Sun root

 The first time I saw this plant tuber in our local community veggie swap, at a glance I thought it was some relative of ginger. But it does not even belong to the same group with ginger. Interestingly, these tubers known as sun root and many other names such as sun choke, Jerusalem artichoke, or girasole belong to the same family with sunflower, globe artichoke and lettuce (Asteraceae). Sun root is not from Jerusalem but it is a native to Northern America. The reason why even you left some tubers underground through winter with heavy frost the plant will come back the next growing season, very hardy tubers. It is not a tuber you always find available in the grocery store compared to potato. But it can be used as substitute for potato and it is much much more easier to grow. Does not required care at all in our garden. When the tubers sprouted, I did not even noticed it until it has grown several leaves and I thought it was some other seeds that I was trying to sprout.

 At this stage, the sun root plant has grown resembling more to its cousin sunflower. The plant grow very well in partial shade and hard clay soil. Very convenient plant, when you have little space and you can grow them at the most unproductive spot in your garden and still produce tubers. I have experimented growing sweet potato and potato on this same spot but it never produces decent tubers or tuber at all due to the hard soil and limited hours of direct-light. During summer this spot received just several hours of direct light around noon. 

The sun root plant grows almost 2 metre tall. Sun root tubers contain no starch unlike potato. Sun root tubers carbohydrate consist mainly of inulin which the body does not absorbed so its a good healthy diet food. Inulin compound is also reported to increase the effectiveness of our body immune system and increase calcium absorption. 

Sun root flower resembles sunflower and smaller in size but looks really cute. Sun root plants once established is drought-hardy compared to potato plant in our garden. In my mind, I kind of form a plan regarding these 3 plants potato; potato, sweet potato and sun root how to fully utilise the space and rotating the harvest to keep fresh supplies going between these 3 tubers. The best time for us to grow potato is end winter and harvest by early-mid summer. We can plant potato again early autumn and harvest mid-winter ~mid-spring. We start to plant sweet potatoes and sun root in September (early spring). Sun root can be grown in the most poor condition in our garden which somewhat increase the garden productivity during summer. Sun root and sweet potatoes can be harvested by mid-autumn when potatoes supply are no more. But for sweet potato tubers we don't have to dig them out until we want to use them. The sweet potato tubers does not mind staying underground in our climate here.

Sun root flower also has seeds but smaller than sunflower seeds. Can be grown from seeds but the tuber results will be variable like potato grown from seeds after some research reading. Growing from tubers will produce the same as its original parent, basically the parent clones. After some reading about this plant, I become interested to try growing this plant from seeds. Alas, did not managed to collect seeds because I throw the debris into the compost unaware of them having seeds or I was not thinking much that time when Abby was still in the tummy growing big very fast (3rd trimester). It was a cold day when we harvested the tubers. Any gardeners on the Northern Hemisphere harvesting sun root tubers soon? Did you find any seeds on the remaining plant spent blooms?

Well as you can see this section of our garden is in shadow some part during the day. The sun root plants dying and almost the time to harvest some tubers. My husband thought all the time it was a sunflower growing, not knowing that it was actually a sun root plant before I seek his help to harvest the tubers because it is in a spot hard to crouch for a heavy pregnant woman surrounded by other plants.

I was not expecting that much harvest because from previous experience growing potato and sweet potato on the same spot yield almost nothing. Surprised me it did, it was really a nice harvest for just one plant growing in poor condition. The basket harvest was really heavy fill with sun root tubers.  The sun root tubers also helped break the hard clay soil for next plant growing there.

When I was pregnant with Abby, I enjoyed roasted sun roots and in Malaysia yellow curry very much. This post actually has been drafted since June and I just managed to post it today typing with one hand while the other hand holding Abby.

Sayang Kinabalu, The Versatile and Liebster Award

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A Giant Russian Sunflower bloom for us on Christmas day.

