Showing posts with label chilli fire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chilli fire. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Herbs and Vegetables Update

My 6 snow peas are towering, flowering and fruiting.
The chilli fire plant looks a bit haggard but I think it will pick up when weather warms up. I have removed the plastic around it and the fleece above it which I used in winter to protect it from cold, winds and frost.
This little rosemary bush is doing well. I propagated it from my original rosemary plant. It does not get much sun and had powdery mildew at times. Not the problem has cleared and it is taking off at its site.
I harvested some yummy greens for dinner : silver beet
Here are the mustard greens (Gai Choy) and spinach growing under net. The spinach are so slow. I think once the weather warms up, it will take off and then start produce flowers instead.
I gave this tuft of lemon grass a hair cut. It was all brown and straggly. Wondering if it will be okay. Wondering if they will grow. All five clumps of lemon grass looked really bad after the winter. Come the next winter, I will have to protect them if they survive this season.
Planted coriander in Patch C where the kaffir lime and lemon grass are.
This little clump of chives (Gu Chye) is doing well and clumping after I harvested it. I intend to buy a few more pots to plant at this spot so I can cook up a dish with squids or fried bean curd.
One strong parsley seed has found its way next to the shed where it does not get much sun but it is growing well.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Snapshots of my Garden Babies.

It's been quite a while since I spent some good time doing gardening. Our family had spent some time grieving the loss of our second baby because we had a miscarriage. We were thankful that it happened early pregnancy but still we were sad. And thankfully it is autumn and most work had been done. I spent little bits of time doing harvesting instead. The garden does need some tidying up and today I did just that as the weather was warmer. The chilli padi plants are doing well and the chillies are steadily ripening. My mum, who is here for holiday, has been the sole customer of my chillies. :) The three cyclamens which I have planted last year are coming back well. I cannot wait for them to flower and bloom :
And amazingly, they have sent out bulbs somewhere else and new cyclamen plants are sprouting up 1 metre away :
My calamondin comquat tree in its pot is doing great too, producing many bunches of fruits. Hoping to make belacan chilli out of them :
I have propagated some cuttings of sweet potato, hoping they can last through winter and be replanted next spring. Here is one successful one :
These few oriental radishes are doing fine under neglect at Patch A:
Recently I picked one brown turkey fig off this tree and it was a bit fleshy and pink. It was quite large. Here is another one waiting to be picked. This tree has produced a dozen of figs but so far only two are a little edible, the rest were dry and yucky :
My Flemings' brown turkey has several small figs. Hoping that they will be better in quality. So interesting to have figs in pots! :
Here's a tuft of chives which I bought and planted where the passionfruit panama is :
And here's the beautiful passionfruit panama gold. It has sent out so many new growth despite me pruning it again and again, cos I really dont know where to encourage it to head. I did not want it to climb up the shed's roof or in summer, it will be cooked :
Strawberry delight...dangling strawberries... :
I have this plant growing in the calamondin comquat pot. It looks like a marigold :
Today, I finally did some work to protect my chilli fire with plastic in preparation for winter. I hope it can survive the winter. This plant has given me loads of green chillies for pickling :
I transplanted the five snow pea seedlings out on the front where the sunflowers used to be. They are doing well :
A friend, Li, passed me some mustard and I planted them in the frontyard. I have not found out much about this vegetable but will soon :
Another friend, Eliada, gave me two pots of chives. They are looking the same after two weeks in the ground.
Today, I pulled up all the lucerne growing in this patch F. I am intending to use it for vegetables? Still thinking. Added some black gold compost to it. Notice one leading branch of my carolina black rose is missing? It was up the pongola ceiling but when I returned from Lakes Entrance, it was found broken. Not sure if the wind or Marco was the culprit. Anyway, I had to cut it down completely and now there is only one leading branch left.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Bitter Melon, Chilli Fire Harvests.

Another pride and joy this season, besides my cucumbers, eggplant, lemongrass, strawberries, chillies, sweet potatoes, is my bittermelon. Several of them harvested and several to come. What a sense of satisfaction! One bittermelon for dinner at my friend's house. Her mum commented that it was very pretty.
Loads of green chillies harvested for pickled chillies. And two melons.
These are my mum's hand harvesting the green chillies.
Yet another bowl of harvest.
I have made four jars of pickled green chillies which we take out for dinners at restaurants.
Another bittermelon and a bunch of purple king beans.
More to come.
More more more....
:)

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Harvesting...harvesting...

Finally. My eggplant is a late bloomer. It is already autumn and it has put on a good number of eggplants after flowering heavily. There are a total of at least 7 eggplants growing though two of the largest had been plucked by my dog. How frustrating! Well, it's not like I am going to eat all the eggplants but the sight of having a plant loaded with growing eggplants is so wonderful. The worst thing is he did not even eat the eggplant, just simply plucked and chewed it all over the ground! I have been harvesting purple king beans, hot chilli and some chilli padis.
And this purple pak choy is looking irresistible. I took a picture of it before any caterpillars come and make holes in the leaves.
Harvested two bittermelons and loads of green chilli fire. These are the 3rd and 4th melons and there are two baby ones growing. Yay!!!!!!!!
The mother strawberry plant continually produces strawberries for me to pick...here's big two yummy ones.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Chillies, Herbs & Vege.

My original pot of rosemary recently was in a poor state. The leaves were looking really skinny compared to its daughter rosemary shrub at the patch next to the garage. Compare them at http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/11/patch-next-to-garage-fresh-faces.html . I was not sure if it was too dry or the pot has gotten too small. I had actually gave it a root trim (See http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/11/catching.html) somtime back before putting it back into the same pot, so I believed it had got too dry in the hot weather. I began watering it more often which is quite strange as rosemary prefers it dry. Deciding to dunk n drench the whole pot in charlie carp helped. It looked better since : I gave my second season thyme a good hair cut and it came back beautifully again :
Finally the three skyscraper-tall chilli padis are begining to fruit after some trouble with sickly spotted leaves :
And the sickly-looking chilli fire (see http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/12/garden-bird-rescue-heronswood-garden.html )which I bought from bunnings is also producing chillies :
And my Nellie Kelly hot chilli are fruiting its heads off :
Thai basil has also grown and is smelling glorious. Maybe this is the first success I am having. However they are seasonal as they produce flower heads very easily and I have to keep up with the deflowering :
A recent hair cut for my vietnamese mint also see them coming back beautifully. The logic 'kill the top and leave the roots' does work :
Nice bunch of crisp buk choy for lunch :
Loving these buk choys :
"All that mankind needs for good health and healing is provided by God in nature...the challenge of Science is to find it." - Paracelcus, the father of Pharmcology, 1493 - 1541