Treasure Hunting

 My mental health is recovering slowly than my impatient side would like too. But it is a positive thing and something I should be grateful that I did not seem at the moment succumbing to postnatal depression while I am having mental depression and trying to overcome it.  Some days are good that I wake up and feel motivated instead of lying on the bed and not looking forward to anything. Its still a fragile thing and could be a false feeling so I am taking tentative baby steps not to be overdoing myself with too much planning or multitasking. There is still many unsettled things which worries me so I need to remind myself to not set unrealistic goal or dealing with high expectation. Sigh, one step at a time. I need to learn how to enjoy doing one thing at a time instead of doing so many things at once. For example, on my good days I can cook while washing dishes, clean the counter top, laundry and I can also do some weeding or sowing seeds in between waiting for the dish to cook or stirring. But my husband he does one task at a time even though he have some breaks in between. It is no wonder I make myself crazy while doing tasks at hand my brain also seems to be planning what to do ahead running into different direction planning non-stop, can't control and it goes chaotic. It made me think that I have some kind of mental disorder. I struggle to focus on one thing at a time. Physically I feel much better and more energetic after postnatal birth from last week. I am urged and advise to go out and socialise a bit to prevent me being isolated and fall to depression by professional help. Yet, I don't feel like going out at all. The only place I will go out to is the garden. Since I feel physically better now, we have been clearing up the garden bits by bits and found lots of treasures or basically free food last week. 

 A small spot in the garden was sprawled with autumn self-seeded tomato plants overlapping each other. These tomato plants flower during winter but I don't think with the cold temperature it will set fruit. However, after I made an effort to stake these tomato plant last weekend and gave some pruning found some ripened tomatoes and there are already producing fruits. I guess the warming temperature has able those flowers to set fruit. One of the plants has actually grown more than 5 feet tall when I pull it upright and tied it on the emergency support. I was not sure how many tomato plants before and now it is 3 tomato plants on that spot. Some of the cape gooseberries fruits has also matured and drop to the weeds underneath hiding these golden fruits. If my boys are here with me, I don't think mama and papa will have their fair share of these delicious golden fruits. I think they would certainly enjoy these golden 'berries' very much. I did not realised how many self-seeded tall red celery have grown among our backyard container gardens in between other plants and they sure have grown. The celery stalk surprisingly juicy when relying on rain water only. We also harvested some peas and broccoli shoots last week. We harvested all of our Early Horn carrots last week grown in container.

 Here is half of the patch in front of the kitchen window that I have cleared on the weekend. Everything on this patch are self-seeded plants except for 2 foxglove plant which has been completely   hidden. Most of these volunteers are celery and chervil.

Celery from the patch above.

I remembered we had several self-sprouted potato plant on the front yard in different places. However with weed competition and pest attacking the plant many plants got lost while they were growing around 20cm tall. Last weekend while my husband cleared up the front yard and pulling out all the weeds he found several small sizes of potatoes from the potatoes that perished early and lost in sight. Surprisingly, one self-sprouted Royal Blue potato that got lost under sunflower and rose geranium plant has produced decent harvest. The Royal Blue potato plant was not there anymore but somehow I remembered there was a potato plant growing on that spot. So lucky we blindly dug around that area an hit a jackpot.

We are blessed with many volunteer rainbow chards plants  last autumn and this spring I found several new seedlings as well while clearing up and left them undisturbed. Hopefully these seedlings will provide us harvest during summer. Summer month is actually the season which we don't really have much to harvest compared to other season. Lettuce are also plenty still to pick around the garden. But it will be time to say goodbye to lettuce by next month if I don't sow a new batch of lettuce this week.

We also harvested some florence fennels, beetroots, top purple turnips and kohlrabi this week.

There are still many spots to clear up.

Join in Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandellion.

Our mid-winter shady frontyard~Winter Wednesday

Every plants grow very slowly at our front yard in winter because our plants did not received much sunlight at this corner of our garden in winter. All of them are mostly growing in shade. If it is a sunny day, there are lucky to receive sunlight about 2 hours or so. So we usually plant herbs, leaf vegetables or brassicas in winter  at this area and avoid growing allium family as they won't do well with lack of sunlight. Although leek can be forgiving sometime. We already have 2 seasons of nice harvest of cauliflowers and broccoli grown at our frontyard. Hopefully, this season will be a nice repeat performance. However, compared with previous years as main were usually cauliflower and broccoli, this year the variety that we grow are more than double the number of varieties last season. Thank you blogger friends who has inspired me to try new things and generous gardeners from Adelaide Hills and Plains Seedsavers group. At least this part still received some sunlight in sunny days. But wait until the next spot.

