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.

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....

:)

Strawberry Delight

My pride and joy....my strawberry plants!!! Even the tradesman who came the other day commented that my strawberry plants were gorgeous and wondered how I grew them so well. His are dying.

These few are the fruit of one baby plant which I have propagated successfully. I did not even notice the huge strawberries dangling from the pot until they were this big and red.

Many smaller ones which I had picked.

Such dainty little flowers.

Strawberries dangling out of the planter where my two baby strawberry plants were growing.

I think growing strawberries have bought my heart over. They do not take lots of space, are easy to grow, produce yummy strawberries and truly are an extremely pretty sight. I was never a strawberry lover but now I am really in love. :)

Eggplant Supreme Harvest

I harvested at least 10 good sized eggplants so far. Eggplants #9 & 10

Eggplants #7 & 8

Eggplants #5 & 6

Eggplants #3 & 4

Eggplant #2

Garden Update

Lots of harvesting to be done. The olive tree is one but I am not doing so as I am not keen to do any pickling : Been harvesting these ripening hot chillies. They are really hot stuff.

My beautiful protea pink ice in bloom in its pot.

Gorgeous aloe vera. Harvested for some steamed dessert with sugar.

Woo Hoo! Sweet Potatoes!

I have not written any entry for a long while. This is because my internet has been slow as a snail. There is so much to update. My sweet potatoe vines are doing so well. Besides harvesting its young shoots several times for stir fry, I have started to harvest the tubers too.

A look at the beautiful yummy leaves.

The tubers have exploded out of the ground.

I am feeling very excited though I was not really planting sweet potatoes for their tubers but more for their leaves.

My first harvest! I gave some away and used some for pork porridge.

My second harvest! I have used it for an Asian dessert called bo bo cha cha.

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.