Usually at the end of the year my family will usually spend this part of the year on the Land below of the wind which is Sabah one of the Malaysia state that is  one part of Borneo island. My Japanese friends will come and visit Sabah tomorrow and my parents will entertain them as my replacement. I hope they enjoy their visit there very much. The last time we were in Sabah was December 2007 and Ilhan was still a baby learning how to sit.

Bamboo Orchestra- Sayang Kinabalu (Loving Kinabalu)

Tinggi Tinggi Gunung Kinabalu (As high as you are Mount Kinabalu)
Tinggi lagi sayang sama kamu (Higher is my love for you)
Biru biru hujung Kinabalu tengok dari jauh (How sky blue is Kinabalu peak appear from faraway)
Hati saya rindu... (My heart miss you Kinabalu)

Kinabalu dekat di Kundasang (Kinabalu is close to Kundasang)

Banyak sayur boleh pilih pilih (So many vegetables to choose from there)

Apa guna pergi luar negeri (What is the use going overseas)

Naik Kinabalu hati saya rindu... (My heart miss climbing Kinabalu)

Mount Kinabalu is the highest mountain in South-East Asia (higher than Mt. Fuji). Although, it is a few hours drive away from my mama village, we can clearly see its peak on a sunny day. There are many beautiful diving sites in Sabah. My brother obtained his scuba diving license recently and hopefully I get to dive with him to enjoy the ocean garden that can be very mesmerising. He probably has to refresh my memory about diving basic since its been almost 10 years? that I last did scuba diving.

I would like to thank Phoebe from Ballynoe Cottage for the Versatile Blogger Award. Thanks to Jody (Spring Garden Acre) and Lrong (Potager Y @ Japan) for the Liebster Award.

I feel very honoured and humble that our blog was selected.

"Liebster" is a German word meaning dear, sweet, kind, nice, good, beloved, lovely, kindly, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome. 

The Liebster is awarded to spotlight up and coming bloggers who currently have less than 200 followers.

Now for the rules (I just copy and paste it):
1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And most of all - have fun!

So without any particular order, here are some of the blogs that we have enjoyed reading that we like to pass on the Versatile Blogger Award and Liebster Blog:

Angelina~ The Meow Factor;
A cat with her big family which is involved in many different kind of charities and organisation. Ehem... I hope their balcony garden will be fill up with many plants soon. They are very good in Maths. Always wonder how they did they came up with big numbers so soon.

Liz~Suburban Tomato;
She has a very productive veggie garden. She lives in Australia too but her winter is a little bit colder than us. Amazingly, she harvest her vegetables all year round. Check out her nice recipes as well.

Sean L~ Half A Pound Of Treacle;
He writes on a wide range of topics and very thoroughly did  research regarding the topic he posted. I learn many new things from his blog such as about Malaysia native plants, cultural festival, and beautiful places to visit. His balcony is growing with many variety of plants. It must be an amazing sight when people look up to his balcony garden from below.

Sue~Our Plot At Green Lane Allotments;
I learn a lot from her about gardening and I enjoy looking at her nature and wildlife photos too. There are many useful links in her blog for novice gardener on how to grow things. Sue very good at knowing good and bad insects in the garden too.

Lena~Frozen Wings;
Each time Lena posted new recipes on her cooking blog, I am so amazed on how creative she is. One day, I hope she teach me how to bake. I remember how she made our traditional kuih pulut panggang look like sushi.

I hope you visit this wonderful blogs and enjoyed the music as well.

The UnUsed Land For Edible Garden

The tallest Mammoth plant that we have grown finally bloom this week. It is about 10 feet tall at least. It was raining yesterday and I was afraid that the bloom will be ragged before I can have a proper look at it after a long week at school. Two bees were constantly buzzing around the sunflower while I took some photos. This sunflower home-saved seeds were sowed early last March. 

I was worried that these autumn-sowed sweet corn cobs will never ripen. The tassels have been in dark brown colour for sometime. But went I took a peek inside, the kernels seems to be between white to light yellowish colour. So perhaps they will in about 2 weeks or so, if the weather permits.