This patch in front of the kitchen window do not received any direct sunlight at all in winter but blazing hot in summer. The perennial polyanthus does very well here. Our polyanthus plants are starting to bloom one by one. It is actually blooming very much earlier than previous year. Something wrong with the weather, it makes the polyanthus clock goes wrong. We grow celery here every cool season because this is the most suitable spot  to grow them. I think it is because the soil here fit their requirement to grow well even with lack of direct sunlight. Moreover, less evaporation in this area and celery needs a lot of water to grow well,This are self-sowed Crisp and Tender Celery that I transplanted last fall. Must thin them, I thought some will not grow well so I planted really close since we had so much seedlings.

No direct sunlight either at this corner in winter, totally in shade.

Growing under our 2 dahlia trees.

All are newcomers in our garden this cool season~Rainbow chards, Witloof chicory, silverbeet, chervil  and purple vienna kohlrabi. You might noticed some ragged plants which is summer plants.

Another veggie bed in shade. More than 10 different type of plants growing here.

Sunny day we had helped those cherrytime capsicum to start turning red.

A miracle in this winter season.

I used to whine about most of the space that we can grow plants are in shade in winter.

But the plants can grow in shade is just patience.

They grow very slow compared with plants that received a lot of direct sunlight.

When spring come and the sun direction change they pick up growth.

They still reward the gardener if she or he is willing to wait.

Linking with Hazel Winter Wednesday#6.

Local Fruit and Veggie Swap May 2011

The only community event that we sometime participate for local fruit and veggie swap is held in West Croydon every first Saturday of the month. Today the host were James and Evie. I wanted to catch up with Evie so we went, although I don't really have many excess produce from my garden to share. Our host managed to surprise us with a very big pumpkin on the table from his friend that even 20 months old Rayyan can fit in the pumpkin. On the table to share today were lemons, eggplants, rosemary, seedlings, pomegranates, walnuts, jerusalem artichokes, seeds and of course big portions of pumpkin for everyone to bring back home.

We brought back many cut pieces of pumpkin for friend and neighbours. Lenay was excited of recieving the big pumpkin seeds and surprise me by counting it. She counted 64 pumpkin seeds and want to try growing it when she return back to her parents home. One of her wish came true today I reckon, because she always wanted to have big pumpkin seeds. Usually she likes to eat pumpkin and sunflower seeds but I don't see her doing it today. I was excited on something else, another plant that I wanted to try growing this year in my wish list have been granted ~ Jerusalem Artichokes/Sunroot. A fan of it, I am not yet. It is just curiousity of how the growing plants look like.  Growing sunroot in Adelaide can make it forever not leaving your garden if you don't harvest them all, you will want to call it a weed after a few years, well that is what I hear from every gardener that grow this tubers. Since I am a novice at growing this plant, do you know whether this tubers can grow in partial shade/ or shade very well or not? How about the soil, will clay be a problem?

What did we managed to bring along?

Scooped some celery seedlings today to give-away at the swap and clear my conscious regarding their fate today. I planned to prepare the veggie patch that have hundreds of self-sowed celery seedlings for cool season vegetables. Happy we managed to complete the task today. At least some were saved from being green manure as I prepared the bed for other veggies. We also brought some seeds to share which is suitable to sow this month~ Red onion odourless, calendula sunshine, lettuce, coriander, lakspur (Making a note so I don't bring the same thing again for the next swap). Hopefully for the next swap, the self-sowed coriander are big enough to bring along. Lucky, at the last minute before we went, I managed to snip some ripe red chilies to share.

So many pumpkins on our kitchen table. But Hazel is having "The Pumpkin Challenge" which have many wonderful pumpkin recipe to try!

Our Dense Kitchen Garden

I have to be more creative with the mix and match of vegetables and flowers in each patch in our garden this fall. Hopefully, looking at the variety of seedlings available in our hands that is currently growing well and healthy, I can make many happy groups and not bad companions in one of the patch. I would try my best to plant these seedlings in block, inter-planting, successional sowing and spreading the same variety of plant at different location. One of the combination of plants that seems to get along very well which I have planted last fall did seems to be working were my kitchen garden patch (very small area which is about 1.3 X 2 per-square metre).

Front view of the kitchen garden in early spring.

