Some New Plants

Some new plants in pots:

 Baby carrots. Boy are these slow! These are more than one month old! 

Capsicum! Knowing my experience with chillies, will this be the same?

Radish! I have three of this. Planning to add more, three is not enough for my family!

The ever popular, easy growing spring onions. The one right in front with the bigger shoots is grown from big onions. The one behind it is grown from shallots. Shallots will give a more fragrant but narrower shoots. I usually use this for garnishing. For the big onions, I plant the smaller sized ones, these will give larger, broader shoots which I usually use for stir-fries.   Do you call these leaves or shoots or stems?  Can anyone clarify on this?  Whatever it is called, this is a must have with my kids when they have their chicken porridge. 

Chives! I have a battle with chives. They just refused to grow for me and I have been trying again and again. I think this is the third packet of seeds that finally have grown to this height. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will continue to grow. It is actually growing ever so slowly! I think that it is testing my patience! I have never seen chives sold in the market with the roots still intact, unlike the corianders.  Otherwise they can be grown direct from the market!

Faithful ladies fingers!  This is easy to grow and easy to fruit too!  I have four of this!

Nai pak. Only these and a few more.  The snails has a party with the rest of the seedlings! 

Update on the sawtooth coriander.  The number of flowers are more than a dozen from one single stem! And they are more sturdy and spikey that the leaves.

Happy Gardening

Gardening A Game

Malar of My Little Garden has invited me for a game of "Gardening A Game".  Now for this game, we are supposed to do the following :

1. Inform who invited you
2. List 10 things you like to do
3. Invite 10 other bloggers

Malar is quite a gardener! As I have mentioned to her (twice), she has more green thumb than brown! If you visit her blog, then you will know what I mean!

10 things I like to do :

1.  Gardening ! My love for gardening is inspired by my mother. She loved to plant. When I was small, staying in the village, she grew jambu air (water apple) which is extremely sweet, guava (crunchy and delicious), serai, daun pandan, jasmine, roses.... the list goes on.

2.  My first fruit tree that I planted was when I was about 12 years old. I planted a rambutan tree from seed but when the plant was about 2 years old, we had to move. I was almost in tears at leaving behind my beloved tree!

3. I have always love flowers that are yellow in colour! Most of the time I do not know the name of plants! So sometimes it is very difficult to ask about a certain plant at the nursery!

4. I would love to have a big gardening space, my little 'big' private garden, where I could plant all the plants that I love!  At the moment I have to make do with pots and containers.

5. Besides gardening, I love to bake and cook! Again, inspired by my mother, who was a great cook. I love trying out new recipes.

6. My favourite section at the bookstore will be at the cookery and gardening section.  I could spend hours just browsing and reading the fabulous books!  The glossy pictures of perfectly maintained gardens with all the beautiful flowers and greens are enough to dazzle me, hence I would dream about "my own dream garden"!

7. I'm basically a homey person, so travelling is not that important nor at the top of my list.

8. I love to read, though mostly now it has been taken over by gardening books, magazines and cookbooks!

9. I love coffee, must have my cup of coffee first thing in the morning before I start my day.

10. I love to check on my emails, meaning that friends are not that far away!

Invite 10 other bloggers :
I am inviting the following blogger friend for this game and for anyone else, please feel free to join in, it would be fun to know you.

1. Go Right In My Garden - p3Chandan, Selangor, Malaysia

Sawtooth Coriander / My Corianders!

Since my last posting a week ago, the flower of the sawtooth coriander has branched out to 3.  It can branch out to more flowers from one single stem that grows from the root.  Went to my sister's house during the weekend, the sawtooth coriander at her neighbour's house are growing very well!  They really spread out, and if you are not familiar with this plant, you would have thought that they are perhaps cow grass at a glance (that's what my other sister thought!).  Here are the pictures of the flowers taken this morning.

Two more flowers branch out from the single one.  Can you see the one on the right, I think another flower is growing from it.  Soon there will be four!  Wondering how many more  flowers can it grow?

View from the top

I think these are the seeds in the centre!  

MY CORIANDERS! 

Look at the leaves! Attacked by some "fleas", know what these are??

My beautiful corianders! 

They have to go. Not risking the unwanted "fleas" to spread to my other two pots!

What's left of the container.  Have checked, doubled checked and triple checked for any signs of the fleas or their eggs!  So far so good, this particular one seems to be free! Anyway, spray with some organic pesticide just to be sure! Will leave this for a few days before sowing more seeds!

MY NEW PARSLEY

This is my new pot of parsley, sowed them about a little more than a month ago!  Hope they will continue to grow well!

Sawtooth Coriander

Sawtooth coriander goes by many names and is native to Central America.  The three most common name for this leafy herb plant is "Sawtooth Coriander" (since the edges all around the leaf has a serrated saw pattern), "Mexican Coriander" or "Culantro".  In Thai, it is called "Pak Chi Farang". It's scientific name is Eryngium foetidum. It is extremely fragrant and smells stronger than the normal coriander. It grows well in full sun, hot and humid weather. The fresh leaves are picked and used to flavour curries, soups, stews, rice and fish dishes. Like most herb plants, besides the culinary uses, it also has medicinal values.

I got this plant from my sister (who got it from her neighbour).  I have not seen the seeds being sold anywhere.  My sister's neighbour got the seeds from Thailand.  As you can see from the picture, the leaves grows directly from the root, there are no stems.  After the plant has matured, a long stem will grow right in the centre and there will be flowers at the end of this stem.  Once it has adapted to its surrounding, this plant multiples and spreads really fast.  I took back one plant and now I have five, which I think is  a little too slow  at spreading.  I will have to re-pot one or two of this plant to encourage more growth. The photo above is the mother plant in this little family of five!

This photo was taken about 4 days ago.

This photo taken this morning, the same plant!  The flower is growing!

View from the top!

See the jagged saw-like edges round the leaves.  It's name certainly fits it very well.  Surprisingly, this variety is not known to many people, it can hardly be found in any market.  I usually use it when I have steam fish for dinner.  I have yet to try it in curries.  Will definitely do so as soon as there are many more plants and leaves! Do you know of this plant?  If you have seen or eaten this before, please share with us your method of cooking in using the leaves.

Will update on the flower when it blooms!

Happy Gardening !

Sage

Common sage or garden sage, also known as salvia officinalis, is a perennial plant.  It has woody stems with greyish leaves and blue to purplish flowers.  The leaves are oblong, grey-green, rugose on the upper side, and nearly white underneath due to the many short soft hairs. This plant is native to the Mediterranean region.  Sage is known for its medicinal and culinary value.  It has a slight peppery flavour and is used for flavouring meat, poultry, sauces and bread. 

I got this plant from Sg. Buloh for RM5.00.  It is much bigger now. Some of the leaves have started to turn yellow, but I can see a lot of new leaves growing.  I've trimmed off the wilting leaves to enable the new ones to grow.  I am very impatient for the flowers to appear, wonder how long I'll have to wait.  Sage is a great herb plant to have in the garden, the leaves are actually quite nice to look at, the leaves being grey-green are really different from other plants.  

I have used the leaves of this plant to bake a very nice flatbread and also some herb butter.  For recipes, please click Garden Herb Flatbread and Herb Butter.

 

Happy Gardening !