New Friends & New Produce

"When the cat's away, the mice will play."

We did not do gardening for just one weekend and behold, the garden was overgrown with weeds. An SOS was sent out and help did arrive. Last Saturday morning, we weeded, dug huge rocks from the ground and tended to our vegetables.

The guys to the rescue...

Much of the land was cleared and apparently the challenge has been appealing as the guys are returning next week to dig out a deeply embedded boulder. We, girls, will be cheering you on!

Even the children came to lend a hand

The children had fun too, helping Uncle Fah Shin with the pumpkin planting... (and building a home for the ants as well).

"Professor" Henry at work

Henry dropped by and helped, giving us tips in growing the vegetables and in using the shovel.

Why is Phui Yee hiding behind the plants?

The beds filled with weeds being cleared by Phui Yee and the rest of the ladies.

This week, we got to harvest the baby long beans. They are different from the regular long beans, as these are narrower and shorter. The flowers are yellow on the outer side of the petals and its inner sides are white. Once the flower drops, a tiny 'strand' of bean emerges. It takes about a week before the beans can be harvested from then.

The baby long beans flowers and the beans
themselves.

The harvest amount was not great as we could only pick about 3 strands of beans from each plant.

The amount harvested.

 We had another visitor to the garden...

The beautiful skipper butterfly that found its way to our garden.

The eggplants are doing well, from the beautiful purple flowers...

Eggplant flower

To these round beauties...

3 beauties in a row

T
o this mouth-watering Eggplant & Fish Curry by Auntie Lilian!

So appetizing!

Coming soon... A Corny Tale!

Look Out for Our New Produce!

 Barely four months into our gardening, the Jericho Land has surprised us with an abundance of produce. Please say hi to Brinjal! We didn't know what kind of brinjal we had in our garden because we planted them from seeds. But ah... what a pleasant surprise when one day, after her watering duties, Ling Beng reported excitedly the birth of this plump and purple baby... "It's a round one!" 

Please welcome our long-haired baby, the Corn! The yellowish strands on the top end of each head of corn is called "silk." So, corns don't need shampoo cuz they naturally have silky hair.

 

Here are our Cherry Tomatoes! We were just trying out tomatoes on this plot of ground because our experience growing tomatoes at home proved to be very challenging. You either fight with the weather, water, aphids, or any kind of pests that try to chomp off these delicate plants. Chui Fang's brave experiment with cherry tomatoes in Jericho Land is bearing fruit, literally. Big thanks to everyone who took care of these plants over the weeks!

These are Roselle flowers. It's a very versatile plant. Depending on which region you visit, the people eat various parts of this plant (the leaf can be used for salad, apparently). But over here I think we mostly eat the calyx -- the fleshy, dark and blood red part that looks like a flower. It's not a flower actually. The flower is the dainty pink one you see below, which falls off within a day or so, leaving the calyx and a hard part with seeds inside. The calyx is very versatile and you can make it into anything from cordial to ice-cream flavouring.

Briefly around the garden, here's what the folks and new guests are up to. Uncle Fah Shin brought lots of "drippers" to garden. This innovative device is made from 100Plus bottles with a hole punctured on the cap and fixed to a short PVC pipe. When overturned, the dripper waters the ground around it slowly, which is super duper useful in our hot and hazy weather now. See how proud Aunty Lilian is of her hubby! <3 

And we have a new customer! Thank you, Julie! We hope you'll enjoy the okra and lemon grass. ;)

Irene dropped by too, and got an intriguing demo of the dripper by our resident farmer.

Can you guys see how much more land Lame has to work on? Kesian him ok. Please come and help. All newbies will get free tips from Lame.

We spotted these two ladies bowing down and talking to the tiny plant in front of them. Jane (right) was actually speaking positive words to her wintermelon plant... and she forced Jamie to encourage the four-inch-tall plant also.

Hock Keat is one of our regular members, seen here watering the maize while Lame takes a break from ploughing. Kudos, guys!

See you next week at the garden!

Visitors

Visitors, you are welcome to our vegetable garden!

We have been very blessed to have so many people come to visit and encourage us.

