Baby Blue Jade Corn

 Rice is a staple food in Malaysia.  For my babies, I would like them to sample a variety of staple food and not just rice in their diet everyday. Growing home-grown rice is not realistic at the moment and one which I cannot commit while still struggling to complete my thesis, not easy since I can't really started my writing while trying to recover from post-natal and mental depression. I chose another relative of rice which is corn as the first tentative step to grow our own food. Thus this year, I decided to study the soil and weather at our place which is perfect for a successful growing corn requirement in different season and location. Perfect condition meaning I don't have to look after them as I need to be more committed and focus more on my thesis and my three babies which is all under 5 years old. All the plants including corns at the moment only depend on rain water unless we don't have any rain for 3 consecutive days. The first corn we decided to grow since we came back is Baby blue jade heirloom corn. 

 Baby Blue Jade Corn is a very beautiful mini size corn compare to standard sweet corn size. Baby Blue Jade is about the size of baby corn  just fatter and have fat kernels. Therefore, baby blue jade corn is a blue heirloom open-pollinated corn that is suitable for gardeners that have limited spaces to grow their own food. For fun, we did a trial growing baby blue jade corn on a meter square raised bed and just use a quarter of that space to grow Baby Blue Jade Corn next to okra plants which also dominated a quarter of space too. I also utilised the raised bed space for a place to sow seeds that will be transplanted later. One of the reason why I put small pots underneath the Baby Blue Jade Corn to prevent hens from scratching the soil and uprooted the young sweet corn plants. Happened several time, so this is one of the solution apart from fencing it. Although, many young Baby Blue Jade Corn were uprooted, the plants were hardy and strong enough to survive the attack after I replanted them back. Corn has very shallow roots which is actually not much a problem growing them in container. For successful pollination it is advise to grow many in block and not in rows.  However, it does not mean to really grow them in perfect 'block', can be grown in circle or clumps as long as the plants are surrounded to ensure success pollination. This is one heirloom corn that balcony gardeners can try. can also be space much closer than the standard sweet corn size.

 The raise bed which we grew this first batch of Baby Blue Jade corn is situated underneath the canopy of Durian and Banana tree. I always observed on hot weeks from experience growing corns, the male pollen is not very rich and the male tassel somehow looks a bit worn out quickly, probably many got damaged before all the female hair came out. I am speculating that the banana leaves that shade the male tassel did make some contribution of corn success this time around. The male tassel did not seem to dry up fast.

 Tantalising silky female hair making an appearance.

The male tassel still look good after lots of hair emerged from the ear.

 Almost the time to harvest waiting for the white hair to turn brown and drying. It is said the Baby Blue Jade Corn plant grows about 2~3 feets tall. But some of our plants were more than 5 feet tall. Surprisingly, Baby Blue Jade Corn is a good companion with okra plants. Can you see okra flower and fruit peeking?

 Baby Blue Jade Corn is an heirloom blue-coloured corn, but beginners at growing corns makes mistake easily with the ancient or heirloom coloured corn with the time of harvesting. If you want to harvest the corn to eat them raw, grilled or boiled, harvest the corns before they turn blue and when you prick the kernels milky liquid ooze out. This is the perfect time to harvest them like the picture above. Eat while they are young. It is the sweetest corn, we ever tasted raw! We taught our boys to eat fresh home-grown corn raw since little. No need to hassle preparing boiling water at all. The corn also tasted better that way. Sowing corn to harvesting this stage took about 70~80 days. Corn is Ilhan favourite food while Rayyan is a carrot fan. I was very surprised that Rayyan finishes up one corn quickly than Ilhan and Rayyan is a very slow-eater. Little Rayyan was even asking for more and I even have to hide Ilhan share so Rayyan will stop pestering.

 When the kernels turned blue, indicates that the corn is not palatable to be eaten just like that. However, the hard dried kernels can be use as popcorns or grind them for your very own home-grown corn flour. Also look very pretty as ornamental hanging in the kitchen, I am just happy looking at them in our kitchen drying.

 One of my passion in gardening is collecting heirloom seeds. Although, it was hard to resist not to harvest all of them young, I managed to harvest some just enough for my private seed bank. Hopefully with the seeds that I  collected can help us to grow more for our babies. Collecting seeds requires patience and hopefully with the next new batch with our own home-grown collected seeds will be able to grow more and collect more seeds.

Lets share stories at Liz Suburbun Tomato Saturday Spotlight.

Kesimpulan tuaian bulan Mac ini

 For these past 2 weeks, we had lots of hot sunny days and not much rain. Thus some plants are balking and some welcome it. Happy plant is the okra bunch.  I have to check on the okra plants every 2 days because the fruits grows so long so fast in just 2 days for about at least 10 cm. The lemons are sulking, the hot weather causes them to ripe too fast and physically they don't look great. Lemon size significantly changes on the smaller side compared to wet season.

