Cucurbits Catching Up

The cucurbit in our garden~cucumber, squash, melon, bitter gourd and angled luffa could not produce proper fruit during summer as it was too hot for the flower to set fruit properly and lack of pollinators. Did my best to hand-pollinate them. But the fruit just shrivel under the hot hot hot sun. The plants growth were also stunted, they were struggling as best as they could to just survive until the milder weather comes. Now came March and some rain, we see that the cucurbit are now promising us some reward. 

The green gem cucumber plants starting to bear some fruits.

Hoping for our first watermelon harvest this year.

Hope the temperature and sun is enough until it is ready to be harvested.

About a hand size now.

Other cucumber varieties that are still growing in the garden and waiting for them to produce are lemon cucumber, white spine cucumber and bavi cucumber (pic below). Last week, I sowed some lemon cucumber and suyo long cucumber, and the seeds has geminated this week. It is trial to see whether it will grow quickly and make it up to harvest stage before the weather is too cold for them. Since many of our cucumbers died in summer.

Our second year of growing banana rockmelon. Last year was a failure, it was cooler last year and maybe the location I chose for them to grow was not suitable. Now we grow them at the spot where we had big success with honeydew melon 2 years ago. Three plants are growing in partial shade. Some fruits are growing and already more than 10cm long. Inter-planting them with pepper plants. The banana rockmelon foliage that sprawled on the ground help to prevent the loss of water from the soil which benefits the rockmelon and pepper.

In January I tried direct-sowing for spaggetthi squash and watermelon to replace the plants that died due to the extreme heat we had. Lucky that they grow well in containers and this week I have spied some female flowers on the plants. Hopefully next week, we have our first 2012 official angled luffa and bitter gourd harvest. Hoping that this month, we finally have some cucurbit harvest. We only had a few odd-looking cucumber shape harvested in summer.

First Fall Harvest 2012

Pak choi helps to fill in the gap at the moment while waiting for the warm loving vegetables to bounce back after the summer heat. Some chillies were available to pick frequently came fall. Surprisingly cabbage verona purple savoy has been doing amazingly well through out summer as we have been able to pick it fortnightly from late spring. Those cabbages were planted in winter. Hubby also cheated sometime not watering them frequently. Once established, this variety is a very heat tolerant plant. The ones we planted in fall, many of them bolted in winter.

Pull out some carrots (Topweight/New Kuroda?) as the mice has their eye on them. Nibbling on it sometime. Some ripe peppers were also harvested.

Second batch of kangkung/water spinach for 2012 made its way to the kitchen. First fall cucumber. I think we used up many fresh onions this month, mama using them a lot. Probably she like the fresh onion sweet flavour. Some beans and cherry tomatoes.

Cut some rainbow chard/swiss chard from a flowering plant. It is a part that grows from the bottom of the plants that look like a separate plant. I was curious whether it will taste bitter or it usual taste. It tasted ok not bitter.

Visit Daphne's Dandelions to share or see all around the world gardeners harvest.

Potato Onion

Growing potato onion for beginner is easy.

It does very well in mild weather.

Just push in the onion bulb into the soil and wait for some leaves to sprout.

We grew potato onion for the first time last year.

We did not pampered them at all.

Just some watering and leave them to grow on their own.

I think we planted them around April~May.

Perhaps can be planted earlier in March, but we usually don't have space in that month.

This is our note of potato onion growing stages.

We grew 3 bulbs of potato onion last year.

The leaves look like spring onions, tempting to cut.

Starting to form separate stalk for new bulbs formation.

More potato onion bulbs forming from a plant.

You can harvest a bulb and let others grow.

The plants will keep multiply bulbs.

Don't need to harvest all the plants, just harvest what you need and let them grow more for you.

Maybe this is a good onion for gardeners with limited space.

We wanted to let our potato onion plant to keep on growing.

But alas the summer weather here did not permit us.

So harvest them all I have to.

Most of the leaves have dried out, by the time we pull out the plants.

Another thing I have to learn and gain more experience of growing onion is the watering part.

How to control the amount water so we have some good number of skin layers.

So that the onions can be stored well.

From those 3 potato onion plants, we got more than 25 bulbs.

Have a nice weekend!

Happy Gardening!

2012 End Summer Harvest Finale

Summer ending for us here.

I am sure many gardeners living in Northern hemisphere are happy greeting spring.

Did not take many photo lately.

But here some what we had been harvesting at the end of summer.

Sorted some of our brown onions that are left curing in the shed, brought in some onion for the kitchen use which does not going to store well.

Pak choi grown in container and miraculously survive the extreme summer heat.

We harvested our first batch of kang kong/water spinach bamboo leaves, second summer broccoli and bonica eggplants.

Mice have been nibbling on the top of our root vegetables, so we harvested carrots and beetroots.

Beans, cherry tomatoes, brown onions and shallots.

Carrots and self-sowed amaranth (bayam).

We harvested our first banana capsicum that we grown from seeds this warm season. 

Pak choi, hon tsai tai, daikon, baby beetroot and cherry tomatoes.

The weather has cool down a bit now.

Hoping that our summer veggies will set fruit well now.

It was too hot before for them to set fruit, although they have blooms.

Wishing for more cucurbit and solanum family harvest at the moment.

Visit Daphne's Dandellion for harvest monday and see what other gardeners doing with their harvest.

Parsnip Life-Cycle

The white root vegetable parsnip seeds shape are different from other root vegetable such as carrot, radish and turnip. Parsnip seeds looks like a round flat brown disc. I was surprise when I first saw them. Parsnip seeds are much bigger and easier to handle compare to carrot seeds. 

Newly sprouted seeds. From right: a seedling still attached to the seed coat, a seedling free from the seed coat, and seedling with its first true leaves. 

More growth and bigger leaves.

Parsnips growing in rows with carrot and leek as companion.

If parsnips is grown over-winter, it will be better to harvest the root before mid-spring before the root becomes woody and start to flower. It will be good to left a few parsnip to flower as the flower attracts beneficial creatures into your garden. Parsnip roots takes a long time to grow compared with carrot. It will take at least 6 months before it is ready to be harvested depending on the climate.

Parsnip flowering.

Parsnip seeds developing stage.

Parsnip seeds ready to be harvested.

Are you planting any parsnip this year?

How long do you usually wait to harvest your parsnip?