Organic chilies harvest

Sorry to anyone out there for not posting for ages, I will try to do better from now on. Brief but regular :)

Cili padi (bird's eye chili) are a favourite of most Malaysians, but not that easy to grow I find. They need a well drained soil and tend to do better in pots. Most of our previous attempts failed miserably but this time - aided by loving care from WW and perhaps our vermicompost - it's looking good :)

This was on May 10th


And this is today!


You can see the flower in the foreground, and how the chili still has the remains of the flower on it as it grows


Here you can see it going red - these chilies are hot, and quite sweet


Here are various stages of growth


and a 'field of chilies' :)

Palm tree flowers with bees

We have two palms at the back of the garden.
I'm not sure what type they are, but it is similar to the MacArthur palm (Ptychosperma macarthurii) - the similarties are that it grows in clusters, and has a similar seed thing, but I never remember seeing red seeds on it. I'd say it's definitely some kind of Ptychosperma, but which one I'm not sure...

A few days ago, I noticed that the seed/flower stalks had burst into bloom - I'd never noticed the flowers there before. Maybe it's the recent hot and dry weather.


Closer up, I saw that it was buzzing with bees!




On this one you can see the pollen that has been collected (a 'pollen sac'?)


Based on the picture of the flowers here, it looks like a Ptychosperma elegans - aka 'Alexander Palm', but the seeds are also red. Maybe I just never paid enough attention to the seeds.

In fact, I have taken to pulling off the flower stalk, as my father-in-law suggested - in order to stop lots of little trees growing up. But now I feel kind of guilty, having seen the bees enjoying the flowers so much!


It reminded me of one of the paradoxes of gardening - I like to think of myself as using the garden to get closer to nature, using organic means, caring for the environment and all that; but in the end of the day, a garden is such an unnatural environment :/

Planting Organic Lemongrass - The Return!

[No posts at all for the whole of April! Tsk tsk...]

I had previously tried growing some organic lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus), which ended in a resounding FAIL! But then a helpful reader (A Canadian in King Parakramabahu's Court) suggested getting the roots going in a glass first before putting it in the ground.

So I tried it out - after a few days, the stalks started growing out


and there was some root growth


I stripped off the outer leaves


and cut the stalks back too (because someone else had told me that this would encourage root growth)


Only four days later, the results were impressive! Lots more roots


and the stalks have grown back too


I've been lazy since then and have not transferred to a pot, but I will do asap and report back :)

myBlogS 2009 - Malaysian Blog Survey

I have not been updating for a while - not because our garden has stopped growing, but because I'm well busy with this

It's for my research into the monetisation of Malaysian blogs - I'm doing an anthropology PhD on the Malaysian blogosphere, focusing on how monetisation is affecting blogs, bloggers, and blogging.

If you read Malaysian blogs, please take the time (5-10 minutes for blog readers, 10-15 minutes for bloggers) to do the survey. As a token of appreciation, there's a prize draw for participants - the top prizes are Platinum Movie Suite vouchers. The summarised results will be posted online once I have compiled them.

And feel free to tell anyone you know who may be interested! :)

Click here to do the Malaysian Blog Survey

For the gardeners out there - here's a picture of some colourful iridescent beetles - I'm not sure if they are good or bad for the plants, but they look nice anyway :)

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).