 Butterfly pea flower plants is a very cool plant. They don't mind the wet or hot weather. So our kids continue to enjoy their 'Smurf' drink. Everyday we spent at least 15 minutes harvesting the butterfly pea flower blooms.

We harvested some turmeric rhizomes and bandicoot some young ginger rhizomes as well this month.

 I almost missed out the beginning of our burgundy okra harvest since I ignored the place that they were growing for more than a week not expecting the plants will produce anytime soon. The Sweet Large Italian Basil plants are doing very well and I was surprised how big the basil leaves were comparing to other sweet basil I have planted before.

 I was not expecting to get any decent harvest of this variety heirloom sweet corn as the male started to flower in just over a month. From experience, when the male started to poke out too early it is always a sign they are under stress. Well I do know what was the main reason why was this sweet corn batch suffered stress because it was solely depending on rain water. Furthermore, our geese managed to chomp some part of the sweet corn plants as I forgot to close the nettings properly as they were able to poke in their head and tugged the plants. This variety of sweet corn produces a lot of ears, but I decided to harvest them as baby corns because the male pollen has finished up. Calamansi limes are also available but not many. So my aim this week is to prune the citrus family and feed them with some manure or compost. 

 Entering March we started to be blessed with bananas. As we are able to harvest a bunch of bananas from one plant each week. Our cheekie monkies is very happy each time we have them in the basket on the table when they are fully ripe. We have to keep an eye on them or ended with a huge mess of bananas in the kitchen.

 Malay wild eggplants which is a very tiny over 1 cm in length and birds-eye-chillies is wildly growing all over the place courtesy of the birds that like them too. Actually the birds and our part of the share is more than we can eat them. I am very happy the first time I tried growing Baby Blue Jade heirloom corn  and have very good results with it. Although the hen below scratched out the young corn seedlings caused it to uprooted and I have to plant it back feeling no hope for it. Despite that these corn batch did very well.

 But the hot weather brings many death to our egg-laying hens in this month of March. Every week at least 2~3 hens were found dead. Sadly, we now only have 2 hens left. I really need to get more chickens now. Does anyone knows any chick suppliers close to Sungai Buloh area? We really are interested to buy some chicks, please do contact us.

Join in Harvest Monday.

Saraba Summer Sweet Corn (さらば夏のトウモロコシ)

Strangely this warm season we have many self-seeded tomato plants growing in containers by itself. A lazy gardener that I am, I did not weed them and I just let them grow in the container. So this week some of the self-seeded tomato fruit had ripen like the yellow pear cherry tomatoes. Not sure what variety the red tomatoes is. The yellow currant cherry tomatoes harvest is more than 1kg every week. 

I thinned out some purple top turnip yesterday as its foliage was shadowing our capsicum plants. We also harvested some beetroots and a Lebanese zucchini before our night visitors enjoyed them. Some of our flowering capsicum and beetroot leaves has completely became bald each day last week. I have not encountered yet "our night visitor" that is enjoying our plants at the back of our backyard fence (council reserve land). But judging on how the plants were attacked it looks like the work of a big animal like possum. In one night, this visitor managed to eat 2 green capsicum fruit and the whole plant leaves. Furthermore, it also enjoyed many of our carrot blossoms that were planned for collecting seeds. Sadly, most of our young capsicum plants has gone missing or without leaves. A new challenge.

We harvested some self-seeded Chinese spinach,a kohlrabi, some baby leeks, eggplants and a sweet corn. I think this is the only decent looking sweet corn that we are able to harvest for this summer. Its hard to grow sweet corn which is a heavy drinker here in the driest city in Australia in summer. After 3 consecutive summer growing sweet corn with unsatisfactory results, its time for me to give up on them. Better to grow sweet corn at the end of summer and early fall which we had good harvest this year.

Therefore, farewell (saraba/sayonara) summer sweet corn.

I sowed sweet corn at the end of August this year and it managed only to grow about 30cm until now. I think it such a waste of water to grow them. Might as well grow other drought tolerant edible plants that does not required too much water. Too much stress for the sweet corn to grow in summer season here.

Visit Daphne's Dandelion Harvest Monday.

Ilhan Sweet corn Sweet Farewell

Finally we had some free time last Saturday after lunch to celebrate my birthday to harvest all of Ilhan sweet corn.  Ilhan sowed sweet corn seeds last March when we were in Melbourne for Rayyan cardiac surgery. We were not sure whether we got to harvest any ripe sweet corn in winter. But I was hoping for an alternative to grow sweet corn here in Adelaide other than summer. Each year when we sow sweet corn seeds in spring it grow so nice and promising. However when the tassel and female silky hair appear, heat waves come and all the important part of the plant got burn to crisp. The last batch of sweet corn harvest from Ilhan patch from looking at it was not that bad.

