Purple Top Turnip

 I had so much fun growing purple top turnip this year after more than a year trying to grow them successfully but did not get much of a root to enjoy. But this year I got it right and the best thing was that I don't even took care of them, never water and feed them. The turnip plant grows only with rain water. What I did was only sowing the seeds. It was only the matter of sowing the seeds on the right time and season. To grow them easily will be early-mid autumn which is March and April. Later than that the turnip might not give me much root but will probably produce flower much earlier. Thank you to Mr. H owner of Subsistence Pattern for introducing me this beautiful root vegetable.

Purple Top Turnip Seedlings.

Sowing turnip seeds in spring for me is a bit tricky if it get stress out due to lack of water will bolt easily. We really have dry weather by end of spring so it hard to make sure the soil does not dry out quickly.

Its time to thin those plants.

Sometime I got confuse whether these are turnips or radish plants if the label gone missing. Yes, the small hands in our home love to collect these labels. I always wonder how in other gardens all round the corner of this humble earth their turnip roots develop rather quickly and some I read harvested the roots in two months. Ours turnip roots does take long time to develop in good size. Although I sow them early autumn, it usually in spring seasons that I can enjoy harvesting the root. The root starts develop in spring and not much in winter except for the leafy top.

Turnips rubbing shoulders because the gardener did not bother to thin them was on sick leave :P.

Can be grown in container.

Oh my that turnip is squashing a volunteer celery I see.

Slugs/Snails must have been having a taste of that turnip looking at those scratches.

The container I have been using is only about 20cm deep.

Yup yup yup had so much fun growing them this year.

Or should I said not taking care of them this year at all.

Turnip Rikyu Soup

 We harvested some purple top turnip this week. I like purple colour so I was excited to harvest these root vegetables and it is the first time I had success with this variety after  trying to grow them at second attempt. It is the gardener fault sowing in the wrong season the first time because I can't wait to grow them. I have been keeping this turnip recipe since last year and waited to try to cook it. My husband and I enjoy Japanese food very much and he is the one who cooks better Japanese food than I do. So I handed the recipe to him. I really like the simplicity of the preparation and ingredient in 'The enlightened kitchen~Fresh vegetables from the temple of Japan' recipe book by Mari Fuji for 'Turnip Rikyu Soup'.

~Turnip Rikyu Soup~

Ingredients:

4 small white kabu turnips (about 60g), peeled

2 tablespoon white sesame seeds

Turnip leaves, very finely chopped (about50g)

800ml Konbu stock

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon sake (did not add)

finely grated yuzu rind, for garnish, optional

1> Cut the turnips lengthwise into 4 to 6 wedges.

2> Roast the sesame seeds, then grind in a food processor.

3> Blanch the finely chopped turnip leaves briefly in boiling salted water. Drain and squeeze lightly.

4> In a saucepan, combine the konbu stock, soy sauce, salt, sake and turnips, and place over medium heat for 5 to 6 minutes until the turnips are cooked through, but still crisp.

5> Add half the turnip leaves to the saucepan (my husband add tofu and spring onions too), bring very briefly to a boil, then remove from the heat and serve. Garnish with ground sesame, the remaining turnip leaves, and yuzu rind.

A very healthy and nutritious food. Sorry no photo of this dish, it is just a soup dish and I was too hungry to take a photo after feeding Abby.

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.

IRIS (Larkspur Seed Give-Away Winners)

This is our first time growing iris and we were so excited to see them blooming last spring. Thanks to Berry Gnome for sharing with us so many iris rhizomes last fall. Even my mama got to bring some iris rhizomes back to Malaysia. My mama iris did grow very well but unfortunately papa mowed them through when he was mowing the lawn. So I thought of sharing our iris bloom with her for her belated birthday.

I really like this iris colour.

Brighten up this veggie patch when there were only tiny veggie seedlings.

Yellow coloured iris blooming together with gazania.
Visit Ewa for Flowers on Saturday.

We did a larkspur seeds give-away a few days ago.

Our boys pick the winners with the old fashion way of writing names on the paper, roll paper, shake rolled paper and randomly pick the rolled paper...so the winners are:

(1) Cikmanggis~ jom masak, jom makan makan...

(2)Jody~ Spring Garden Acre

(3)Jennifer~ Three Dogs in a Garden

(4)HangKebon~Pak Mamat Ada Kebun

(5)Cher~Sunray Gardens

Hope the winners can email us your mailing address so we can post the seeds (kebunkmg@gmail.com).

Have a great weekend.

We are having a few showers this weekend which made our plants happy.

Cup and Saucer Canterbury Bells

It required a lot of patience to grow Canterbury bells flower from seeds here. I thought at first the seeds won't germinate at all and almost gave up on them. After almost 2 months suddenly there were new seedlings in the pot. I probably sowed the seeds too early and was lucky that not all those seeds got rotten. If  I remember correctly it probably best to sow them in May/June which is late fall/early winter here in Adelaide plain. Probably needs colder temperature to germinate because I was surprised to see Canterbury bells seedlings sprouted in early-mid winter. But brace yourself because we had to wait for two Springs to pass for the Canterbury bells plant to bloom (waited for a year and a half). It was worth the wait. Now I understand why it is categorised as a biennal plant. But since we have mild winter, hopefully it will stay as perennial here. Lenay has threaten me many times to pull out our Canterbury bells plants because it just stays there and does nothing before it blooms. I had to beg many times to let it just stay there. Now who diligently does the dead-heading to prolong blooming season of our Canterbury bells because she fell in love with the bloom. Lenay of course.

