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.

3 Blind Mice Lovin' Sweet Potatoes

I found sweet potatoes are very easy to grow here in Adelaide plain as we have mild winters. Easier to grow than potato as you can simply leave sweet potatoes growing all year round. I usually have one spare plants growing in winter so I can cut some young shoots to propagate several new sweet potato plants when spring comes. Cut the shoots and put them in water by the window and roots grow from the veins very quick. Sweet potatoes are now weeds in our garden. If I buried the plants after harvesting, thinking in will be composted in winter, I have new plants popping out when the weather warm- can be invasive.

So I planned to plant more sweet potatoes in containers last spring as it grow without care and isolated it with other summer crops because of its invasive characteristic. To make the garden more productive I planted fast crop like Asian greens together with the young sweet potato plants. The one without Asian greens were already completely harvested. You can still have another round of fast crop with it like radish or bean and top up with compost later.

Grow without care...

But this situation welcome small critters to take shelter from the heat.

We did got some decent harvest from it, although we harvested it earlier than usual.

However, mice enjoyed them first.

Those pest even enjoyed the big ones until all left were only skin.

The ones that were save for us is the young tubers growing under the polystyrene in the ground soil. None harvest from the container for us.

Those polystyrene container were badly chewed on by mice to make bigger holes.

What we also found?

3 blind mice.

Still blind and unable to run.

The mice parents were not in time to take their babies out.

There were actually 4 babies, one of them, one of the parents tried to get it away.

But with all the confusion, squealing, hubby did not realised there were a baby mice under his boot as it was covered with sweet potato veins.

The parents were a bit agitated as it keeps running around as we put the babies in a pot near us while we clean up the area. Rayyan even named the babies- Mickey, Totoro and Ponyo. Told Rayyan we can't keep them as a pet. He was a bit upset followed his father to allocate them far away in the garden at the back of the reserve land.

Thats the story of 3 blind mice.

Have a nice weekend.

Early Fall Container Garden

I have not posted about our container garden at our small backyard since last year. Well nothing really nice to see last summer. The plants were struggling to survive back then and not much growth. It still not very nice to look at even now. The mild weather has made some of the plants grow crazy and now they grow wild. The plants have a mind of their own now. For example this spot, I have to scratch my head trying to remember what is growing here~watermelon, capsicum, parsnip, lemon basil, purple sweet potato, okra, kailan and jicama. Can you tell which is which? If you have a small place or even garden on a balcony, this kind of gardening is still possible. This is about 1 metre X 1 metre. Suits for a location that received at least 6 hours of direct sun.

What is growing in this 30 cm X 40 cm polystyrene container?

Cucumber plants climbing on the trellis, banana capsicum and carrots.

Not supposed to be there beetroot also wants to grow there.

Half of our backyard receive morning sun and the other half received afternoon sun.Took the photo in the morning and you can see the clear line light and shadow separation.This is the spaggetthi squash that I sowed last January in container to replace the ones that died due to the extreme heat. Very happy with the attempt because we already have squash in March, did not expected that it will give us fruit so fast. Its actually 2 plants in the same container and each plant has fruit on it. One is hiding somewhere in the long grass. Hopefully this weekend, I have time to spend in the garden to cut the grass and sow some seeds.

The different length of the trellis? We pick them up from hard waste during spring cleaning week in our suburb. At the back, I have cleared some of the containers and sow some seeds for cool season vegetable here. There is one long dangling angled luffa can be seen at the background. Sweet potato harassing lemon grass plant. Sweet potato are becoming invasive as they start to sprout in many different places in containers and on the ground. Lemon basil also growing as they please.

It might be hard to believe but these sweet potato plants are actually growing from containers. There are a row of 4 containers. Now they entered other plants territories. This section has given me much headache and cause the biggest problem for other section of the container garden. Because of this, we have trouble with mice. The mice took shelter here from the heat. They come out during night and dug up holes all around the container garden which have cause many young seedling uprooted and direct-sowed seeds failed to germinate or possibly lost. I don't think I have much to harvest here since the mice might enjoyed some of the sweet potato tubers. But I will wait perhaps until May before I clear up this place for good.

Let me think what plants are growing here ( 1.5 metre X 1 metre) ~ okra, jicama, capsicum, bush bean, parsnip, purple sweet potato, water spinach (kangkung), carrots and bitter gourd. The jicama seems to like the mild weather now. But I must remember to harvest them next month because the edible root will rot when the weather drops below 15 degree Celsius in consecutive days. The jicama tuber won't be big cause they don't have enough sufficient growing time and those plants are just starting to produce flower bud. Last year the bud did not managed to bloom but let see will it bloom this year or not.

Hope one day we see many green balcony from tall buildings.

What's growing in your container garden?

Jalan Gajah 4 Postcards

I took some random pictures of my mother garden.

The front yard and back yard is much in contrast.

More than half of my plants were gone this mid-summer.

At the moment our kebun (garden) here in Adelaide is unsightly.