We trained nastartiums to climb trellis near the wall. Nastartium were choking the plants when we let it rambling at the ground. Self-sowed violas, celery and carrots (topweight) are growing in partial shade. Some polyanthus flowers which can tolerate shade. Leeks recently planted in spring as it was bare after we harvested that small area transplanted near over-wintered carrot. Bolting coriander/cilantro plant nursing capsicum back to health which survived winter but were infested with aphids because it was weak against the cold weather. We have self-sowed french marigold and aquilegia growing near the front door. All the winter brassicas have been harvested and while we wait for summer seedlings to grow like tomato, inter-planting with komatsuna.

Kitchen garden side view.

Can you see 2 tomato seedlings inter-planting with komatsuna?

A closer look.

Can you see at the front sunflower seedlings?

A few week later, over-wintered celeries have bolted so I have replaced celeries with one zucchini plant. Sunflower seedlings has grown much taller. I found that growing sunflower and zucchini close together has less crop compare with zucchini plants which is not growing together with sunflower. However, sunflower did not effect on viola. The reason we planted sunflower in front of the kitchen window is to provide us some shade from the afternoon sun. Moreover it is not ideal to plant herbs here during summer, too hot for them. In winter this patch received very limited sun, only leaf vegetable can grow well here. This is the main thing I have to remember when I plan to grow things in this patch, Summer-too hot; winter-almost no sun.

Photo taken in middle of summer where the sunflower has already fully bloom, the plants flop toward the ground when it is too hot and gradually start to go upright again in the afternoon after drinking some water. Over-wintered capsicum producing. Cherry tomatoes did well last summer. Bean and jicama (legume) not fond of this soil here. Aquilegia spent-blooms were left dry and collect the seeds later which is giving us lots of babies at the moment. I am still not satisfied on how I use the space here, need to think of new plan next summer.

What is "Companion Week" and Seed Give-Away visit this post for more information.

Kebun Malay-Kadazan Girls Seed Inventory

There are many new things I like to plant next autumn which is not that far away. In about another 2 months I can start sowing winter-loving vegetable here. I don’t want to make a mistake of buying seeds that I already have and buying excess seeds when I have only limited space to grow them because browsing through the seeds catalogue needs hearts of steel so many temptation. So this week, I was inspired by Eliza and Nyack Backyard to do a seed inventory. I am very glad I did this if not I ended buying too many seeds which I don’t actually need and forget about what is in Kebun Malay-Kadazan Girls home-saved seeds bank account. I hope when the next ordering seeds time comes, I thought of buying seeds for spring planting as well to save the postage cost.

Allium

I enjoy growing allium very much because they can thrive in neglect, pest don’t bother them and not a water-thirsty plant. The only pampering I have to give them is they need lots of sun, won’t grow well in partial shade and make sure no wet feet. I am starting to collect chives seeds but it not that much still. But we do have excess home-saved seeds of Red Odourless Onion. I also have one spring onion seed packet which is still unopened and we still have one opened packet which is not yet finished. So no more spring onion order this year. Some of our Musselburgh leek plants are flowering so we can collect seeds from this plant. I am actually tempted to try another variety next season but I will not order them (have to be very determined here)

My wish list for allium:

• Brown onion
• Garlic Cloves
• Garlic chives

Flowers

Surprisingly, I just realised that I don’t really have many flower seeds that we bought.  Most of the home-saved seed are from nursery seedlings that I collected from. Here are pictures of some flower seeds that we are collecting this month which are still in capsules or seed pods.

Kebun Malay-Kadazan Girls excess home-saved seed account list:

• “Crushed Silk” Hollyhock (white)
• Lakspur
• Stock (Astral) (white)
• Acquilegia/ Columbine (McKana’s Giant) (yellow)
• Calendula (Sunshine)
• Nasturtium (Jewel Mixed)
• Gaillardia (Red)
• Evening Sun Sunflower
• Viola (Cottage Mixed)
• Bellis Perennis

My flower wish list (this is hard, I like all flowers and welcome all)

• Morning glory or sweet peas ( will look great in the arch or other part of the garden).
• Sunflower ( other variety then mammoth or evening sun sunflower)
• Cosmos
• Foxglove

Too many wish the list can go on and on. Nursery flower seedlings will be very tempting and offer more variety. I am still indecisive of growing flower bulbs this year. Never grown from flower bulb need more initiative.

Umbellifers

We are collecting coriander and celery seeds this month. I heard of a pink celery which have pinkish colour stalk and tempted to order them. But we have too many seeds on our hands now so no ordering celery seeds.

My umbellifers wish list (all of them I have never grown before):

• Fennel
• Parsnip
• Chervil

I would like to try different carrot variety as well to see which grows well at our place. So far we have tried Topweight, Manchester Table, early Nantes and New Kuroda. I still have Afgan variety which I received from Chris author of Under the Mulberry Tree blog that I have not sowed yet.