Purple Cup and Saucers.

Without the saucers blooming near our front entrance door.

Bees simply adore Canterbury bells bloom.

The tall ones need to be staked as it leaning towards the ground.

The ones growing in partial shade does better.

How our front yard looks at the moment.

Kind of messy.

Many of the flowers are self-sowed ones like larkspur, viola, pansy and calendula.

Have a nice weekend!

Visit Ewa for more Flowers on Saturday.

Carnation Chabaud Life-Cycle

I have been wandering whether our carnation flowers produce seeds. It should have seeds since in our local seed company catalog there are seeds available. The chabaud carnation that we grow were not originally sowed by us. I bought a punnet from our local nursery when we were really wet behind the ear in the world of gardening. When we started gardening, carnation was one of the first flower that grace our garden. Lucky for us, it thrives in neglect. It dislike the hot summer here though. Commonly, bloom in spring but we have some bloom in autumn or winter due to strange weather. Carnation were growing well side by side with chives in one of our containers previously.

Fresh carnation seeds collected last spring.

Newly sprouted carnation seeds.

Carnation seedlings.

It was much easier to collect seeds from single layer petal carnation than the multiple-layers one. But it will be interesting to see if those seeds follows the features of its parents or diverse.

Looks like a flower bud but it is actually carnation seed pod.

We did not planned to collect carnation at first since we don't know where the seeds are hiding. But my cousin Lenay while she was dead-heading spent blooms stumbled on the carnation seeds hide-out.

Eureka! Eureka!

Carnation can also be propagated by stem cuttings.

This plants has been in good mood and give us some flowers to cut for indoors.

Hope you have a Wonderful day this Wednesday.

Shirley Poppy (Sweet Pea Seeds Give-Away Winners)

Early ~Mid November is always the best blooming season for poppy in our garden.

I think I sowed some poppy seeds earlier than it ideally should be this year.

I did get earlier blooms in October but it wasn't pretty.

Because the flower bud can't proper fully blossom. 

Maybe I should try sowing in between May-June.

Two weeks ago, I wanted to share our recently collected sweet peas with 3 gardeners.

I hope these sweet pea seeds will make a home in these 3 gardeners lovely garden:

Dani ~ Jurnal de gradina, Cathy~ Cathy@home and Meeka.

Hope I can get your address ladies (my email: diana.demiyah@gmail.com)

The colour of this poppy is really bloody red.

No editing colour here.

It is that red.

White poppy so delicate to touch.

A pink multi-layer poppy.

A blushing one?

Wearing a different kind of red frill skirt.

Have a nice weekend!

Aphids Vacuum Cleaner

Last week, I gave a talk for the "3rd Australia Sex Summit" conference at Yarra Valley, Victoria. The title is a bit misleading. To avoid misunderstanding what the conference objective and purpose was really about. Let me clarify, this is purely scientific academic purposes. It is mainly on the evolutionary, biology, genetic about sex chromosomes,  sex determination and sex differentiation for gonadal development, or disease that is associated with it. I was really nervous. The first few slides when I was explaining it, I think it was obvious that I was shaking. I found it a bit intimidating at first since I have to talk in front of expertise in this field. It was exciting to meet them as well since for years I have been reading about their findings and papers.

Earlier this month, I noticed that our dill and some other plants were badly infested with aphids. I got very annoyed as those aphids have been mainly aiming on the parts that are developing seeds. Spraying with chilli water did not have any effect at all. Before I left for the conference, I noticed that they were some ladybirds on the plant. Those ladybirds were doing a great job of eliminating those pest. I think it was really a grand banquet that those ladybirds enjoyed.  Relying on those ladybirds will save money and friendly to the environment and us.

Close inspection shows that the nearest part of ladybirds has reduced number of aphids compared to other place. After I returned, the number of aphids on the dill plants were significantly reduce. They did a wonderful job. I think in just a few days only 25% original numbers of aphids remained now.

I hope this is a fruitful union with many offspring!

Bees are getting a bit drunk these days in the garden.

This is the first time I have seen a blue sky banded bee in our garden. It was really difficult to get a good shot of this bees as it does not stop that long. I hope you can see how blue those bands are. 

Sweet Pea Life-cycle (Seeds Give-Away)

I got some sweet pea seeds earlier this year from our local seed-saver group meetings. Those seeds germinated so well on clay soil of our garden and were lucky not be eaten at all from dreaded pests. Starting last month, we started to collect these sweet pea seeds. Some of the seeds will be travelling to Phoebe's Ballynoe Cottage. We also will like to share these sweet pea seeds to make a new home in 3 gardens anywhere on this planet earth (randomly from comments).

Drying seed pods.

Direct-sowed sweet pea seedlings.

Very fragrant bright red sweet pea flowers.

Visit Ewa for Flowers on Saturday.

When I look up at the clear blue sky under the arch, I imagine many colourful butterfly dancing.

We let the flowers to develop into pods to collect seeds later.

Although it is not the season for tree dahlia to bloom, we had a few flower blooming during this spring season.

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