We have been harvesting snow peas and Telephone peas. We finished harvesting most of the daikon last month. Now we used the space to grow purple savoy cabbage. Not sure whether the transplanted cabbage will form heads as it is planted a bit later than usual.

Almost a week I did not take a look at this area and found some pear cherry tomatoes on the ground.

We pull out all bush bean plants growing at the front area of this patch and in its place now are very tiny red onion seedlings. Now rainbow chards, dragon carrots and Russian kale received more sunlight so they can grow better. Self-sowed tomatoes producing fruits but it might take longer for them to turn red.

This patch are vegetables that we grown first time. From the back row > Florence fennel, Purple Vienna Kohlrabi, mixed beetroot, dragon carrot and parsnip. Beetroot are already at the stage of baby beetroot.

Sweet corns were finish harvested on this patch last month. So we replaced the sweet corns with our excess seeds of Italian sprouting broccoli, purple savoy cabbage, red choi, silverbeet, Florence fennel, chervil, cauliflower and Chinese celery. 

I was planning on going to the lab this weekend since Saturday was raining and Sunday was expected to rain. But it was a Sunny Sunday :). Cancelled my plan to do some work at lab...hehehe...I promise I work much harder next week in the lab as long as I can have one day in the garden.

Winter Sunflowers

It is very cold this year according to Adelaide usual average weather standard. Usually in the month of June, we have some Asian greens and lettuces to harvest from end summer or fall sowing. But not this year, the growth are so slow and some were stunted. I have not even harvested one lettuce plant. Asian greens that were harvested was half their normal size. So the end summer-sowed sunflowers are cheering us up by giving many sunny blooms in this winter month! This sunflowers are making bees happy too. We still have many bees buzzing in our small garden. In the front yard our tree dahlias are making them happy and at the back bees happy with sunflowers.

Visit Ewa for Flowers on Saturday.

Evening sun sunflower sprouted from compost and blooming in the middle of the sweet corn patch.

Have a nice weekend with your love ones.

Behind the backyard fence

Most of our June harvest will be from this veggie patch which is outside from our house compound. As it is not been look after that much, the plants must have been very happy with the occasional rain that we are having lately. As I was looking back at my previous post about how the plants were progressing last month, I was quite surprise how much they have grown. Ilhan sweet corn patch has many cobs now and his mammoth sunflower is about 8 feet tall with no sign of bud yet. If the mammoth sunflower bloom we can see it from inside the house.

Sunflowers that have just recently bloom.

Mammoth snow peas at the back and telephone peas in front which are producing pods. We used sunflower stalks to make this trellis for the peas to climb. In between these peas are daikons growing which we had  harvested quite a lot since last month. Hopefully this patch will provide enough vegetables for our kitchen this month. Caterpillars are having a fun time with daikon leaves. Our record so far is finding 12 caterpillars on one daikon plants. I don't mind about caterpillars munching on daikon tops as long as it keep away from the greens.

Potatoes plants were so small and newly sprouted last month. I was surprised that one potato plants have already flower early this month. I inter-planted giant purple mustard with potatoes. Mustard secretes some substance that nematode dislike, function same as marigold. Near the fence, I sowed some bush peas which is about 20cm tall now. These peas are starting to give some pods now although it is so tiny. On my bad planning, I wonder how I am going to balance myself to pick them and avoid stomping on other plants. This is the first time, we are growing bush peas, in the seed packet it is said that it can grow a metre tall. But I did not think that it start to produce when it is less than 20cm tall. At the front, 4 rainbow chards plant. First time growing rainbow chard and I wonder does the leaves suppose to look wrinkle like that.

This patch is growing vegetables that I am trying for the first time. In this patch are Florence fennel, Purple vienna kohlrabi, heirloom mix beetroot, purple dragon carrot and parsnip. We never eaten kohlrabi and beetroot, so it will be fun to have our first taste with our home-grown later if we grow them successfully. Purple dragon and parsnip don't look very good on this patch but we have them growing on other patch.

Self-sowed tomato plants surprisingly bear some fruits now. Bush beans are not prolific anymore, I should plant other vegetables when I find the time.