So let me give a tour of some part of my mother garden.

While I wait for some green sceneries coming back in our garden here.

This is the front yard. On the right side is a bottlebrush tree that attracts many birds when it is blooming. The bottlebrush branches is full with orchids plants naturally hanging by its own root strength. It is a favourite spot of my father to take photos of my siblings during festival season. Those palms trees were there since we moved in. On the pergola are passionfruit veins rambling all over it and laden with fruit.

Goose and ducks are given permission to enter the frontyard in the late afternoon. There is a medium size mangosteen tree at the back of the slide. My record so far of the time to complete mowing the front lawn when I was a teenager was more than 2 hours. It was tricky to maneuver the mower around the trees and other things.

It was just the end fruit season of rambutan when I came back for a visit. Not much left on the tree, they were over ripe. Those ducks don't even bother with the fallen rambutan fruit anymore.

I never realised before that we have a tamarind tree at the back yard in my parents small orchard. Tamarind is commonly use in South-East Asia cuisine. Sometime we use the tamarind juice combine with chilli and shallots for grill fish dipping sauce. I don't think it will easy to pluck them as it is a very tall tree and none of the fruit is within my reach. If nobody helps mama harvesting them, I think it will just be left hanging there.

Papaya trees at the back yard is really tall that it is not easy to harvest the fruit. The yellow flower is luffa bloom. My mama's luffa bloom is triple the bloom size of the luffa that I grow here in Adelaide. In the photo, a luffa fruit resting on top of the old wooden shed. Mama did not need to erect a proper trellis of that luffa plant, it climbs up on other local fruit trees.

Uncontrollable sweet potatoes plants that even climb onto that citrus plant tree as it please.

One corner of mama backyard photo that I took on a ladder. It is going to be rather challenging and time-consuming to make it more organise when I come back for good. It is not harvest-friendly at the moment. 

Ilhan and Rayyan is helping grandmama to clean up the backyard now.

End Year Container Garden 2011

It has been sometime that I have not posted pictures of our container garden. This is because of the cleaning up of winter plants and waiting for the right moment to sow warm loving veggies made the container garden look very not organise and bare. So now some of the containers has filled up a bit. It probably look greenish now but continuous high temperature will make them look very dreadful later on.

From Container Garden

Orange sweet potato veins at this corner of our container garden. They don't follow orders really well so this summer they have been isolated from the rest of the plants. Experimenting in one of the containers is growing soy beans and sweet potato together. Soy bean plants grow straight right up whilst sweet potato leaves will keep the soil more moist as they cover up the soil.

From Container Garden

Growing "Jack Be Little" pumpkin at this corner and this pumpkin plant actually giving some shade to strawberry plants. The strawberry plants is clever enough to send out stalk for the berries to ripen while keeping it foliage out of the harmful summer sun.

From Container Garden

This summer is our first time trying to grow purple skin and white flesh sweet potatoes. I thought it has purple flesh at first but bought the wrong one. Young seedlings of jicama (sengkuang) and Clemson spineless okra sharing the same container. I had some encouraging result growing them together last year so repeating this combination again. Leek and parsnip growing side by side. Dragon carrot growing together with cherrytime capsicum.

From Container Garden

This is a bit of complex situation because that trellis was intended for bitter gourd. But bitter gourd end up sharing that trellis with volunteer tomato plant. The spagetthi squash is also inching its way to the trellis as well. There are one promising (indicate with arrow) spagetthi squash at the moment. We are excited to harvest the fruit cos this is our first time growing this squash and of course will be our first taste of it. Lenay spied one female bitter gourd flower this week and has pollinated it with male flowers. Hopefully the success for the female bitter gourd fruit to grow won't be deterred by the very warm days we are having for several days.

Last year we did not have that much a problem starting cucumbers early. But this year the cucumber seeds seems to be on strike until end of November when those seeds favor to sprout. Its not only one variety playing hooky but all the varieties of cucumber that we plan to grow this summer. So we probably have late cucumber harvest season this summer compared last year if growing them are successful. This corner we grow cucumber "Suyo Long" in container together with beetroot and Topweight carrot.

From Container Garden

At the back row are orange sweet potato and "Royal Blue" potato plant. In the front, angled luffa growing together with "New Red Kuroda" carrot and jicama.

From Container Garden

Another volunteer tomato growing in the garlic container. This is the only garlic that I have not dug out yet. I probably should since all the leaves dried up. But it was too hot this week I simply don't have the motivation. We also grow white sweet potatoes at this corner here. First time growing shallot and I am not sure when is the perfect time to harvest and cure them. I need some advice; from looking at the shallot in the container, do you think it is ready to be harvested?

Hope you have a joyous moments with your love ones during this festive season.