But I noticed some of the female gone bald.

Something must have given some of the female silky hair a haircut.

Found the culprit. Many of them at Ilhan patch.

We pull out all sweet corn plants and dig it into the patch. So it will decomposed and return some of the nutrient back. Horse manure was also added. Before we grew sweet corn there, sunflowers that were growing were dig into the patch. We did not saw any trace of sunflower in the soil. We did get a few self-sowed sunflower though. The soil was not as hard as the first time we prepared this patch.

My backyard neighbour that gave me mandarins also gave me many seed potatoes to plant. When he gave me those mandarin, I went back into the house and search for something I can share with him too. I went back to his garden and gave him some red chillies and a small young Chilean guava tree that I received from our gardening friend. I was so happy that Chilean guava tree has finally find a better home and will be cared really well. In this small space we have here, I could not possibly grow that Chilean guava tree with the space it needs to grow. The first time I visited our backyard gardener neighbour, I knew instantly that Chilean guava tree will be perfect in his plot. Maybe he was happy too, because I received many seed potatoes ready to be planted. I have faith that this potato will grow very well since he probably has been gardening before I was even born. A very lovely birthday present.

After we prepared this patch, we planted these potatoes at the middle of this patch. There are 2 very tall sunflowers near the fence. Lenay tied strings between this 2 sunflower plants for direct-sowed snow peas to climb later on. We transplanted some onion seedlings at the front area of this patch. There are some self-sowed evening sunflower on this patch which has not yet bloom. I guess this is my birthday patch and hope to received some present from it around Christmas.

Some of Ilhan sweet corns. Although there are not as perfect as the shop ones,it tasted very sweet.  Some of these sweet corn kernels were frozen. The ones with bald female had short cobs but full kernels as seen in the photo. Well better than nothing, although less than half the normal size.

This post is for Ilhan when he is big he can't complain to me he can't grow things. He already grow sweet corn at the age of 4 years old. So he has confidant on himself when he is not a boy any more and starts his own garden with his family.

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.

Jagung menjadi juga

Male and female together on the same place?

The kernels still tasted very sweet, although exposed like that.

Yesterday we cleared this veggie patch to plant cool season vegetables that is a bit late than usual. Sunflower blooming from compost which is a nice surprise considering that it is winter.

Only a few sweet corn were left to harvest from that patch. I found 2 ripe red tomatoes from self-sowed plant. We have not harvest any red tomato for a long time, wanted to leave it ripen more but thinking about hungry tiny critters better harvest it quick.

Hopefully Ilhan sweet corn patch will ripen and we have more sweet corn to harvest. It takes longer for sweet corn cobs to mature in this cold weather. It will be another 3 months before we can start to sow sweet corn seeds again in spring.

Ilhan stole his father boots when his father went into the house for a while and he is pretending that he is a farmer.

First winter harvest and a jicama

Keeping up with winter colours, our veggie garden has given us white colour vegetable to harvest such as daikon and snowball turnip. Other regular harvest are snow peas and yellow cherry tomatoes. We also harvested our last angled luffah for this year.

Harvested some sweet corn and chili last week.

Ilhan had some buttered sweet corn for breakfast.

Clearing up old plants in container which is not productively producing last weekend. We were surprised to harvest some sweet potato tuber that were invading carrot container. Due to that, carrots were so much smaller than sweet potato tubers.

Da Cheong Chae look so terrible from pest attack that I pull out all of them. Bitter gourd still produce female flower but the fruit won't grow that big so I harvested them last weekend. Clearing up the containers with unproductive old plant for new planting given us some leeks and spring onions. We don't usually allocate space for spring onion usually inter-planted them with other plants.

End last spring, we sowed jicama (sengkuang/yam bean) seeds for the first time in our veggie garden. The sad thing that direct-sowed seedlings on our patch that received full sun all day died on the first heat wave of 40+degree Celcius.  Jicama plants that survived are growing in containers which received only morning sun. As we had already enter winter, jicama plants does not look good. So I am a bit worried at the moment whether we actually have some tuber to harvest or not. Moreover, I worry if too much rain will make the tuber rot if we don't harvest them quickly. So last weekend, gently I moved the soil away from one jicama plant to see whether we get any tuber or not. Surprisingly, the root went very deep, I had to dig about 20cm deep to finally see some white root. Our first home-grown jicama and look like a top.

See other gardeners around the world harvest this week at Daphne's Dandelion Harvest Monday.

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.