Michelle brought her aunt when she was on watering duty one day. Her aunt who loves gardening wishes that she was staying in one of the nearby cabins so that she could work on the land. Already, she is looking for suitable seeds and plants for us. If only she was really staying in one of the cabins...

Michelle's Aunt posing with our fruiting Okra plant

Mei Lin who visited us 14th July 2012 wrote the following :

Life’s Happening Here!

I must, straight out, confess that I do not have ‘green fingers’ – in fact I am an ‘angel of death’ to plants, I have ‘killed’ even potted cactus plants.  Thus, I have never given a second thought about helping out at FGT’s Vegetable Garden.

However, when I received Chui Fang’s email invitation to come visit the Vegetable Garden, her blog dated 9 July 2012 piqued my interest.  The plants were growing - growing BIG, and the evidence were in the photos.  There was an air of excitement.  Hey, God is on the move there… I needed to go take a look at what God’s doing over there…

So after our 6.00am prayers on Saturday morning, Chui Fang invited us over to the garden.  “Yes, I will come visit the garden, but look see only ya…”, I obliged.  After a quick breakfast with the regular breakfast gang, and as promised, I dropped by at the vege patch.  There were already a number of people there hard at work.

Phui Yee proudly and enthusiastically gave me a grand tour of the patch - she first introduced me to the Thai Basil plants.  I plucked a leaf (with permission, of course) and smelt it – strong licorice-like smell.  Phui Yee tells me that these were different from the basil used for Italian cooking… “oh I see”…

The (current) star of the patch would be the okra plants, which were growing very well indeed.  Big luscious green leaves and lots of fruit buds, promising a bountiful harvest.  There were earlier attacks on the leaves by crickets and the likes, but the attacks have been successfully fended off using  natural insecticide – ground chilies and onions, sprayed over the plants. Interesting information, I learnt something new today... 

The spring onions have all sprung up and were ready to go.  The potato leaves will soon be ready for the dinner table too.  However, the Roselle plants weren’t quite ‘rosy’ yet, and the squat banana tree stood alone.

There was furious work going on at the far end; a growing army of pineapple plants were being assembled over there.     

At the end of the tour, there was, of course, the invitation to come join the jolly farmers in their labour of love on the land.  “Errr…. Sorry, not today folks.  Got to run soon…”.  But as a gesture of support to these earnest people of the land, what could a red-blooded charismatic prayer intercessor do? Pray lah!  So, I called upon our Heavenly Father and released a prayer of blessings, fruitfulness and protection over the land; may it yield 30, 60 and 100-fold in harvest!  Hallelujah! Life’s Happening Here!

We are glad to say that Mei Lin is now committed to FGT Green Fingers and started work on the land last Saturday, 4th August 2012. No more 'look see'. :) Welcome on board!

As this post is being written, we are glad to announce that our Roselle plants are budding.

Phui Yee had to do much to convince
Mei Lin to join us!

One Sunday morning, Lay Kheng decided to drop by and see for herself the plants that we are growing.

So excited was she, that she wanted to have a picture taken in the garden and commented:

"Good job by the Green Fingers! Am impressed with the variety of plants especially the extra huge lady's finger plant as well as the hard work which has been put in to prepare the land for planting. Keep up the good work."

While showing Lay Kheng around, Chin Chin joined us, also thrilled.

"I was green with envy for those of you with green fingers! Can't wait to sell vege at CAREmart..."

Well Chin Chin, we hope that we can meet the market demand. :)

Lay Kheng & Chin Chin with her adorable
girl & our Star Okra plants

Always glad for extra hands, we had the wonderful company of Yichieh and Eumelia.

"I hope I did not pull a vegetable plant instead..."

"Not only am I cute, I can work too!"

To those whom we did not mention, be assured that you are not forgotten. Thank you for coming and giving us your support in your own ways - praising us (we glow in compliments!), buying our produce, giving us seeds and seedlings etc... We appreciate you and please come again!

Okra

Our okra plants are our pride and joy currently.

We watched them grow from seeds and they just grew and grew bigger everyday. Then one day we discovered buds forming, after which a beautiful flower appeared one day. The flower, which has 5 yellow petals and a purplish heart does not last more than a day.

