Darling Just Dive Right in and Follow My Lead

I have finally secured myself a red magnolia. I hope to have a better luck this time. It did seem to have a good start as after I stripped all the leaves, the bud began leafing again after a day.

Honey Dijon is very quickly becoming my favourite rose. She also has a faint pleasing scent.

Ad for my platyceriums... 

The maidenhair fern that I almost lost flourished again.

Cotton bud. How cute is that?! I have not repotted them so the cotton plants are very leggy but they are forming buds.

My sunflower patch that never materialise. Will be clearing the area soon. 

The Kauka Wilder tree has been pretty happy I suppose as she is flowering massively.

The phantom bougainvillea near the veg patch finally bloomed. It's a pretty orange-hued one.

Now let's talk about the Plot to Happiness. I've totally neglected it as I was very occupied with my wedding preparation and then at the same time, there's a bun in the oven. I'm in my 15th week this week and finally started to feel like a human again. So I cleared the forsaken patch, and covered with the weed-blocker. I think I will take a break for now.

I harvested the white radish a couple of weeks ago but they are still in the fridge.

Yesterday I harvested the carrots. Many of fellow gardeners in my FB group were impressed by the size of them as it is known that carrots grown in (lowland) Malaysia are tiny and thin. I believed that they could have been bigger as I stopped caring for them since November.

They are our dinner tonight. Not only they smelled so good when I pulled them out, they tasted amazing raw.

 As I was clearing the patch, I pulled out many tiny sweet potato tubers. What the heck, I really thought it was a failure as I pulled most of them out in December and all I got was 2 alright-sized tubers.

Quite motivated by how well my carrots did, I sowed some again in the same pots and moved them to the front instead. At the same time when I was rummaging through my seeds that I kept in the fridge. I felt a surge to plant things again but I do doubt that I won't have the time to care for it so maybe I will just use the planters I have to plant some greens.

Look at this cute pineapple!

Seedless guava sapling from my sister's boyfriend's family tree has grown a flower bud. Truth be told, I've been eating a lot of guava lately.

Phantom Gourd and the Rest

The phantom gourd creeper grew a fruit today and I found out it's luffa/petola, one of my favorite veggie. That means, I have to fertilize it and wonder if I should move it to the patch. I mean there's some free space on the patch now. I pulled the red okra today when I saw them infected with something. One Japanese cucumber plant and french died. So I think I can grow this next to the french bean.

I finally made something with the first cucumber that I harvested - cucumber yogurt sauce for grilled fish today. I'm leaving the second cucumber to seed and harvested 2 cucumbers.

Sun was in full force today my carrots withered. I pulled one out and it was quite fat but short. 

So I noticed one zucchini plant grows a lot of female while the other two don't,

A couple more young fruit rotted.

My neglected seedlings. Those are spinach, leek and more spinach. The 3 newspaper pots were chili, they didn't germinated.

Another tray of neglected seedlings. Front to back: Giant Italian parsley and coriander, tomato with parsley, etiolated white radish, onion and Columbine with 2 rogue strawflowers.

I still haven't move the cotton plants to the ground. I really should but the mosquitoes are really crazy right now it's discouraging me from going out there.

My patch. Zucchini and sweet potato are overgrown, another cabbage head kaputted by insect. I accidentally pulled out the kailan that's growing seed pods. It was on my way.

Fruits section is doing not too bad - Longan is still at flowering stage.

At least6 jackfruits are fattening up on the tree. I really wish I know when to harvest because the first one that I harvested didn't even form fruit inside.

Mulberry shrubs are shooting shoots with a lot of fruit in vengeance.

Herb patch is also pretty wild. The latest addition - rosemary is not doing ok.

Harvest of the day.

Edibility

The blueberry didn't survive. I'm sad.

The cotton plants should be ready for transplant.

This particular zucchini plant has 3 fruits but 2 of them seem to be rotting from the butt.

The very neglected radish.

Multi-headed cabbage.

Perfection.

First Japanese cucumber is fattening up.

French beans ready to be harvested

Longan!

The mulberries growing buds so quickly after hard prune. I hope they will fruit in time for the visiting future in-laws.

New Acquirement & Mess

 So I was away for almost 2 weeks and I came back to a huge mess of a patch, dying seedlings and bald rose plants. Some of strawflower, most of the 2 parsleys and all my sage seedlings died. Am pretty sad about this. Let's talk about something else, my plot to happiness.

Look how much they have grown! Oh, the grass and weeds were overtaking the plot though.

The lettuce have grown quite a bit too! Those are cotton plants in single pots. Should be transplanting to ground soon.

My blueberry is drowning. It's been raining very heavily lately. Quite a bad idea to plant it in this Ikea hole-less pot so I've transferred it to a regular pot. 

I've cut down the sweet potato which was overtaking the plot. I think I should be able to harvest the potatoes soon too.

The greens that I chopped off.

This poor cabbage seedling etiolated after being covered by the sweet potato.

Many of my bean plants died including all of the berlotti beans before I left due to the hot weather. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that 2 french beans survived and are flowering. It has to be the sweet potato greens that spread all the way and covered the ground.

The red okras decided to grow pods when I was not around so I came back to many overgrown pods. I will save seeds.

Didn't expect the Japanese cucumbers to flower so soon. It looked like I'm gonna have a lot of cucumbers.

 Carrots are doing pretty well too. 

Magda Zucchini are growing pretty wild, one of them grew very big but her flowers are dropping so I cut her smaller. I noticed the smaller plant does better with the flowers.

The chinese kale ave overgrown and some have bolted. I will try to save their seeds.

Broccoli is growing steadily and in different pace as if I did successive planting which I didn't. 

The cabbages are also growing as if it was a succession planting (no it's not) but one of the cabbages multiplied on the head after the bud was attacked by some slug.

This is the textbook bud - hopefully it will start to form the head.

 Transplanted some of heirloom tomato seedlings before I left but only one survived. I reassigned the berlotti bean plot to tomato and I used the weed mat. Maybe the weed mat absorbed too much heat.

I'm letting an Edamame plant to seed.

  

Harvest! Plucked most of the red okras and some edamame for snack. Only a couple of the red okras are edible, the rest will be seeds meanwhile edamame was extremely yummy after a quick boil and tossed with salt! The best!

The big daddy.

Sigh. My seedling trays.

 My sole radish plant. Sowed and transplanted some seedlings before I left but that time was just too hot. I should sow more.

The plot after cleanup.

Mexican Giant sunflower didn't turn out to be giant!? Look how tiny they are! They are no more than 3 feet.

Anyway! My loot from the trip

These packets are pretty as heck!

Perennial Bloom Mixture:
1. Basket of Gold (Sp) 2%
2. Black-Eyed Susan (S/F) 2%
3. Blanketflower (S/F) 7%
4. Candytuft (Sp) 6%
5. Carnation, Double (S) 6% %
6. Columbine, McKana (Sp) 2%
7. Coneflower, Pink (S/F) 5%
8. Coneflower, White (S/F) 1%
9. Coreopsis, Lance-leaved (S) 4%
10. Dianthus, Spring Beauty (Sp) 4%
11. Daisy, Shasta, Alaska (S) 4%
12. Forget-Me-Not, Woodland (Sp/S) 2%
13. Gayfeather (S/F) 6%
14. Lupine, Bigleaf (Sp/S) 28%
15. Mexican Hat (S/F) 1%
16. Moss Verbena (S) 4%
17. Oxeye Sunflower (S) 8%
18. Penstemon, Rocky Mt. (S/F) 3%
19. Wallflower, Siberian (Sp) 5%
(from Botanical Interests)