Elephant's Ear propagation

We have an Elephant's Ear in the corner of our garden under a palm tree. It appeared by accident, but I think it's no coincidence as the Elephant Ear likes compost (according to this useful guide to 'General Aroid Care'), and that's where we put a lot of the larger waste that we can't fit in the compost bins.


The official name is Alocasia macrorrhizos, and another name is Giant Taro.


As you can see, it spreads easily too - it is known as a hardy plant that can also survive in less favourable environments, and works as a house plant too.



It spreads by stolons that form corms - here you can see the roots, or stolons I'm not sure, coming out of the stem.

An organic Valentine :)

Worried about being stiffed with overpriced roses, chemically enhanced and flown in from halfway across the world? There is a solution :)

Find a few blooms in your garden


put them on the breakfast table and say


I love you :)

Dedicated to WW - my love for ever xxx :)

PS: Check out the Organic Consumers Association for more ideas.

Cooking organic sweet potato leaf

We harvested our organic sweet potato today (there are a couple of more detailed recipes on that post too). One lesson to be learnt is that it needs a climbing frame - it was crawling all over the ground looking for something to climb up; also, the leaves of one of the plants were all small and not a deep green - I think there was too much shade.

We didn't get a lot out of it...


I separated out the older leaves, those with holes and browned edges, and kept only the tender stalks - about enough for one portion. All the rest went to the vermicomposting box.


It's often cooked with garlic and lard: we don't have any lard so I tried with some chopped chinese sausage, couple of cracked garlic cloves, and a dried chili. Fried that in oil for a while then threw in the leaves


Added some chinese wine and soy sauce. Too much soy sauce! You always have to watch out in stir fries not to overdo the soy sauce...


Well - it was not really a success :( Too oily and too salty - but the basic principle of the recipe was good. But the sweet potato leaf was still good - tender and pleasantly non-bitter (not exactly sweet though, if you see what I mean).

Organic lemongrass - FAIL!

Well, our organic lemongrass (aka Cymbopogon citratus, or serai makan) has died :(

I'm not sure why, initially it was doing great, but then started to wilt and go dry. We may have forgotten to water it, but there was rain and all. It's meant to do well in full sun too, which is what it was getting.

My guess is the soil was not drained enough, it seems like the stems just rotted away at soil level.


The soil itself was nice black soil from our compost heap, so it should have had enough nutrients, etc. A friend told me that they do better in the soil than in pots, and maybe that's because they need good drainage.

Ah well, we'll just have to try again :)

Organic Mint Tea

The organic mint I grew from cuttings has progressed very well :) Though it's the pot that I was expecting to do less well that has done better - this may have something to do with interfering dogs though... :)


It's important to trim the mint so that it gets more bushy, so I took the first opportunity to harvest some to make some tea. It smells wonderful when you cut it, so fresh and invigorating!


How to make organic mint tea (easy):
• Some organic green tea (or black if you prefer)
• Some organic sugar (optional)
• Organic mint

Put it all in a cup and pour in boiling water. Sorted!


It was nice, and had a lovely aftertaste. But, to be honest, it didn't have that 'in your face' mint taste I was looking for; my comparison for good mint tea is Moroccan mint tea, and I wonder whether they use spearmint (Mentha spicata) or peppermint? The plant I have is spearmint (the kind they use in toothpaste normally), and I prefere peppermint sweets to spearmint.

Hmmm... a rapid search via Google (detailed info here) doesn't tell me much apart from that most 'Moroccan mint' teas on the market use one or the other, or a mix.

Growing organic Thai basil

Also known as Vietnamese mint, Vietnamese cilantro, Cambodian mint and hot mint - Persicaria odorata is not a member of the mint family,

*Edit 12/2/2009*: thanks to the anonymous commenter below (Terima kasih!), I now know it is in fact Thai basil, aka Ocimum basilicum var. thyrsiflora.

but you can also grow it from cuttings like mint. It may not be organic when you get it from the market, but I suppose if you plant it with your organic compost, fed with vermicompost, it must qualify as organic after a while! :)

In Malaysia, it's also known as daun laksa (‘laksa leaf’) [I'm not sure of this now...] because it's used in the delicious spicy-sweet laksa dish. It's also very nice with chicken, and WW likes to use it in stuffing for roast chicken.

As usual, I got a bunch at the market – its smell is easy to recognise, something like a spicy tarragon is how I remember it.

It's meant to be able to grow roots in water, but five days after the photo below, that hasn't happened.


There are purplish flowers on a stem which may help it to grow, I'm not sure about that though.


For those which were going in the ground, I stripped off the bottom leaves because the roots are likely to grow out of the interstices, and I buried as much of the stem in the earth as possible. I got the earth from below our compost heap where we piled all the palm branches, bamboo cuttings, etc.


Then into a wide pot they went – so far, they seem to be doing pretty well. So far, we’re doing pretty well with the ‘market to garden’ series :)


I’ll keep you updated!

Here's a recipe for Katong Laksa (Singapore Curry Laksa), and some advice for growing it in an apartment.

Organic sweet potato leaf

Yummy! Another in the 'From market to garden' series - sweet potato leaf is one of my favourite greens, and it never seems to be in the market. It's normally stir fried with garlic, and maybe some lard (sinfully delicious), and the leaves are thicker and smoother than other greens, and not bitter.

Anyway, WW got some sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) and planted them.

It grows fast! It took about a week to get to this stage


but then, three days later it shot up!


There was another one (not photographed) that was in the kitchen - where there's plenty of light but not much direct sun, it grew considerably slower.

And today she planted it in the ground. It's classified as a vine, so I'm not sure if that means we have to watch out for it growing all over the fence?


Look at those leaves... thick and purplish. I'm not sure when to cut them off though, they are quite bushy and soon there'll be enough for a dish, I think...

Here are some recipes online:
Piggy's Cooking Journal (this one looks more like what you usually get in Malaysia)
Mental Masala