Wordless Wednesday - Losing Battle Against The Birds!

This is the third one we have lost in the past two weeks. They didn't even wait for it to turn yellow!

For more Wordless Wednesdays, please visit My Little Drummer Boys.

Trainee Gardeners

We've been spending a lot of time in the garden this week. The weather has been getting colder and during the day time, our house always feels like its a few degrees colder than the outside. We have one experienced trainee gardener and one new one this year. They've been working hard on the weeds and sweeping up after Richard mowed the lawn.






Our garden is also starting to feel as if its going to be bare soon. The colder weather has ended the okra's season and some of the other leafy plants are starting to look a bit crinkly. Some over enthusiastic fertilizing has killed off our eggplant and a couple of the tomato plants. The kale was eaten up by caterpillars some time ago. Thankfully, all the gingers and lemon grass are still good and there is still plenty sweet potato leaves, chilli, bazillion spinach and sweet leaf. We're waiting on the papaya and tahitian lime trees to give us some fruit.

With my parents away, I'm now head gardener. So, the first assistant and I went out and got some seeds for broad beans and kale and some carrot and spinach seedlings. I also bought an organic garlic to plant. Although on hindsight that one doesn't really seem worth it. It takes 6 months for the garlic to form from each clove and we only got 4 cloves out of that garlic I bought. We go through garlic like crazy in this house.

In any case, everything in the ground now and hopefully, if the turkeys don't go digging them up, we'll have some new vegetables to eat in August.

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.

No Green Thumbs Here

My okra plants have been doing extremely well for the past couple of months. They provide enough for me to have one or sometimes two meals with okra each week. I started to feel good about it. Recently, they've gotten so tall, I need to get on a stool to harvest them. I've been proud of them and it has felt great eating my own vegetables.

Here they are from their good side:



Unfortunately, things have recently started going wrong. Last week, the leaves on one of the plants all wilted. Overnight! And, it only happened to the main branch. So, I cut it off and am hoping that the remaining branches will stay healthy. So far so good....

After that first plant, I had three other plants start wilting the same way. This is really getting scary. Supposedly, okra is susceptible to verticilium and fusarium wilt but what if only part of the plant is wilting? I think my tomato plants had this problem too previously, they never lived long enough for me to get any tomatoes.

You can see the naked looking stalks here. The wilted leaves don't show up well in the photo.



And look at this one. No leaves at all!



I've bought some fertilizer so we'll see if that helps. Otherwise, I'll have to start from scratch again soon.

Dwarf Snapbeans Indeed!

After nearly 7 weeks away, I came back to a pretty decent garden. Shortly after I left, I told Richard to harvest the sweet potato leaves and eat them up. Instead, of "harvesting", he cleared them all. He just pulled them all out instead of just cutting the longer stalks off. Luckily, he proudly told me of his accomplishment that night and I got mad early enough for him to retrieve some stalks for replanting. By the time we came back, the sweet potato patch was full again.

My okra started flowering a few days before I left. At that time, they were only as tall as my knee. Right now, they're nearly 6 feet tall and full of okra. Another success!

Finally there is my Dwarf Snapbeans. I've been trying to grow them since last year but they kept dying or getting diseased. Before going back to Malaysia, the plants that I had there were alive but in no way flourishing. I really didn't expect anything from them and only hoped they wouldn't die again.

Surprise! Surprise! When I got back, the plant looked similar, perhaps with a few more leaves here and there. But, the underneath was full of skinny little beans. I was thrilled of course but when the pack said "Dwarf" I really didn't expect them to be this tiny!



This is what the photo on the packet looked like. Wouldn't you expect bigger beans too?



I took great pleasure in cooking up that handful last night. Unfortunately, they were already old and chewy. So, next time, I'm going to harvest them when they are even tinier.

The funny thing about growing my own vegetables is that no matter how they turn out, I'm always more than happy with them.

My first tomatos!

I've been waiting for these little guys for a month.



When I first saw them as little green bubbles, I thought it would be a matter of days before they reached full size and then turned red. Well, they got big pretty quickly but stayed green for weeks! They looked so cute on the plant that I almost didn't want to pluck them off.

I did of course, and ate them all raw to fully appreciate their taste. They were the most delicious tomatoes I've ever had :)

There are a few more on the plant that are changing color as well. The problem now is that I don't see any new little green ones.