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?

Granny's Bonnet Life Cycle

This spring flower has several known names such as aquilegia or columbine. The genus name Aquilegia is derived from the Latin word for eagle (aquila), because the shape of the flower petals are said to resemble an eagle's claw."Columbine" is derived from the Latin word for pigeon (columba) (resource: wikipedia).The blooming season here at the Adelaide plain is usually from October to November. I found that it does not survive well in dry soil and needs to be in semi-shade during summer for long longevity. But it does need sun to bloom profusely.It can be perennial if it is grown in a right location. 

This plants can self-sow easily and you get many volunteers for give-away if left them to seed.

Usually propagated by seeds. However, division from well-established plant during dormant season can also be a success. I found that the seeds germinate better at the end of fall~ early winter. The seedlings might flower in next spring or have to wait for next year spring (makes it 1 1/2 year in this case).

The foliage of this plant look fern-like.

The flowers of various species of Colombine were consumed in moderation by Native Americans as a condiment with other fresh greens, and are reported to be very sweet, and safe if consumed in small quantities. The plant's seeds and roots are highly poisonous however, and contain cardiogenic toxins which cause both severe gastroenteritis and heart palpitations if consumed as food. Native Americans used very small amounts of Aquilegia root as an effective treatment for ulcers. However, the medical use of this plant is better avoided due to its high toxicity; columbine poisonings may be fatal (resource: wikipedia). 

Continue dead-heading if you want to prolong this plant blooming season.

The seed pods.

One seed pods contain a lot of seeds.

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!