Our First Sunroot Malaysia Harvest

 We are doing a trial growing sunroot (Jerusalem artichokes) this year in this hot and humid tropical weather and one plant had died off which was planted last November. So we dig in and see what the results are from the spot we tried to grow the sunroot plant. The plant was only about 2 feet tall so I was not expecting much of it. Surprisingly the plant did yield several tubers, although not as many as we used to harvest from one plant. The location was in full sun. At the moment, I am contemplating to regrow the tubers again in different location. As I don't have much tubers to experiment on, probably most will go to re-planting them again rather than cooking the tubers.

 Our main harvest last week were sweet leaves (star gooseberry), chillies and butterfly pea flowers. I am not sure what this fruit is called but it is not a mango fruit. My mother gave most of the sweet leaves plants a hard-pruning 3 weeks ago and now new shoots are quickly growing. She pruned those sweet leaves plants to half of its original height.

 We also harvested some pattypan squashes, cape gooseberries, sweet basil leaves, cucumber tree fruits, sponge luffa, calamansi limes, soursop, nam nam fruits, purple plum radish, snake beans and pea eggplants. We made juice with the soursop fruit. I have been harvesting while doing some other gardening task and kept the harvest in the pocket. So this picture above summarise what we got to harvest from our garden last week.

 We only got a few mulberry fruits to harvest this week. Rayyan has to wait for the fruits ripening on the trees at the moment. Lemon fruits are not as many as previous to harvest since some got a hard-pruning so waiting for new shoots to grow. But we do have a few lemon trees fruiting which is still green not ready for harvesting. I think it is better to have them not ripening at once so we have a succession of harvest. We managed to prune a pamelo, calamansi lime, wax apple and nam nam tree last week. Last Saturday, my husband managed to give a hard pruning on this mango plant that we did not realised had 2 passion fruit plants climbing on it. No wonder we had ripen passion fruits under the bushy mango trees. Not only that we discovered so many orchids on the tree as well which has not seen light for some time I reckon. The passion fruit will flower much better now as they will received more lights and we can also spy whether the plants are fruiting or not.

 This is another mango tree that had a hair cut as well and we can now see the sky in any angle or corner of this tree. This is the mango that my mother pruned almost 2 years ago and she fell from it. Hopefully tomorrow when she returned she will be happy to see the mango plant had a hair cut.

 My husband in the mood to do some tree hard-pruning and has been asking me which tree next. I think it is time to give the sapodilla fruit trees a hard pruning. The sapodilla fruit trees bear fruits almost all year round. But the problem the plant is too bushy now and I can't see the fruits clearly except the ones facing outside. So I think better to give the sapodilla tree a hard pruning.

Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions. 

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.

End Autumn Harvest Note Wrap Up

Some of our summer crop season extends longer than previous year for this year. We seems to have longer warm weather this year. Furthermore this year, some of the summer loving plants were re-sown in mid-summer to replace the ones that were damaged by the summer heat. The photos will be like a note reminding me how to make the garden more productive each year. As I discovered earlier that for pumpkin/squash I can plant them twice a year but the rules must be that the first sowing I started them very early around mid-August (end winter). So pumpkin/squash plants will fruit before the extreme heat comes around early summer. Because by mid-summer most of the pumpkin/squash plants will be kill off by the extreme heat. Second sowing will be mid/late-summer and the fruits will hopefully ripen by mid-late autumn. We have many yellow currant cherry tomato volunteers plants fruiting. I am very amazed with this variety as it is very disease resistant, tolerates the extreme heat and our winter; and does well in partial shade. It just simply thrive with neglect in our garden. 

Second half of end-autumn goodies harvested from our garden.

Parsnips grown over summer in container did produce decent root size after about 8 months. I was not expecting much since the parsnip leaves got burn during summer.These parsnips were grown together with leeks and a purple skin sweet potato plant. Strange I found 3 potatoes also in the container, must have been from a volunteer plant that I forgotten. Never did I imagined that parsnip, leek and sweet potatoes grow well together in one container. One of the most productive container, as these 3 plants are plants that grow very slowly so they are a good combination.

Sweet potatoes that were grown in container.

Kangkung, leeks, chilli and white spine cucumber.

The white spine cucumber is our family most favourite cucumber. Its not bitter at all, nice flavour even in dry season. Because of this cucumber variety, Rayyan started to really enjoy eating cucumber. This means my portion will become much lesser or almost none because Rayyan will try to put all the cucumber slices on his plate.

Cherrytime capsicum has been the most prolific capsicum this year grown from our home-saved seeds. I had trouble when growing them first time from the seeds I bought, germination was very low. But germination rate was near 100% when we sowed our home-saved seeds probably the seeds has somehow adapted well with our garden climate. Baby lettuce or thinnings from home-grown seeds are generous now for picking often. Lettuce volunteers are also many living harmoniously together with weeds.

The last bitter gourd harvest for this year. Alpine strawberry has been flowering and fruiting this time around. The strawberry fruits are much bigger and sweeter compare during summer. It took half a year for this mini cabbage 'earliball' to form a 'small' head. I think I found more than 10 snails in the leaves

Our first home-grown Jerusalem artichoke (sunroot) harvest. We had only 2 plants growing in partial shade during summer growing without care. I was not expecting much tubers. I was so surprised of the yield from only 2 plants! The picture don't justify how many tubers were harvest actually because that is a deep basket. so you only see the top part. The Jerusalem artichoke tubers felt much heavier than our recent sweet potato harvest. I don't know what does Jerusalem artichoke taste like or the best way to prepare them. So I roasted some tubers together with marinade chicken for Rayyan lunch since I lack energy these days. The flesh near the skin tasted a bit salty and the inner flesh have mild sweetness. I thought it will be fun if I can think of a Malaysian dish that will go well together with these tubers. Next to the Jerusalem artichoke plant was a volunteer turmeric plants that only produce a thumb size knob of turmeric rhizomes. I don't have any home-grown potatoes in my pantry anymore and I have a craving for Malaysia ' Masak Lemak Cili Api' dish. I really don't know what this dish is usually call in English it is somewhat like yellow curry but the paste does not use any dry spices at all. The basic ingredients for this yellow curry paste are usually fresh tumeric rhizomes, shallots, garlic, onions, hot chillies, lemon grass, and add in shredded turmeric leaves, tamarind peels and coconut milk in one pot stir to mix. I made a veal 'Masak Lemak Cili Api' with Jerusalem artichoke tubers substitute for potatoes. One success experiment, Jerusalem artichoke goes well with this Malaysian traditional dish. Rayyan drop some tears after he stubbornly tasted the dish, he was warned several time but did not heed the warning due to strong curiosity. I did not realised he already dip his finger into the yellow curry. Poor boy his tongue was on fire. I used 5 chillies the one harvested in the photo.

Found some volunteer sweet potato tubers while clearing up one of the corner of our vegetable patch. We tried growing hybrid carrot for the first time (Purple Haze F1) and were disappointed with the result. It was supposed to be a dark purple carrot variety but most of the carrot roots were orange and smallish size after 7 month. Shockingly, some carrot plants did not even produce any roots.