Gift for Parents

Our garden/kebun has been very generous this month, although I have very much neglected our garden. Lenay and my brother has gone back to my parents home last weekend. They have brought back some vegetables for our parents. We are happy that we met some of our aim when we sowed seeds in fall for them to grow ready to be pick on the week my brother going back home. Visit Daphne's Dandelion Harvest Monday and see different part of garden in this world that gifted their gardeners who has given so much TLC in return. This week harvest photos are some part of harvest that we had for our parents. I have not taken much photo lately in the garden.

We had beginners luck with Florence fennel this year. Maybe this year is a good year for Florence fennel since I felt Florence fennel are selling cheaply this year in the local market and good size too. We had to harvest most of our lettuces since we had several days of warm weather, they have the sign to bolt.

Parsnip for my parents. First attempt at growing them this year last end summer.

Don't forget to sow some parsnip and carrot seeds this month quickly.

The germination rate was really good here in Adelaide plain.

Beetroots that were grown in container. It was my parent first taste of beetroot and I got a text with a request to post some seeds of beetroot after that.

Purple-podded peas season are almost over in our garden since those plants are dying. Those beetroot that received a haircut from my brother which I had to remind him several time not to trim near the root so much or it bleed.

Sprouting broccoli plants still providing generously.

This sweet potato is for us that were left growing in container over-winter. I was kind of worried that the tubers will rot in winter but I do not dare dig them out cause it was sharing space with Chinese Broccoli which I plan to harvest seeds from it. What a surprise when we dig out this 1.5kg sweet potato out. 

Talam Labu/Sweet Potato

I was really hoping that this weekend it will be sunny and I can complete the task that I set this week in the garden. However, it rain in the morning. So we decided to make Malaysia traditional cake~ kuih talam labu (pumpkin) or talam keledek (sweet potato) while waiting for the rain to stop. Talam in Bahasa Malaysia means tray. What interesting about this recipe that it can use either pumpkin or sweet potato as its main ingredient. Since we still have some pumpkin that we harvested from last autumn and recent harvested sweet potato we decided to try both. I got this recipe from Iyajuyi author of ARAH blog.

Ingredients :
For the bottom layer
300gram sweet potato/pumpkin (boiled/steamed and mashed)
75gram rice flour
75gram tapioca flour
150ml coconut milk + 150ml of water
200~150gram sugar
1teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanila essense (optional)
colouring (optional) the pumpkin one I did not use any colouring but for the sweet potato I added colouring for the layer which contain only coconut milk. Sweet potato did not give any colour. But pumpkin has its own natural colouring.

For the Top layer
100gram tapioca flour
200ml coconut milk + 200ml water
2Tablespoon rice flour
1Teaspoon salt

Preparing for the bottom layer:
Mix well rice and tapioca flour with coconut milk. Then sieve.
Blend all the ingredient together including mashed pumpkin/sweet potato.
Put the mixture into a pan and stir until it gets concentrated at moderate heat.
Pour the mixture into a container that fit your steamer with half fill in the size of that container. Beforehand, brush the container with very little oil. Steam for about 7 minutes.

Time to prepare the top layer which is the similar process with the bottom layer.

Pour the top layer mixture on top of the bottom layer. Steam for about 10 minutes.

Let it cool. Then cut and its ready to serve.

It actually will look much more prettier if I have an artistic talent on how to cut and make it more presentable. But it tasted very good. You have to take my word because I usually got C in art class. The bottom layer is sweet potato which does not have any colour add on. 

This is talam labu (pumpkin).

The top layer are pumpkin which does not need to add yellow colouring, it is on its own natural colour.

I prefer talam labu more.

How about you?

Hope you had a great weekend.

Linking with Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

How to make edible BOMB~Winter Wednesday

This is a fun and easy Malaysia traditional cake that children can participate in the making at the kitchen. In Malaysia it is known as 'Kuih Bom Keledek' which literally translate as Sweet potatoes Bomb Cake. It is quick to prepare about 45 minutes (psst...my first time). Maybe less for a pro. I got the recipe from CikManggis. CikManggis said not to worry as it won't explode. I am obsess about sweet potatoes this week since we harvested some last weekend. In this cold winter weather,working in the kitchen looks more inviting than the garden at the moment. This cooking made enjoyable teatime of hot bombs and hot tea in this cold middle of winter season. Lets make some bomb.

Ingredients:
80 gram of mashed sweet potatoes (boiled)
120 gram glutinous rice flour
20 gram flour
35 gram castor sugar
a pinch of salt
100ml water
sesame seeds
grated coconut (you can also use red bean paste/adzuki bean paste)

Mix all the ingredient above except for the sesame seeds and grated coconut. Knead the dough  until all of the ingredients well incorporated. Make a round bomb ball about the size of a ping pong ball.

Heat some cooking oil for deep-frying.

Meanwhile, make a hole and fill the bomb with grated coconut.

Make it a bomb shape again with the grated coconut safely in the middle of the bomb.

Roll the bomb on sesame seeds to cover the whole bomb with it.

Fry the ball until golden brown.

CikManggis got 12 bombs and I got 14 bombs.

How many bombs did you got?

Linking with Hazel Winter Wednesday.