Planting Cucumber

Cucumber is one of the vegetable plants that fascinated me much in the process of planting. My first cuke plant is Cucumber Marketer. It started to bloom about twenty male flowers for about a week or so before the female flowers came out.

At first it sets in only one female flower a day and after about a week, two or three.

First day of blooming - Female Flower

Both Male and Female flowers' prime is only a day. It means a day to produce pollen for the male flowers and a day up for a pollination for the female flowers. If we miss it, it will be too late as it withers and falls.

I had hand-pollinated at least 18 female cukes and at first it seemes that they're starting to swell up but then after a while I noticed that they stopped growing, especially after getting soaked from a downpour or suffered from a sun-scorching day. I then started to move them to a shade during the scorching noon and afternoon in order to protect the pollinated female flowers and the leaves from getting sunburnt.

One day as I was going to pollinate a female flower,  I found this one survived, but only this one which was growing... fast. In days it got this big.

So what happened with the others...?

The growth stalled and they're getting yellow―immaturely.

 And sadly I had to remove them...

 I harvested the cuke after it got about 13 cm long and about 6 cm wide.

It's stout and  fleshy with few seeds but the size and form was not like the one shown in the seeds catalog which is longer and not as stumpy as this was. The taste was a bit bland and not as sweet and crunchy as the local breed. I wonder if it's a little too ripe as I had already seen a little crack on the lower skin.

After several days after the harvest, I got some new blooms and had them pollinated but again only one got succeeded. I wonder why I can't have several cukes succeededly pollinated at the same time? Does the plant automatically abort other baby cukes because it has not enough energy for all of them since I plant it  in  a 4 gallons container? (shoulders shrugged and eyes rolled)

Spring Salad

Lettuce Gourmet Mix

 The most rewarding of gardening is when you can harvest some produce from what you've sown! Finally today, after 32 days from germinating, I could harvest some of these lucious lettuce greens....

With some other organic produce I harvested from my own garden, i.e. green and ripe tomatoes, orange and green sweet peppers, and some basil leaves plus an apple, a carrot (shredded), a handful of borlotti beans, and 2 stalks of green onions that I bought from the market I am going to make spring salad for today.

 I add some cubed chicken breast that I seasoned with worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, soya sauce, and a pinch of black pepper for 10 minutes before I sautéd with a little oil until it's cooked.

As for the dressing, I simply used some lime juice, sugar, salt, olive oil and water. And here is the result! Fresh Spring Salad to add to the delight of lunch in a hot day!

Art & Photography

Passiflora Foetida

It started with a couple of foliage that once I had mistaken as pumpkin or cucumber plant. I didn't plant it, it just grew by itself, so I guess the seed may have come in the soil I bought. I let it be. It grew prolifically, and at some point, starting to climb up. I gave it a cane to climb up. And one day.... 

it started to bloom...

When this plant started to bloom, I felt familiar... 

I thought to myself, "Where have I seen it before?"

I didn't really pay attention to it because I thought it was just wild flowers, so I let it be.

But one day, I noticed that the flowers only bloomed wide open for several hours during sunlight, but in the afternoon 

it will be cloistered.

And several days afterwards I can see a small fruit formed inside this hairy garment, covering it as some kind of a protection.

Out of curiosity, one day I broke open one of the fruit and found these.... immature green pulps! It's a kind of passion fruit! But a teeny weeny one.. :-)

Once the fruit mature, the skin will turn yellow and the pulp softened and taste sweet and a little sour just like passion fruits.Only, it's the miniature.

When I showed it to my mother, she recognized it as wild passion fruit she used to find as a child in the forest. 

Hmm.... it's very interesting, that sometimes you can reap 

what you didn't sow!

