Monday, March 1, 2010

The Brisbane Garden

I've done several posts on our garden in Palembang and how I discovered the joys of planting my own vegetables. Well, now we have an even bigger space and a lot more variety to our plants.

My mother has always planted a few things in the garden but towards the end of last year, we got serious about becoming farmers. Actually, there was one farmer, my dad, and two directors. Ha!Ha!

We've been having more than enough curly kale, okra, Malabar spinach and rocket leaves. The long beans, chilli and tomatoes are all starting to fruit right now. The sweet potato leaves had to be replanted but they're coming back now.

Its a really amazing feeling when we're out of food in the fridge and just walk out to the garden to get something. We've also planted a lot of herbs and several ginger plants. The biggest disappointment so far has been the winged beans. This was what I planted in Palembang and they flourished in the clayish soil we had there. Unfortunately, it seems that the soil here is a little to good for them.

Here are a few photos. It isn't exactly the prettiest garden around but it definitely is one of the tastiest.

Here are the kale with some rocket in between:


The much too big plant to the right is lemon grass. The white stuff on the ground
is shredded paper that we use as a sort of mulch. The Malabar spinach is amidst the paper but we had some to eat yesterday so you won't see much of them.


Okra to the right and the much too leafy, yet fruitless, winged beans to the left.


We planted curly kale but looks like the 'curliness' has spread to the okra too. Look at this:


Oh and this last plant is 'katu'. Supposedly the English name is Sweet Leaf Bush and it helps milk supply.

4 comments:

John A Hill said...

looking forward to gardening season in the States. It's getting closer...

fiona said...

wow! :) neat plot of vege land.

Mike said...

Yuck, you mention the O word. Okra. Nastiest stuff I have ever been near. I could never eat that stuff. Hey, plant some big macs and I'll be right over.

Scott and Elaine said...

Love your vege garden. It has definitely grown in size since i last saw it.