The excitement continues when we see the baby okra, and boy, do they grow fast. We have been harvesting the okra and the longest we had so far is the 1st one and it's a whopping 12" in length! Yay!

The Okra flower in bloom in the morning

Before the day is over, it will curl up in this manner

The Okra itself at about 4" in length.
Above it is a flower bud.

 

Our first-fruit cutting ceremony

Ps. Hong Seng, the first to harvest
the first-fruit

Wondering what we are to do with just one Okra!

Ist week harvest!

Okra dish in Nyonya style!

Spring Onions

Harvest time!

We harvested a big bunch of spring onions last Saturday, 14th July 2012. Ling Beng planted, watered, harvested, bought and cooked them.

Harvesting the Spring Onions

Close-up view of the spring onions

Now, to feast our eyes on the dishes she made with the spring onions... yummy!

Stir-fried with taugeh

Cooked with chicken and cashew nuts

Used as garnishing on steamed fish

Truly very mouth-watering dishes...

We had a good weekend and watch out for more postings this week!

Planting Pineapples

You don't really know Uncle Fah Shin until you know how skilled he is in food cultivation.

Hello! This is Phui Yee.

Last week Uncle Fah Shin brought seven pineapple plants from his home to be added to the garden. These were originally "suckers" (shoots that grow from leaf axils of the pineapple stem) which were later grown in polybags.

The experienced gardener also brought dried palm leaves to create mulch and trap moisture for these babies. He said this palm is also the same one that makes the Chinese traditional hand fan... the ones your Ah Ma or Ah Kong used to have. (the fan that gave me a good night's sleep whenever electricity went off when I was young.)

Michael was clearly a big help around the garden that day. Over refreshments afterwards we were teasing him about something but Uncle Fah Shin quickly came to his aide. Allies form quickly at the garden, aye.

With all the pineapples in place, and our arms bearing zig-zagged scratches from the spiky leaves, we were super happy just looking at them.

Meanwhile, just a quick updates on a few other plants:

The okra plants are flourishing despite a few earlier ones were chomped off by hungry crickets. These plants are unbelievably huge (okay la I admit this is only my second time seeing an adult okra plant this close). A certain visitor came and asked us where did we transplant the okra plants from... Ahem, we grew them  from seeds right here in this garden! (Hehe, as you see, visitors make us tremendously happy so all you people who have not been to our farm of late please come!) 

 

Ling Beng said the spring onion are ready for harvesting. She planted these from three shallots a few weeks ago. I said we should sell them but she replied, "Spring onion are given free when people buy vegetables la." No way the Penangite in me's gonna allow that. NO. We SELL spring onion, yes. :)

The sweet potato leaves are also calling us to eat them... soon.

We'll soon have some pumpkin soup to go along with it too. Hello, babies!!

We are soon reaching the edge of the strip of land we initially plan to confine the garden to. I suppose we will be growing on a bigger patch in the coming weeks. We welcome everyone in FGT to join us! Bring your friends and family along lah. There's a children's patch that you can teach your kids how to care for plants and watch them grow too. :)

If you're not yet on our mailing list please leave us a comment below and we'll let you know our next gardening date and time.

See ya at the garden!

Growth Spurts

A week is just made of seven days and yet so much can happen in within this short period of time.

To our amazement the okra plants are getting fuller and sturdier and so are the roselle ones. Our citronella plants are muliplying as are our sweet potato leaves. However, the most apparent change goes to the baby banana shoot. It's amazing how it has grown and we have the photos to prove it.

Besides crickets, we have grasshoppers as well. Managed to kill one and there were teenier ones about, just about 6-8mm in length and extremely difficult to catch. We need to eradicate them!

We are also testing out a Smart Water product. It's some clear beads which will expand and hold water in the soil. Hopefully this will give enough moisture to our pandan plants.

Thanks, Joel for taking the pictures!

Okra Plants

Baby banana shoot , picture taken
23rd June 2012

Baby banana shoot, picture taken
1st July 2012

Brinjal seedlings

Pride of ownership -
Okra planted by Joel,
Picture taken by Joel

The top 2 plants are Roselles,
circled plant on bottom left is the
one planted by Joel