Hope you have a nice weekend.

Not the Backyard

It seems growing vegetables at the other side of our backyard fence has been a good project. We started using that space because we wanted to prevent cars or trucks to park at our side of the fence that made a lot of noise so the kids can have a nice nap during the day. We started growing things there last spring and mostly sunflowers and onions. It is still less than a year from the time we started to plant our first batch of sunflower seedlings last spring. All the sunflowers are gone and were composted on the same place it has grown. Here is the update of what is growing at the other side of our backyard fence since a month ago.

The Redland Pioneer bush bean has already given us first bean harvest this week from this batch. I sowed a row of Dragon carrot seeds 2 weeks ago in between rows of this bush bean and found some carrot seeds have already sprouted last weekend.

Our first batch of Telephone peas has start to flower. We have already eaten many daikon thinnings growing in between the pea trellis. I have already plan to transplant some cabbage seedlings in between these pea trellis after those daikon are harvested. The cabbage seedlings have just sprouted and I have already daydream of transplanting them at that spot. I hope I can fool the white cabbage butterfly using the pea white flower that there are other butterflies around here. So they won't lay eggs on the cabbage later.

Mammoth sunflowers growing slowly and the chili plants growth are stunted. A row of carrot seedlings at the front can be harvested soon.

Mostly root vegetables on this veggie patch with fast growth sequence ~ daikon, 2 rows of Afghanistan carrots and 2 rows of parsnips. I sneaked in some watermelon radish seeds in between parsnip and leeks which has just develop it first sets of true leaves.

Rainbow chards seedlings at the front. In the middle new potato plants interplanting with Giant Purple Mustard (Potato seeds from Berry Gnome). At the back, a mess of self-sowed tomato plants and peas have just sprouted. Not sure whether that one papaya tree that my mother planted last summer will survived through winter or not but I will just let it be there as it please.

Sweet corn seeds sowed in middle of February has already have cobs. Some of the silk from the female ears has beginning tu turn brownish. I wonder if we get full kernal or not this time. I did not help with the pollination as I usually don't pay much attention with the plants growing at the other side of the backyard. Hopefully, a few will be ready to be harvest this weekend, after a long week coop up in school.

This is Ilhan sweet corn patch growing much healthier and taller than mine which were sowed in March. His sweet corn plants are taller than the ones at the other patch. We were making remarks that Ilhan sweet corn follows Ilhan growth like weed. So we voted that Ilhan will sow the next season for sweet corn. He will be taller and understand more what he needs to do by then. But he is still growing taller at that time which make him the best candidate to sow sweet corn seeds.

I am assuming that this veggie patches will be providing us food on the kitchen table this month.

Solitary Sunflower

Sunflower makes the garden look so cheerful and inviting for pollinators or predators.

Mellow Yellow Monday.

 However, behind that cheery smile on sunflower face, it is almost destine to live all alone without having other companion than its siblings. Plants that grows together with sunflower will have less yield for example sweet corn or the cucurbits (zucchini, melon, cucumber). Sunflower inhibits the growth of potatoes and ginger. Last spring, we planted rows of sunflower at the back of the fence. Lenay planted sprouted potatoes and gingers in between these sunflowers without my knowledge. When we were cleaning up the patch after sunflower has finished their life-cycle to prepare for fall plantings, found many ginger and potato sprouts that are just about to push their new stem out from the soil. Potatoes, ginger and sunflower don't get along together at all.

Since sunflower can grow so tall, I entertain the idea that climbing bean growing beside sunflower can take advantage of using sunflower as trellis. The direct-sowed climbing bean (snake bean) germination was not good and growth were stunted. I tried direct sowing both sunflower and edamame (soy bean) seeds on the same patch but only one bean seeds sprouted whereas sunflower had no such problem. I reckon after 2 trials of growing diffrent variety of bean on the same patch with sunflower, I won't grow them together again anymore. Sunflower is good green manure and compost material. Since we can't use sunflower while they were a living plant as a trellis, we used the stalk now for peas or snow peas trellis during the cool growing season.