Other vegetables
Good thing I did this seed inventory, it shows that I have 4 unopened seed packets of Asian leaf vegetables that I bought almost a year ago and many variety of opened ones. Moreover, there are also some home-saved seeds so no more Asian leaf vegetable seed shopping this year.
I was also surprised within 2 years, I can actually finished using up 40 packet of seeds. I don’t throw away the finished seed packet because I might want to refer information there that might be usable or a nostalgic thing . I don’t know why but I like to look at seed packet.
:My other vegetable wish list:

• Beans (other than Redland pioneer, Purple King and Snake bean)
• Beetroot (first time)
• Broccoli (not the sprouting ones)
• Cauliflower ( like to grow other than the white ones)
• Capsicum
• Sweet Corn
• Cucumber
• Eggplant
• Pea (other then Telephone)
• Pumpkin (Other than golden nugget)
• Melon
• Tomato
• Kohl Rabi ( am I serious?I never even eaten one)
• Basil
• Potato

A long wish list, have to think thoroughly before ordering the seeds in few week time.
I am sorry I have not been visiting other bloggers for few days or reply comments. But I will be visiting soon.
Here is a reminder of “ Seed Week” which starts tomorrow.

"SEED WEEK" will be on the 22nd~26th of January 2011 for us to share our own experiences that is related to seeds, bulbs, tubers, rhizomes or cuttings that can be about collecting, propagating,growing them or how to keep them in top shape. It can be submission of an old post or a recent one and not limited to only one post only. In my gardening journey (well not that long yet however I am still novice), I found many joy in collecting the seeds from the one that I have planted to continue the cycle of life and watching them grow again like their parents. It fascinate me how a small seed can contain all the elements to produce such a beautiful living things for us. How like human, the seeds learn to adapt the changes in environment or the hot topic climate change. I hope we all can benefit from sharing our knowledge in this seed week. You can also submit your post earlier to me by mailing me ([email protected]) and I link it during the "SEED WEEK". I will randomly choose 5 participants for home saved-seeds give-away. I like to share my home saved-seeds to you:). Thank you I have received some early submissions. From early submissions I think of organizing it like different section for example flower and vegetable section something like that so it will be more easier to browse. I welcome early submission very much :). Open for any suggestion.

Visit Tootsie for fertiliser Friday.

Harvesting celery seeds

This summer has been very good for tomatoes and cucumber which last summer we did not have any much luck growing them. On the other hand, what did well last summer like chili, watermelon and honeydew is not looking good and we have troubled germinating the seeds. The growth of the sprouted seedlings were also so slow. We have cooler nights this summer which can contribute to many set backs for really warm-loving vegetables. I can just imagine how my plants are struggling to adapt the very hot days and cold night. I am glad that I kept some of our chili plants sowed last summer that survived through winter and now bearing many fruits which provide endless fruit for the kitchen. This is what the garden has gifted us some of it last week.

Many of the harvested tomatoes this week were Rouge de Marmande. The ones that have been grown in partial shade has also ripen and they are not affected by the scorching sun. The Romanesco zucchini is also producing better with better pollination ( have to help hand-pollinate them as I was too busy and been ignoring them hopping the bees were doing it for me).  Its a busy time to hand-pollinate all the cucurbit that has female flower on it ~ cucumber, zucchini, squash, bitter gourd and melons.

We also harvested our first time 'Tender and Crisp' celery seeds. One bolted plant sure provide many seeds. How or when do you use celery seeds for cooking? I know that sometimes celery seeds is also use like spice since I saw them in the market spice shelves. But I myself never used it before.

Celery seeds is very fragrant.

Ocean and Garden to Table Challenge ~ Crab & Celery

This few days I have some dilemma on how to harvest quickly our celery because I see some sign its going to bolt soon. I am not sure whether celery can be frozen or not. If anyone can give some idea it will be much appreciated. I was thinking of making a simple celery soup but I admit I don’t really know how. I borrowed a book from the library with soup recipes. The only soup that use celery as ingredient in that recipe book looks a bit complicated for me using too much of different ingredients. I was hoping of just a simple celery soup cooking. I need to do a bit more of researching (easily distracted with the kids). I have been following Wendy’s Garden to Table Challenge posts but have never participated before. So today I decided to have a go at it.  My husband went crabbing with friends late last night and caught some medium size crabs (about 20 of them). I kept some in the freezer and the rest I fried them coated with a bit of turmeric powder just slightly cooked for my chili crab dish. Below are some of the basic ingredient for my modified chili crab dish.

