My Baby...and Vegetables Update.

Hello! It's been a long long time since I last posted. Life has been very busy with my new baby, and lots of changes along the way. We went for a holiday, moved house and then had our baby. Baby S (yes, another S) is already 15 weeks. He's such a joy and I am savouring every moment being a new mother once again.  Here is a picture of him :

I havent been doing a lot of gardening compared to before.  We moved house, so there is less to maintain but still, my garden of potted plants/veges/trees demand attention every now and then. I have been harvesting a good amount of green veges esp garlic chives. I am very excited to share that the gorgeous black seeds I have collected from my very first planting back in our old property, have grown into beautiful garlic chives successfully. I recalled busy bees working on the chive flowers back then and was wondering if I would get seeds. And yes I did! And yes, the seeds are of fantastic quality too! Here's the first new crop :

Another exciting thing to share. Thai basil! The last few plants I had (which I rooted from market cuttings) died down last winter and their seeds survived the cold winter and starting growing in the pot. So I am getting thai basil leaves now! I really love thai basil. Though I have been too busy to do any cooking (been catering food nowadays) and usethe leaves now, I am still excited. I plan to store these basil leaves in olive oil so if I need them, I can always have a stock of them! Here's some of them drying :

I also have some tomato silvery fir to harvest. They have all sprung from seeds blown into pots. A few grew in the pot of the Kaffir lime tree. I pulled up some and left two to grow. Had to net the plants as caterpillars attack them, those which burrow and make holes in unripe tomatoes, I cannot recall the names now.

 A while earlier, I also harvested green buk choy. Amazing they sprang up from seeds scattered by wind on my previous property. Smile....It's just wonderful to be able to harvest edibles without having to even plant them!!!

A New Season For Our Family & Saffron Crocus

I have not been blogging for a while. This is because our family is expecting a new baby. We are all excited once again, especially after I suffered a miscarriage two years ago. From 5th week onwards, I was feeling nausea and strangely, depressed. I also lost my appetite and ended up lying on the couch every day. It was towards the 9th week that I was more back to myself. I ate more, had more energy but still could not do much. Currently I am going 16th week and feeling much better. Also, we are expecting a baby boy! Little Man is so excited cos he really wanted a baby brother over a baby sister.  I feel rather weird as I have lost all my interest in gardening. But I still have a fair list of to-dos before winter sets in. The garden still needs quite a bit of attention and thankfully, Hubby is helping me with most of the work.

By the way, we had Saffron blooming this year. Such beautiful flowers with edible orangy-red stigmas. I did not harvest any stigmas this year, I just admired the flowers and took in its mild fragrance.

This will be the last post from me at least for the time being.

Scorching Temperatures and Then Lots of Rain - End February

We experienced very hot scorching weather from Friday till Monday morning. It has been a lot of sun without rain this summer in my area.  And there is one casualty out of my garden. My beautiful creeping watermelon vines have succumbed to the heat and withered completely and I expect the unripe watermelons to die as well. There is a large fruit and two smaller ones. :( This year I did not put up any protection against the heat. I have not been feeling very well so have to ignore my gardening and do only the minimal for a little while.

Watermelon and dead vines around it.

My yummy grapes. A lot of them are splitting and I found out it was due to over-watering.

Sweet potato vines.

Back garden view 1

Back garden view 2

Water chestnut tub

Our recent harvest

Lady's fingers...this year's harvest has been better.

Lady's finger's flower.

Success at growing Lebanese eggplants using seeds.

More harvest.

Summer Update - Mid February

Harvesting veges :

Water spinach/kang kong, pak choy green, choko shoots, eggplants, carrots, cucumbers, chillies, spring onions, beans, lady's fingers/okra.

Harvesting fruits : figs, grapes.

The thirty figs on Figgy are not developing well. I am totally puzzled as the fruits were small, hollow and turned yellow before they got bigger. There goes hope of eating more figs this year. The tree is very tall and leafy for its pot, so I am unsure if it was not able to draw up enough nutrients or water from its potting mix.I placed a saucer under the pot and watered daily but nothing seemed to work.

On the other hand, Big Fig which did not put on any figs early this year, has finally grown some. The figs look like they are going to be fine for eating.

Big Fig (brown turkey) with its fruits protected by organza bags which I bought from Ebay. My son says Big Fig 's a boy.

We harvested some carrots. Our first try at growing them. Fantastic result!

Pesky black birds have been trying to go for my Carolina Black Rose grapes even though I have netted my vine. So I resorted to organza bags which is very effective.

These flowers have bloomed. They are called pigface.  Definitely dont look like pig's faces.

The pathetic-looking passionfruit vine outside my garage is finally growing. I think if it survives, it will be really slow-growing, I dont mind as long as it greens up this brick wall.

The other passionfruit vine next to my patio is also growing, but better.

Eggplant Bonita's 2nd fruit and several more to come.

More sweet corns at the patch in front of our garage have all been harvested. I grew lots of corns this season and am sick of eating them already.

Summer Update - End January

Since my birthday mid-January, we have not got much rain fall. The weather was dry and warm and we did have a few hot days. Finally we had a bit of rain fall last night and today, to freshen up the plants and the lawn. I love the rain because it has this magical power of making the lawn look really really green.

Out of the few seeds of yellow capsicum I have sown, two emerged and after re-potting twice, they are doing fantastic.

My little experiment to root market cuttings of sweet potato plants (even after placing in the  vege compartment for two days) worked. I planted four of the rooted cuttings into a large pot (50cm wide x 50cm deep) with loads of cow manure and potting mix. Last few days were hot and I shaded the pot with white cloth. They survived each day and are growing!

These are the same sweet potato cuttings and they are putting on new growth. I could not wait to tell hubby he was going to have sweet potato leaves for dinner soon!

I harvested our first cucumber (burpless). It is about 35cm long. It has a few bite/beak marks which I believe are from birds.

I decided to take my eureka lemon tree  out of its pot (where it was dying)  and planted it in my back garden along the fence. If it survives, I will try to espalier it onto the wooden fence. Amazingly after several rounds of watering on warmer days, it seems to be alive. It is throwing up lots of flowers and growing a few new leaves. Fingers crossed, I still have my lemon tree alive.

I commented about my galangal ginger plants in one of my previous blogs. Here is the picture showing new shoots coming out of the ground.

Gorgeous looking pak choy keeps giving us a constant supply of leafy green.

I am so happy to have homegrown cut flowers - sunflowers and white lilies.

These gorgeous white lilies have fragrance that permeate my house. It was almost bewitching! They last much longer when cut and put in a vase. Out in my garden, they wither within two days.

Woohoo! My Carolina Black Rose grapes are ripening! As the ripening is  not very consistent, I pick the ripe ones off the bunch rather than harvesting the whole bunch as grapes do not ripen once picked.  

When ripened especially by lots of warm sunshine, the grapes are really sweet.

Very happy to say that about 9 pomegranates are developing on the tree after loads of flowers.