tubers this way or new plants, white sweet potato plants does not have very visible nodes. So to satisfy my curiosity, I have cut some young shoots which look like have tiny nodes on it and put it in water to see whether any root will sprout. It is still in progress. Moreover the water might be cold now even indoors to sprout. It is possible this experiment will have to continue again when spring comes.

What does white sweet potatoes taste like?

Sorry, no idea this will be our first taste.

Since the gardener and cook have school, the tasting have to be postponed until this weekend.

I was thinking of frying it like pisang goreng (banana fritters).

Tree Dahlia (Dahlia imperialis)

I got 2 long flower stem which I have no idea what it was from Barbra when I joined our local fruit and vegetable swap for the second time last year. She tried very hard to explain what it is and how to propagate it but I still can’t imagine what the flower will look like. So she told me it look daisy like? I even misunderstood how to propagate it. You are supposed to propagate this stem horizontally but this novice gardener did it vertically. No easy task digging in clay soil for 50cm depth to stick in these stem which Lenay had to help as I was busy in school. Shhh…she does not know yet that it is suppose to be horizontal as I just read about it today. Lenay thought I brought back sugar cane at first. Well I thought the same thing too when I saw this stem at first. The stem is bamboo like but look similar to sugar cane if you spend your childhood in the tropics that will be first thing on your mind. How nice will it be to bite and munch on sugar cane.

So for future reference, here is a link on how to propagate tree dahlia. But we were lucky even we propagated it totally in the wrong direction, the plant did sprouted new shoots.

New shoots sprouted from the nodes.

If we had grown the stem horizontally, we probably have a clump of tree dahlia now. Oh well, there is next time.

The plants grow very slowly at first. This is how they look last March since grown from September last year.

A month later in April, it shoot up very fast.

Early May we see the first batches of buds appearing.

The first bloom in middle of May. I was so excited because it is mauve my favourite colour like the colour of my wedding dress. However, I can’t really see how the bloom actually look like since it is facing my neighbour backyard. Coincidently, that week we have local fruit and vegetable swap meetings and I had the chance to tell Barbra about her wonderful gifts blooming in our garden now. How I finally know that this is tree dahlia blooming in my garden? I borrowed some last year May gardening magazine publication from our local library and it had an article what kind of flowers usually bloom at different region in Australia in May. The tree dahlia photo in the magazine is very familiar to my eyes now.

This tree dahlia is facing our kitchen window, so we have a nice view while cooking. Notice why I am cooking more lately. A very tall plant more than 3 metre tall. Glad that the fence will help protect from the winds.  I read it continuously bloom in winter, I dearly hope so. A very nice colour to have in the garden during winter even on cloudy days.

We are not the only admirer of this tree dahlia. Bees love them too. We have so many bees busy buzzing around this tree dahlia to sips its nectar before the weather gets really cold. We are so delighted that we still see so many bees buzzing in early winter. We don’t see any bees last year in end autumn or early winter when we did not have this tree yet growing in our garden.

I hope this week I have convinced you more thinking about local swap group in you area. See what wonderful gifts that I had received and learn so many new plants from so many generous gardeners.

Linking with Tracie Cottage Floral Thursday at Fishtail Cottage.

Ewa likes purple so linking with Flowers on Saturday for this week.

Sweet potato donuts

Sweet potato is an easy plant to grow if you have its favourite type of soil and weather. It can be very invasive. It is best to grow one shoot or slip in one metre square between each plant. Some Asian groceries sell sweet potato shoots for cooking. On this sweet potato vein shoots have nodes where the roots will grow on soil or water. I found sweet potato shoots last October in Gepps Cross Sunday Market. I was not sure what variety sweet potato shoot it was, but it was a fun experiment.

The roots sprouted very quickly in 2~3 days in warm water end of Spring. Just leave it near a sunny window.

Plant the shoots with the roots tuck nicely into the warm soil. It grows very quickly in mild weather. As usual my plants like to have a break in middle of summer for weeks if planted on our most sunny and hottest place in the garden doing nothing. Then it picks up growth again end of summer. I should mention sweet potatoes is heat-tolerant, although it does nothing if the soil is too hot.

Last summer, I experimented growing sweet potatoes in 3 different location in our garden to see which is the best growing method for our garden.

Sweet potatoes growing in polystyrene container~ Received only morning sun, no checked growth, very fast growth and good harvest in just about 4 months.

Sweet potatoes growing in heavy clay soil~ I wish that sweet potato can help break the soil like potato. Unfortunately, I did not get my wish. Partial shade, no check growth and many leaves. However, a very small tuber were obtained from each plant after 22 weeks from planting.

Finally, we harvested our sweet potatoes that were growing in our most sunny part of the garden in summer last Saturday. It is starting to rain a lot last week so I was afraid if I leave it longer it will be rotten. Moreover, I was getting anxious about my garlic which I have not complete planting yet because of this space. I don’t think if I let them grow longer it will give me more since the soil will be colder now. Since it was growing in the hottest part of the garden during the summer, it has stop growing during middle of summer and pick up growth after the weather has become mild again. Growing on a good loose soil.

What a relief to dig in and find some sweet potato tubers.

I think for our garden, planting sweet potatoes in container is the best method to get quick harvest and make the garden much more productive. Next spring, we are on a quest of vegetables that can grow well at our hottest part of the veggie patch again.

With this harvest, we made sweet potato donut or famously known as kuih keria in Malaysia. English have their tea with cakes, Malaysian have kuih keria for tea . It is very easy to make and you don’t need much ingredients for it.

Ingredients: Sweet potatoes, plain flour, cooking oil, water and sugar.

Boil or steam sweet potatoes until soft. Take them out from the boiling water and mashed. Add in plain flour bit by bit and mix it well. You don’t need flour anymore if it is not that sticky and you can roll it make a doughnut shape. Be careful though that too much flour will give you a hard donut. Fry the donut in hot cooking oil.

For the sugar coating, I usually snip some pandan leaves and extract some juice from it which I will use for the coating later. In a clean pot, add in sugar (for example 2/3 cups of water) and the pandan extracted juice (4~5table spoon). The pandan juice is just to dissolve the sugar. Usually, only plain water is used but I like pandan flavour and aroma. Stir on moderate heat and just before it starts to crystalize (which usually is a quick process), quickly add in the fried donuts to coat.

Join in Wendy’s Garden To Table Challenge.

Every cook has their special tips or advice or different ingredient. I am basic cook. If you are a first timer and not sure about the measurement, check out this great blog:

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