I put some ginger, garlic and shallots into the mortar (lesung batu) and pounded. I heated the oil in the wok and sauted the pounded ginger, garlic and shallots. Then a spoon of chili paste, cooked until the oil is separated. Then add some tomato sauce, plum sauce, oyster sauce and mix well. Toss in the fried crab and celery. Beat 2 eggs and pour into the wok and stir. Cook the dish until the egg is done and its ready to serve.

 

This summer I am thinking of growing sweet potatoes. I never grown them before by myself because my mother grows them and the thought of it make me lazy (manja sangat). So now mother is thousand miles away. So where oh where can I get sweet potato shoots. A week ago I tried with sweet potato tubers but that take a long time to sprout. So I went to a Sunday market today for sweet potato shoots hunting. Did I found it? I almost thought not a single stall have them but finally one stall have it and only 2 bunches were left. I was so excited, grabbed one and paid the man but he gave me a funny look. I said “a dollar per bunch isn’t it?”. “Yes” the man replied and look at his hand at the two coins that I paid him. Too excited I was, I finally realized that I paid him 70cents instead of 1 dollar and apologised. I thought I gave him 2 coins of 50cents but actually I gave him a 20cent and 50cent coins. But the man was so sweet he never said a word about my mistake but just keep on looking at his hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope roots will grow from this shoot where the new branches develop. I am thinking of planting some of the shoots directly into the soil and some keep in water to wait for the root to grow. Another of my new trial of growing edible plants here in Adelaide.

Almost 0% of calories but made of almost 100% of water

We hope next month, October will be celery month for us seeing how well they are growing now. August has been cauliflower month for us. September too has seen many of cauliflower produce from our patch but we do have leeks and peas to harvest as well. I reckon the celery plants from our patch has grown at least 50cm now. 

Celery growing beside leeks, calendulas and peas near the car porch. We can start harvest the celery stalk from the most outer part but I simply want to see how fat it can be.

Celeries growing in polystyrene container. They really need big and wide space for their root growth. When they are still young, I found that they have more root then leaves!!! Several time when I grow them in containers, I can take the celery out from the container with the soil still intact because it was full of roots.

3 Celery plants growing in the middle of cauliflower vegetable bed. At the back row near the fence are corianders which we plan to let them produce seed and attract beneficial insect later important for pollination. Front row, poppy as a natural border. This is our first time growing poppy, we can’t wait how the poppy flower will look like. We grow them from seeds.

Near the kitchen window veggie patch, the nastartium are taking up all the space and covering the celeries.

We had too much celery seedling sowed in autumn maybe because I thought the celery seeds stock we had is not good and sowed too many to increase germination. The celery seed stock that we had the supplier has written the expiry date was in August 2009. However, the seed germination was still good almost 100%. Ended up with lots of celery seedlings. So, with lack of space I transplanted the seedlings to a place that received only maximum of 1 hour direct sunlight on very sunny day and no direct sunlight during cloudy and day. This is how they look like a month ago just few weeks after transplanting  them, the same size as the primula flower plant.  Now a month later and growing well. The celery plant has grown double the previous size, look at how small the primula flower plant now compare to celery. Celery grows well in shade area (part shade) too.

Gardening on the other side of the fence

Adelaide had a very fine weather today. Early in the morning we start to garden outside on the other side of our backyard fence which I think is just a reserve land. I had to climb and jump the fence because we don’t have the key while Mik and Rayyan had to walk about 5 minutes to get to the back of our fence. One of the back neighbours are having construction building a warehouse I think and trucks like to park near our fence. Sometimes it could be very noisy with the music blasting loudly from the trucks and the kids can’t have their short nap during the day. So we are determined today to sow some home save sunflower evening sun seeds all along our fence.Finally we got lucky. The line were clear nobody at the back today after waiting patiently for about a week. Hopefully in future they won’t park near our fence side.

About a month ago, Ilhan and Mik planted some onion that has sprouted leaves at this area. After planting those onions, it has been neglected and they grow depending on rain water only. Amazingly, the onions are doing very well. So we planted some more sprouted onions today.

Finally I have a place for this celery seedlings which I reckon it roots are suffocating due to growth space and water competition. We found at least 10 self-seed tomato seedlings in our veggie patch and transplant them to this area as well. Thank you for blogger friends for note of encouragement on keeping them.

This is how it looks now. But hopefully in 3 months the sunflower will start producing and provide a nice view for passerby.Mmmm…our wish for the moment.

My note for today ;

Seed sown> Evening sun sunflower, Honeydew melon, pumpkin, soy bean, radish, carrot.

Seedling transplanted> Viola, tomato, celery, onion.