Updates from my rooftop containers garden

It's been quite a while since I gave an update from my rooftop containers garden. Frankly speaking, the activities in my now expanded garden are quite time-consuming, though I enjoy it very much! Each day presents its own challenge, be it the weather anomaly or pests or depleting or scarcity of rainwater because of drought! It's a little confusing because the rainfall in January through February supposed to be high still, but all the rain was flown to Java island. They had multiple floods during the rainy season in December, even up to March, while the vegetation in my island and city were struggling to live. Up to a point, I had to give up and used tap water for my plants! I fill big buckets and let it stay out in the open for 24 hours or more before using it on  my plants, hoping that the chlorine and all the chemicals like fluoride can evaporate through that process. But heaven knows!

The other thing the people in my island and city are struggling with is the haze from the fire for commercial agriculture in the central part of my island! I sympathize with the people in that particular areas, since they have to struggle with thick haze much beyond the safe level. So far, tens of thousands of people have been affected by it and suffer from throat and respiratory infections. Schools and offices were closed during the time when the haze exceeds the safe level. The central government and the President himself have intervened with the disaster management. So far 60 people have been listed as the suspects. Hopefully the government will really be firm this time, and hefty fine and punishment will be imposed on the culprits (both who set the fire and those who instructed the fire) for future precedent, since our country has been notorious as haze exporter to neighboring countries! The fact is there is only a handful of greedy businessmen from big corporations and some corrupt officers behind this catastrophe! Seriously, we are fed up too!

Thank God that entering March, we got some downpour especially last week and this week, though it's not that much but it's been such a relief for the vegetation, cooling the air and clearing the haze from the sky. I am still counting on mostly tap water for the plants, though I got a couple of buckets of rainwater from a couple of downpour. Yet it's not enough for my garden.

Well, anyway, as you can see, my garden has quite expanded and I have harvested some from it. So far I have harvested maybe about 10 dozens of cherry tomatoes. And new tomatoes are formed again. I also harvested some hot chilli (the tabasco type of chilli) which I planted from the seeds I saved from the chilli we bought from the market. I have harvested dozens of Jasmine flowers (it blooms almost every other night, 3 to 5 or six flowers each time) and some roses too.

for this new planting season, I germinated more plants in February, as follows:
- Indigo tomato
- Brandywine tomato
- Black krim tomato
- Cherokee tomato
- Tigerella tomato
- Zebra tomato
- Cayanne
- Tabasco
- Red bell pepper (from the seeds I saved)
- Yellow bell pepper (from the seeds I saved)
- Evening Sun Sunflower
- Alchemy Sunflower (failed germination)
- Borlotti beans
- Cilantro (not very successful)
- Marigold (African) Crackerjack
- Marigold (French) Red Cherry (failed germination)
- Roman Chamomile (failed germination)
- Petunia (failed germination)
- Begonia Summer Rainbow (F2) (failed germination)
- Poppy Ladybird (failed germination)
- Gailardia (failed germination)
- Cactus (failed germination)
- Amaranth
- Cardoon
- Cumin (failed germination)
- Oregano (failed germination)
- Gourmet lettuce
- Rainbow Swiss Chard
- Yellow flesh papaya (from the seeds I saved)
- Chinese cabbage
- Water spinach
- more garlic
- Leek Careentan (failed germination)
- Shallots (failed germination)
- Marketer cucumber
- Lemon (from the seed I saved)
- Kumquat (from the seed I saved)
- Turkish eggplant
- Sweet corn (failed germination)
- Giant Strawberry (failed germination)
- Black Strawberry (failed germination)
- White Strawberry (failed germination)
- Watermelon radish (failed germination)
- Pear (from the seeds I saved)

as you can see some germinated successfully but some failed. I am still figuring out why... Maybe the temperature or the soil and humidity.

Rainbow Swiss Chard

Borlotti Beans

Water spinach a.k.a 'Kangkung'

Water spinach transplanted into self-watering containers using recyled mineral water bottles

Tongue of Fire Beans

Orange Bell Pepper

Gourmet Lettuce

Cardoon

Evening Sunflower, Marketer Cuke, Amaranth

Rainbow Swiss Chard