Kai Lan

I sowed some Kai Lan seeds a few weeks ago, and tiny seedlings began to appear on the third day. I guess I sowed too many seeds, and got to thin out the seedlings as they are very close together. The packet says it is the Hong Kong Kai Lan variety.

at 21 days

I transferred some of the seedlings to this container.

 32 days

This is the container which I sowed the seeds in. After I thin out  and transferred most of the seedlings, there are 8 left in their original place. One later wilted.

38 days

They were growing rather slow at first..

 45 days - harvest day! 

in just a space of one week later, they really grew!

The leaves are huge, but I can tell by touching the leaves and the stems, they are young and firm, just right for picking! I could leave them a little longer and let them grew a little more, but I was really impatient to taste my kailan! :)

My kailan harvest. 

I harvested them this evening and these are stir-fried with lots of garlic, so good! Very tasty. I can taste the difference from the ones bought from the market, homegrown is so much yummier. The leaves and stems are young and tender. I should grow more of these! 

The rest of the kailan are rather slow in growing, and they are from the same batch of seeds that I sowed 45 days ago! I guess that this container did not get the morning sun, as the other container did. I placed them in different areas at my front porch, due to space limitation. This container only gets the mid-morning to late afternoon sun. I need to reorganize the positions of my vegetable containers, but it is a headache with so limited space.

I cut the stems a few inches from the base. The purplish part close to the soil, is the hard and woody stem, the green part above it, the young and tender stem. Hopefully there will be new side shoots soon. Keeping my fingers crossed.

My spring onions, which I have fully harvested last week. Photo was taken weeks earlier. Cannot get enough of these, I love spring onions! Of course, there's another new batch growing! :)

Happy Gardening !

I'm sharing this post with Garden Tuesday @ Sidewalk Shoes

Update on Turmeric Plant

An update on my turmeric plant. I harvested all of my turmeric in early February, in my previous post here , and replanted some rhizomes for starting over. Less than two months later, the turmeric plant is thriving well and a new young plant has started to sprout from the rhizomes roots.

Turmeric plants. These are two separate plants with separate rhizomes which I replanted about two months ago. Seems to be growing well, such a pleasure to see this from my kitchen window.  :o)

My never-ending supply of spring onions! I have received a couple of emails regarding my post "How I Plant Sprouted Onions" which I posted back in September 2011. It is wonderful to know that the tutorial has helped a number of home gardeners to achieve the maximum harvest of spring onions from their onions. Thank you for reading my tutorial and for letting me know that it has worked for you too! 

Harvested some of the spring onions, and made some ....

Ham, spring onions and cheddar buns. I use sandwich ham for these buns. Chicken Sandwich Ham can be bought from any supermarket. These buns are really soft, fluffy and tasty.  The spring onions may be replaced with chives from your garden. If you would like to try out these buns, you may get the recipe over at my kitchen, here. Happy baking and enjoy your buns!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Happy Gardening!

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How I Plant Sprouted Onions

Spring Onions (Scallions)

My organic home-grown Spring Onions

I have received a few emails asking me about how I planted the Spring Onions, what is my 'secret' that they grow so fat and healthy! I was really surprised to see that my Spring Onions have sparked quite an interest. So I have done up a tutorial (if you could it that! haha!). 

Spring Onions  (Scallions)  is one of my favourite veggie which I use constantly in my kitchen. Really good as a garnish for soups, porridge, stir-fries and even in curries. Due to my constant usage of this veggie, I always plant my own. Before I discovered the speedy way to make them grow, I used to plant the whole bulb of onion or shallots directly into the pot or container, but most of the time, the success rate in sprouting is not even 70%. Sometimes only 50%, with the rest rotted in the soil, even when I used sprouted bulbs from my kitchen basket. Even research from the web does not give any detailed info, other than the ones which we already knew, that is, by planting either by seeds or by placing the bulbs directly in the planting spot.

So I tested with the following method (refer below) and to my surprise and delight, the sprouted bulbs have at least 90%, most of the time 100% success of growing into healthy plants with big lovely green leaves, which can be harvested within three weeks. 

