Cucumber farm

Five minutes walk from my house, there is a small cucumber farm. Well, the real estate where I live is surrounded by vegetable farms and rice fields actually. :D Vegetable farmers usually grow cucumbers, long beans, bitter gourds, amaranth spinach, water spinach, chilies etc, not the plants that need cold weather like carrots, cabbages, etc here. Most of the farm land has been bought by the property developer though. So in a matter of years, the farms will be gone piece by piece turning into a new cluster of houses. But right now, I'm happy there are still vegetable farms near where I live. This way I can buy some fresh veggies cheaper than the ones sold in the market place.

The cucumber farm that I visited was almost in its expiration date. In the next few days, the plants will be killed with roundup herbicides. I just hope I can stock enough for a week or maybe two. :D Here's a pic of the farm:

Most of the harvested cucumbers were very young fruits. The one that I held on the pic below was considered too big for the marketplace where the farmer sold his harvest. He picked young ones like those are usually made into dill pickles in a jar. But I'm fine with this size, it's still young enough to eat it whole with its seeds. Younger ones are sweeter but the farmer said I could even take the big ones for free! YAY! Great snacks for me and my birds! Since all of us like to chew something now and then, cucumbers are great to satisfy our habits without making us fat! :D

Here are some cucumbers that I picked myself at the farm. I will go there and pick more daily until the farmer decided to cull the plants. :) Btw, it's only 1$ for 3 kg of cucumbers! Plus the big ones are free, and I've found a reason to leave my PC for a while and walk under the sun! :D

 

Could you tell me about cucumbers in your area? Like, what species that people grow there and how much are they in the marketplace?  Thanks! :D

Growing rosella in pots

Rosella (Roselle) is hibiscus related plant but its flower is not very big and will bloom for just a couple hours in the morning, so it's definitely not a very attractive plant to have for its beauty. Here's a pic of a rosella flower blooming. The color is pink but there are some that's more white/yellow.

 

One of the popular purposes of growing rosella is for harvesting its sepals. Once the flowers wilted, the seed capsule will grow big along with the sepals, like the pics below:

 

After 2 weeks, you can snip off the flower stem, harvesting the red sepals and you can use them for tea after you remove the seed capsules.

Put some rosella sepals in hot water, 6 sepals for a cup of tea, you can add rose petals too if you like. Let it set for 5 minutes or until the water color has changed into bright red. Don't boil the water with the sepals, it will ruin the vitamin C the tea is famous for. Pour into a cup, straining the sepals/petals out.

 

There you have a pretty red rosella tea ready to drink. The taste is a bit sour. It's like lemon infused water. The more sepals you use, the more sour the taste will be. :)

Try growing a few pots of rosella at once so you can have a cup of this red tea everyday. They are easy to grow and will grow very fast as long as they have enough sun shine. :)

Growing red okra and red long bean in pots

At the fresh market place where I live, people usually sell the green okra pods and green long bean, so when I found someone sells some seeds of the red variants, I was eager to have them for my porch plants. They grow really fast, especially the okras. After being cooked, the red okras will turn green and the red long bean will turn purple. They both have pretty flowers too. Okras are from the same family of hibiscus plants, thus their flowers look alike. Below are some pics of them:

  

 

Growing melons in pots

Melons and cantaloupes can be grown in pots. Although the number of the fruits must be limited into 1 or 2 most per pots so that the size and the sweetness can be maxed out. Here were the 2 young melon plants that I grew from seeds.

 

I put them near my fence and use it as their climbing trellis. They grew up fast and I could see their male and female flowers blooming everywhere.

 

Soon they bear a fruit. Here's what a very young fruit look like. It was as big as a kiwi.

 

Once the fruit had gotten big, I made a net from plastic rope to help the vine with the fruit weight.

 

Each plant has 1 big fruit now.

 

One of them had the texture of its skin shown off, while the other had just started.

