Collecting Seeds of Thai Basil

Refering to the thai basil (http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/02/long-long-entry.html) which was not very successfully propagated from stem cutting and had many flower stalks. I have decided to leave it to flower and see if I can gather any seeds :

The thai basil which produced very little leaves and kept bolting to seeds

Well I did. After many weeks, the white 'seeds' in the flowers have turned 'dark brown/black' (if you click the picture below, look into the leaflets around the middle of the stalk, you are able to see two seeds) :

Click on this picture to enlarge it. You can see two seeds encased within the sepals? leaflets?. There are actually four seeds altogether encased together.

I managed to collect a good deal of dried thai basil seeds. This is just the beginning :). If completely dry and ready, seeds should fall out easily when leaflets are opened, brushed with finger and turned upside down. If not ready, they will still be a little sticky and best left to dry completely before seed collection.

Some of the thai basil seeds collected.

Hottest Week of the Century

Weather Forecast says this week could be Melbourne's hottest time of the century! Temperature is expected to be 41 degrees celsius today. I woke up really early despite late shopping the night before. Had to give the plants a good watering before the heat came. Yates Multi- Nutrient Plant Food was on sale and I bought a bottle for my garden babies. It is made up of Chicken Manure, Blood and Bone, Seaweed extract and Fish emulsion and providing Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorous for good plant health. I prepared 10L of it and fed all the plants before the sun came up fierce. Here's a picture of my first sunflower :

Here's the two gorgeous Mighty Red ripening daily :

The shallot in the pot has produced two clusters of flowers on tall stalks. Before the sac burst, it really looked like an alien waiting to erupt. Here's a close-up after the sac burst and I am anticipating the look of the opened flowers.

Surprisingly, found a caterpillar feeding on the potato leaves which I thought are poisonous.

The buk choy look so much better now since their growth is not hindered by tiny caterpillars feeding on them.

Bay - A New Candidate in the Garden.

I caught this bug climbing up a wall in the house and wondered if it was a lady bug since it really does look like one except the strange brown-gold colour. I wrote to 'Ladybirds of Australia' and Adam told me that it is a leaf beetle of the family Chrysomelidae feeding on eucalyptus.

http://www.ento.csiro.au/biology/ladybirds/authors.htm is a good site to identify lady bugs in our gardens. This one is a good one which feeds on fungus. I found it on my vegetable patch! :) http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2408773.htm is another great site to learn about lady bugs - the good and the bad and the evil. And I thought all of them are good!

Harvested 11 pieces of my precious vietnamese/hot mint for a meat dish. Yum!

Very pleased to say that my lavender is a survivor in spite of being under the hands of an inexperienced non-green-fingered gardener like me! I think the pyrethrum I gave it could have really burnt the leaves. Could have been too generous and too near with the pyrethrum when I tried to deal with the pesky whiteflies attacking it. Brutally chopping much of it, though it was already summer, proved to be a good thing (kept my fingers 'crossed')(Refer 9 Jan 09 - Keeping Check). It survived and has been putting on green healthy leaves. I never gave up on you. Please dont give up on me. :)

Bought this bay from Flower Power...only $2. No harm trying to grow it. I have re-potting it inot a gigantic pot, being hopeful that it is going to grow into a potted tree for my new house! In cheap potting mix + blood and bone + seasol + dried danelion leaves (at base). It was shaded by a large box for a few days before being fully exposed to the summer sun.

A few of the Mighty Red tomatoes are turning orange. It is really exciting to see that and I hope possums would not ruin my joy by stealing them in the night. Look at the shine! No pesticides or chemical sprays on the skin!

My largest Sun King Sunflower is due to open its flower soon, revealing its yellow petals today. Interesting to find out that they will face the rising Eastern sun each day.

Mixed basil germinating well in the pot. It will interesting to find out what sort of basils I have got and how they finally look like.

The two groups of capsicums are doing fine. This clump has been thinned out severely. The other clump has been attacked by grasshoppers or some leaf-eating insects but are good still.

This Purple King bean plant of two is doing well. I think the other one is going to die, looking at the way it is developing.

Summer - Warming up... ...

The pot of lavender bee pretty seems to have grown but are attacked by whiteflies. I used the yellow sticky trap which was quite good but no good with controlling them. So I did a pyrethrum spray and the flies were gone. The new flower buds have grown.

Mint given by a friend standing in jar of water (Christmas Day) waiting to root. Roots appeared 5 Jan 09)

I have harvested lots of plums. They turn from green to yellow to deep red. Taste sweet in terms of pulp but have sourish bitter skin.

The sunflowers are 0.5m tall for the tallest! Growing fantastically. Waiting for giant sunflowers!

An orange has germinated. However, I cannot remember which type it is. :(

I accidentally pulled out this plant but the smell seems so oregano. I replanted it and it is growing fine again. I hope it turns out to be some yummy wild oregano.

A friend has just given me two twigs of vietnamese/hot mint and I have re-planted them (26 Dec 08) in this pot with a thai basil which rooted while kept in a glass jar of water. The former needs lots of water. This time, I made sure I gave them Seasol to help with any shock. I kept the pot indoors and gave it lots water. So far so good.

I bought these two cheap pots of flowers ($2 each) to attract bees to come and pollinate my melons.

The Mighty Red tomato plant is doing well and have produced more than 10 fruits so far. These are the largest so far.

Clump of melons before thinning out.

Melon yellowing after thinning out.

Surviving melon plant with flowers. Seasol came a bit late on 22 Dec 08 but at least rescued most of them.

In my last blog, I mentioned that my peppers died of shock during re-potting. So, I have since sown some on 14 December after cooking some yellow and red ones. I also thinned out the clump of melons but they too went into shock despite my very careful job. Their leaves were turning yellow and thankfully I got some advice from a fellow blogger to add some fertiliser. So I did, with Seasol and they have survived. Some died but a good number survived. A few of them have flowered and I am so pleased to see bees coming to them one early morning on 27 Dec 08. That means pollination! I wonder if the two little cheap pots of marigolds are doing their job attracting bees on the vege patch. I hope to see melon fruits soon, either rockmelon or honeydew. I am not exactly a fan of them but it is fun just to see them grow.