I'm going to share with you, step-by-step of  how I planted the sprouted onions, my way.

First, get some sprouted onions from the market or supermarket. I usually buy these from Tesco, nobody will buy these sprouted ones, if you see a lady choosing the sprouted onions, most likely it will be me!! :)

This onion is perfect, the sprouts are just beginning to grow, the onion looks good, without any rotting or soft spots. Firm and nice.

The roots at the bottom are compact and dried, there's some new roots that can be seen growing. Sometimes  the new roots can't be seen from the outside,  they are hiding in between the onion layers. 

Peel off the dried skin 

Peel off the next layer or two. The fresh roots are inside. Depending on the onion, you may need to peel off about 2 to 4 layers, especially if the layers are showing signs of rotting and are not healthy. Just peel them off until you can see that the bulb is firm and nice.

More of the fresh roots are now exposed. See the fresh roots all around the bottom top of the onion, on top of the dried roots.

This is another onion, where the roots can already be seen right under the dried skin. All the better!

Peel off the dried skin to reveal the long fresh roots.

I would usually cut off the clump of dried roots at the bottom to make way for the fresh roots to grow. 

These are the good layers of onions that have been peeled off from all the onions. Do not throw them away. They are sweet and can be used for cooking. Great for omelette, pasta and fried rice. You can use these when you blend your paste for sambal, asam pedas or just about anything. 

The onions that have been peeled and about to go to the garden pot.

Just give them a quick rinse so they are nice and clean.

Mix some organic fertilizer in the soil and plant the onions, with the sprouts up. Place the pot where they can get full sun, and do not let the soil dried up. They will be most happy in lightly damp soil, under full sun . Water once a day, and on extremely hot weather when the soil is dry, water twice a day. Well that's it... wait for a week... 

.... these are exactly one week later. Water them on the base of the plant, that is on the soil. Try to avoid watering them with force over the leaves, as they might snap and bend, and would not look nice. They would still grow, but they would not look 'pretty'.!

.... two and a half weeks later. All the bulbs are growing great! Look at the bended leaves, blame it on the rain!

Harvested some spring onions yesterday morning. This batch is from another pot which I planted two weeks earlier than the one above.  Just harvest how much you need, leave the rest until you need them. You may harvest only the green part by cutting the leaves about 3 inches from the bulb. The leaves will grow again. But I prefer to pull out the whole plant and start over, as the leaves that grow the second time round are usually not as big. Besides, I love using the white part of the onions, really fragrant. 

Goes into my fried beehoon (rice vermicelli) for our lunch. 

I hope the above is a useful guide. It is my method of how I plant my Spring Onions and it works for me, each time. I enjoy harvesting the spring onions right from my garden, it makes me happy, having fresh organic homegrown veggie for my cooking pot. If you are trying this out, please let me know how it works for you, I would love to know. Happy Gardening!

The weather has been so hot these few weeks that I have not done any gardening until two days ago. Weeds have been growing in most of my pots, and they are the ones that are most happy with the hot spell. Besides frequent watering, I have stayed away from gardening until two days ago when the weeds became unbearable!

This pot of mint leaves  has wilted and died, and I left the pot in a corner two months ago, forgotten all about it, to my surprised found new sprouts and leaves growing. I transferred the pot where it can get full sun and now it is growing well. 

Sweet Basil plant which I bought many months ago have wilted and died, and now I find the baby plants sprouting in many of the pots with other plants. Transferred two baby plants into the foam container about four weeks ago and they are growing well, behind these two are another two tiny plants which I just transferred two days ago. Found a few more baby plants and have planted those in other pots as well. Very soon I will have enough of leaves for my cooking pot! So happy just thinking about it, can't wait!

I bought some San Choy (Malabar Spinach) for a vegetable dish, and planted the stems about a month ago, many leaves have grown since then, and soon it will be harvest time!

Another round of harvest of spring onions, which I planted almost three weeks ago. 

Harvested my chives!


Happy Gardening!

A Visitor...and Some Harvests

I have a very cocky visitor a couple of weeks ago. This cockerel came from nowhere, just out of the blue, I saw it at my backyard, never seen it before! It "stayed" over at my backyard about a week and my neighbour's son caught it, brought it to somewhere else and have not seen it since. Now why would he do that?

