Beans Update

More Info …..Beans are one of nature’s more nutritional packed foods – the home grown types taste so much sweeter than the supermarket variety. The organic beans are very chewy, not fibre-wise but meaty-wise. The non-organic types are sweet without the chewiness however when it comes to a strong bean flavour, the organic one wins every time.  In addition, the organic variety appears to have a long productive life compared to the non-organic variety.  This is one of the vegetables we really look forward to when summer arrives.

It might look like a mess but there are 4 organic bean plants there.

Beans – can be hard to find. You have to get them before the pods fill up.

Non-organic climbing beans – they grow quicker and produce light coloured thinner leaves.

Non-organic beans 3 weeks after first leaves appearing.

Non-organic beans.

New organic beans bed – there should be some harves a several weeks’s time.

All these beans were harvested from our mature organic plants – there must be at least 700 grammes there.

Cucumber Update

More Info ….The Japanese cucumber plants has been growing aggresively. It stubbornly refuses to climb the pole in the ground intended for that very purpose and choses instead to hang on to the surrounding plants to hang on to and creep outwards. There are fine sharp barbs on the leaves and plenty more on the stalks. Its impossible to walk pass or among its tendrils without worrying you might get scratches. It produces the cruchiest cucumber I have tasted and has a pleasant mild taste with no significant pith in the middle if you do not let it get too fat. Other cucumber varieties might have better flavour but you can’t beat this one for crunch and productivity.

A curled Japanese cucumber.

2 healthy Japanese cucumbers growing among bean plants (heart shaped leaves are the bean plants).

Japanese cucumbers are a little longer than the Lebanese cucumbers but not as long as the Burpless cucumbers.

Lebanese eggplant and Japanese cucumber side by side.

Spring Onion Update

More Info …A healthy harvest of spring onions.

Garlic Chives Update

More Info….One of the most useful and easy to grow vegetables – absolutely crucial to the making of Chinese dumpling for Chinese New Year. Too bad we have so little growing now. Let’s see how things turn out as the year progresses.

Basil

More Info…This is a delicate fragrant herb and our most favourite way of preparing it is to turn it into basil pesto sauce This bush yielded sufficient leaves to make 3 jars of absolutely delicious green sauce. It helps when you have a healthy and fresh quantity of Grana Padano cheese to help it along, not to mention the organically grown hard-neck garlic, purple variety and lots of toasted pinenuts. The sauce was seasoned with Celtic salt which leant a nice soft salty flavour enriched with trace minerals and no chemical aftertaste. Sigh, the joys of summer…

New Plant – Pak Choi

More Info..This pak choi has has a white fleshy stalk and dark green leaves. When stir-fried with garlic and a pinch of salt, it has the sweetest taste in the Chinese sense of the word.

Very young seedling grown from seed.

Handsome specimens growing up to become tasty vegetables.

Chilli Update

More Info …There are 3 varieties of chilles in the garden right now. The ones doing well and fruiting are the large long chilles which have very little heat in them. There is habanero in there as well but it seems to be producing a lot more leaves than anything else. A hot Thai chill was included in a few weeks ago, that one is tentatively coming along.

A happy sight to behold, lots of healthy chillies growing from a single plant.

The summer has been good for the chilles – too bad they were not hot.

Pumpkin Update

More Info ….The pumpkin plant has been the most robust plant in terms of growth and the constant production of flowers. When the flowers were counted, we thought we were looking at a big harvest of pumpkins.  Interestingly, as the flowers grow with little pumpkins growing behind them, when the flowers die off, most of the little pumpkins turn yellow and then black and shrivel, falling off the vine eventually. It seems that only one or two pumpkins are growing to full size at any one time per plant. All pretenders are knocked out until the mature pumpkin is harvested, then one of the little pumpkins will start growing. It might be behaving this way because of the confined space we are forcing it to grow in.

Pumpkin creeps on the ground naturally, this is our attempt to coax it to creep certically.

Our first mature looking pumpkin, it looks ready for harvesting.

Lots of pumpkin flowers. None will turn to pumpkin unfortunately.

Frst butternut pumpkin harvest. Harvest weight 1.5kg but it will become lighter when we ‘dry’ it for storage.

Help, the 2 pumpkin plants are taking over the side garden. Its not a very friendly plant to its neighbours.

2 pumpkins ripening from same vine – we are in luck.

Eggplant Update

More Info …2 varieties of eggplants were put in the gound. The dark slim and long Lebanese variety and a green long Thai variety. The Lebanese one appears to be doing well, the Thai one is slowly coming along.

Mature fruit of Lebanese eggplant /aubergine, long and slim variety.

Our first haversted fruit.

Eggplant and Japanese cucumber side by side.

A cluster of eggplants. We must be doing something right in the garden!

Okra / Lady’s Finger / Bendi

First time ever seeing okra seedlings sold by ‘farmer’ whose main produce was mushrooms, it was too tempting not to purchase the seedlings to give it a go, so to speak. Here are pictures of our unusual plant.

Young okra

First fruit ?

New budding fruit