I like to fully utilise the space that we have in the garden, can anyone share their success of growing any plants together with sunflower?

What is "Companion Week" and Seed Give-Away visit this post for more information.

Thank you for linking.

Our Dense Kitchen Garden

I have to be more creative with the mix and match of vegetables and flowers in each patch in our garden this fall. Hopefully, looking at the variety of seedlings available in our hands that is currently growing well and healthy, I can make many happy groups and not bad companions in one of the patch. I would try my best to plant these seedlings in block, inter-planting, successional sowing and spreading the same variety of plant at different location. One of the combination of plants that seems to get along very well which I have planted last fall did seems to be working were my kitchen garden patch (very small area which is about 1.3 X 2 per-square metre).

Front view of the kitchen garden in early spring.

We trained nastartiums to climb trellis near the wall. Nastartium were choking the plants when we let it rambling at the ground. Self-sowed violas, celery and carrots (topweight) are growing in partial shade. Some polyanthus flowers which can tolerate shade. Leeks recently planted in spring as it was bare after we harvested that small area transplanted near over-wintered carrot. Bolting coriander/cilantro plant nursing capsicum back to health which survived winter but were infested with aphids because it was weak against the cold weather. We have self-sowed french marigold and aquilegia growing near the front door. All the winter brassicas have been harvested and while we wait for summer seedlings to grow like tomato, inter-planting with komatsuna.

Kitchen garden side view.

Can you see 2 tomato seedlings inter-planting with komatsuna?

A closer look.

Can you see at the front sunflower seedlings?

A few week later, over-wintered celeries have bolted so I have replaced celeries with one zucchini plant. Sunflower seedlings has grown much taller. I found that growing sunflower and zucchini close together has less crop compare with zucchini plants which is not growing together with sunflower. However, sunflower did not effect on viola. The reason we planted sunflower in front of the kitchen window is to provide us some shade from the afternoon sun. Moreover it is not ideal to plant herbs here during summer, too hot for them. In winter this patch received very limited sun, only leaf vegetable can grow well here. This is the main thing I have to remember when I plan to grow things in this patch, Summer-too hot; winter-almost no sun.

Photo taken in middle of summer where the sunflower has already fully bloom, the plants flop toward the ground when it is too hot and gradually start to go upright again in the afternoon after drinking some water. Over-wintered capsicum producing. Cherry tomatoes did well last summer. Bean and jicama (legume) not fond of this soil here. Aquilegia spent-blooms were left dry and collect the seeds later which is giving us lots of babies at the moment. I am still not satisfied on how I use the space here, need to think of new plan next summer.

What is "Companion Week" and Seed Give-Away visit this post for more information.

Left them partying

Off day from the garden today. We went to the beach as it was a fine sunny day after only a few hours of sun this raining week. So we entrusted the garden today to our unofficial pet birds. When the kids were safely fasten on their chair in the car saw these birds trying to open one of the box that contain sunflower seeds under the shed. They have been very naughty lately in the garden.

Bees take their role seriously as pollinators. They are doing a fine job. More bees partying around the garden these days. We don't have to worry about manual pollination, less work in the garden now. The only thing that we worry is who gets to the female flower of vegetables that we plan to save seed from, us or the bees. 

Yellow colour flowers received a lot of admires this week.

I feel much happy this summer because there were many kind of insects visiting our garden compared to last year. A few variety of moth and butterflies came to visit us ( I was getting bored looking at white cabbage butterfly dancing in front of me). Not worry about caterpillars at the moment as not growing that many leafy vegetables. It will be a different story starting April when winter vegetable are ready to be transplant since most of them are brassicas. I have been learning to add some herb or flowers in the veggie patch to attract beneficial insects to the garden but not reducing our space to plant more vegetables or yield. Found this caterpillar having a great time on tomato plant, I wonder what kind of butterfly will it transform.

Found this larvae on a different tomato plant. Anyone know what it is? Good or bad sign? The image is not that good, I can't get a good focus.

Did you garden this weekend?