This cockerel does not like cats! I have seen it chased away the cats from my backyard a couple of times, much to my delight! The cats ran with their tails between their legs!!!  Whenever the cats came near, it will chase them away! Remember, my neighbour who has eight cats that was annoying me? Her son does not like what this cockerel is doing to his beloved cats, and the cockerel even poo over at their back yard, sounds familiar, right? 

One afternoon while I was in my kitchen, I saw her son chased after the cockerel and finally managed to catch it. He carried it away (I do not know where), and this cockerel has not been seen since. Should I get a cockerel and rear it at my back yard? ....  hmmm   :)  The cats do not poo as often as before, because I covered my unused pots, but the smell from their backyard is yucks! Two of my neighbours have complained about the stench, but what can we do?... sigh! Perhaps we should do exactly what he did to the cockerel? 

Give him a taste of his own medicine? ... just a thought!

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Time for some harvest :

Harvested all the spring onions. Planted some new ones again. 

Garlic greens! I planted some garlic bulbs for the greens. Since it was successful, I have sowed another two pots of bulbs. Looking forward for the greens to use in my cooking. The ones above, I used them for my omelette. I will try to leave a few plants and see whether can I actually get any garlic bulbs from them, which I really doubt so. My main purpose is actually for the greens. 

Harvested my kangkung, goes into my Nasi Goreng Kampung! 

Happy Gardening!

Long Beans, where are you?

My Long Bean plants are growing very lush and healthy.....but where are the flowers?

Photo taken on 17/03

Photo taken this morning

I have two of these planted in the ground near my belimbing tree, supported by the recycle TV antenna. These plants are already four months old and they are not showing any signs of flowering yet! According to my neighbour's friend, who used to grow lots of long beans, I should prune the leaves to make way for the flowers, and what shall I do with the leaves, boil it in soup! My neighbour told me that the leaves can be cooked in ikan bilis soup, and it is very tasty. Have any of you tried eating the leaves before? I never knew the leaves can be eaten! Did a search from the net, and found out that the young and tender stems and leaves can be eaten. So I cut some leaves this morning and cook it in some ikan bilis soup, surprisingly it is quite good, taste a little bit like our local spinach. The young and tender leaves are nice, but the big ones are tough. This is just a trial, as I was very curious how it will taste like! Will be cooking it again when I have time to prune the leaves these few days. 

Found a leech under one of the leaves and ....

a couple of snails, no wonder they love to eat the leaves, the young and tender leaves tastes good!

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Harvested more spring onions today!

Harvested half a kilo of spring onions, 528gm! And this is just from one container, I have two more containers that I will harvest soon! This is definitely my favourite veggie to plant! 

My Little Harvest

My front garden is  starting to look like a vegetable garden, that's what my hubby said today. That is nice actually! The only veggie at the moment are the spring onions, kangkung and a few pots of cherry tomatoes.

These are some spring onions which I planted more than two weeks ago. I have already harvested some, and some of the smaller ones,  I planted just a few days ago.

 Another two pots of spring onions which I planted about a week ago, and a pot of kangkung.

Some kangkung which I planted today, look at the snail already enjoying the veggies!

My little harvest !

 Some spring onions and parsley harvested yesterday. 

 My first cute little radish, it is so tiny! After months of growing, that's all there is! Hopefully the new batch will fare better!

Harvested more spring onions and some kangkung today. 

I love growing spring onions, they are extremely easy to grow and I use them frequently in my kitchen. There are more growing at my front garden. Thanks to Tesco again, I bought the sprouted onions at a bargain and now they are rewarding me with lovely greens. Gave some fresh spring onions to a friend in my neighbourhood and she is requesting me to get some sprouted onions for her when I'm at Tesco the next time! She is excited at growing her own spring onions now!

The carrots and broccoli seeds which I sowed have already sprouted and I saw some very tiny seedlings of the celery seeds growing too. I'm waiting for these seedlings to grow a little bigger before I could transfer them to their new veggie bed, at least not for another two weeks or so.  

Happy Gardening !