But, my melons got attacked by aphids and root bugs. They died quickly in just a few days like my cherry tomatoes before. It was very disheartening because the fruits have gotten more than 1 kg each. :( But they were still too young to be eaten... I guess I'll stick to crop/plants that's more resistant to bugs because I don't want to use pesticide. Have you ever grown melons? What melon variety is your favorite? The ones I grew here are green-fleshed cantaloupe melons which are commonly sold in our fruit market. :)

Growing red and green amaranth spinach in pots

Hi, Gardeners! Today I'd like to talk about the amaranth plants (Amaranthus spp) which is locally known as spinach in Indonesia. There are some species of amaranth that we use to cook as vegetables here, but the most common sold in the market place is the green and the red ones. My favorite of those two is the red amaranth. Besides more nutritious than the green one due to its red color (beta carotene), red amaranth is easier to grow and very fast to generate new leaves that can be harvested again in 2 weeks! I grow my amaranth in pots and I grow them from lower stalks that have roots. People here selling amaranth in a bundle and they usually still have roots. I just cut the stalks 10 cm above the root, dipping them in vitamin B12 for 3 hours and plant them in rich soil. Put the pots in shaded place for 3 days and gradually introduce them to the sun. Here are some red amaranth ready to harvest! :)

Below are some green amaranth in various ages that I grow from seeds. You can also grow them from the fresh stalks like I do with the red ones above. :)

Here's a close up look on a bunch of amaranth that I have just harvested for quick cooking with instant noodle. :D Eating instant noodle can be more nutritious if you throw an egg and some vegetables in it. Amaranth leaves are nutritionally similar to beets, Swiss chard and spinach, but are much superior. For example amaranth leaves contain three times more calcium and three times more niacin (vitamin B3) than the usual spinach leaves you eat. Amaranth is my favorite choice, besides the mustard green! :D

Harvested some more red amaranth, clean them and put them inside a tight closed plastic container and put it in a refrigerator. They can stay fresh for a few days. :)

And these yummy looking snack are green amaranth leaves that I fried with flour and spices. They are very crispy, and maybe more healthy than potato chips? :D They are still very greasy though. Have you had any experiences growing some spinach? What kind of spinach do you grow? Please comment below! Thanks. :)

A yellow butterfly landing on my hand

A few month ago when I started gardening I experienced what some of you might have, a butterfly landing on your hand. I was out to my porch with my pocket camera to take photos of my water spinach sprouts. After one or two photos, there came this tiny yellow butterfly that flying around me and my pots.

It lands on me when I gave it my hand. I wonder it was Pocky's spirit who wanted to say hello. Pocky was my little lovebird who passed away years ago. I know butterflies represent the spirits of our passed away family members, friends or pets. But that month was not his hatch day or his death anniversary month... so maybe I thought too much... :D

Here's a clear photo of the butterfly, it was resting on the ground. I wonder if it was a female one and she was actually laying eggs on the ground. I read some butterflies lay eggs on dirt instead of the leaves. Do you know what species is this one? I went back into my house to get honey and I offered it with a toothpick but the butterfly didn't want it. :P The photo of me offering the honey was very blurry so I didn't post it here. But it was the same way with how I fed a dragonfly on my previous blog post. Btw, do you know they can refuse food with their tiny feet? It's like a cat who refuses a kiss by putting their paws on your lips. :D

What pesticide do you use for your plants?

Me? I don't use chemical pesticides at all because it smells so strong, I'm afraid it will affect my birds' health although they live indoor. I grew 2 cherry tomatoes in pots and they grew pretty good to the blooming stage till some pests got them :( The infestation was so bad I had to pull out one of them and let the other one lived long enough until the only fruit it had was ripe... Well, at least I still got one tiny tomato for my 1 month work taking care of them! :D The photo below was when they were healthy...

The next pic was after the bug infestation... :(

I've heard about organic pesticide made from spices + vegetable oil. Have you tried it? Do you make one yourself? What ingredients do you use? :)