Unexpected Dinner

All thanks to Odyssey, we had microgreens, which were my bokchoy seedlings,  for dinner.

 On another note, I harvested my basil to make pesto. I'm thinking to replace the overgrown and gone-wild basil with my new seedlings.

Little Update

I was away for the week for work so I didn't do much except germinating some basil genovese seeds before I left (only 3 of them germinated).

After coming back, I prepped the kaffir lime seeds from the kaffir limes I got from my dad's tree and germinated them. Outer layer of the seeds were peeled off and I soaked them in wet paper towel for germination.

Speaking of my dad, his plot currently is full of pumpkin seedlings that grew out from my brother's compost it's hilarious. My dad grows mostly fruit trees and ornamental plants- mango, malabar plum (sweet-smelling fruit that's very susceptible to worms!), kaffir lime, apple mint, desert rose (whole lot of them!) and orchids. I recently gave him a lemon tree which flourished under Lumut's sun. I also introduced My Lestary Seeds to my brother so there's a huge possibility they might start growing vegetables. I hope they do. :)

 My lemon tree finally died so I cleared it to plant my avocado seedling.

Update on my self-watering system using wine bottle with my hydrangea- well, it didn't work, my hydrangea was so dehydrated. However an hour of watering, it bounced back. I am definitely going to invest in an Ikea self-watering pot as I will be away for a week after Christmas and I don't want to put the hydrangea in stress again.

Other than that, my potatoes are growing away but my kohlrabi seeds aren't. Heh. Might be placing a new order from My Lestary Seeds since I have higher success rate with her seeds although I will point out that only one lavender seed germinated.

Since I will be going away again soon, I will be putting off germinating some of the lettuce seeds.

Successful Start

I harvested some seeds from two mini plum tomatoes which I bought from the store on last week  and left them for fermentation. I let the seeds fermented longer (recommended was 3 days I did it for almost one week).  Seed drying took 3 days and I had 8 seeds germinated on a wet paper towel and guess what? 75% of them started to grow root. 

Germinated seeds today. So happy to see those tiny root.

Seeds being dried out on baking paper.

The two garlics have sprouted.

 The brown 'root' turned out to be the sprout. Interesting that it grew upright from the bottom.

The third avocado pit has split and you can see the sprout already. The second one showed a slight split.

Potatoes chitted rather nicely. The sprouts should be in green with purple base. The potato at 5 o'clock wasn't meant be chitted but it sprouted in the kitchen and the shoots are pale - not really a good one but I will try it anyway.

Happiness is Seeing Them Grow and Healthy

Finally cut my first two hydrangea blooms and vased them. I didn't cut them immediately as I wanted to find out how long can the bloom last and let me tell you - it can last more than a month on the plant!

The third bloom and possibly the largest head - it was shocking pink when it's at its peak.

I've been hooked on hortchannels on YT especially this and it inspired me even more to work on my own kitchen garden.

The tomato seeds and poppy seeds that I tried germinating failed. I gave up on poppies but I'm trying another technique for the tomatoes - seed saving by fermenting tomato seeds from fresh ripe tomatoes that I bought from the local supermarket (I chose mini plum variety).

I'm also chitting some Aussie potatoes. A quick Google tells me it's a white variety - could be a Nadine or a Coliban (probably the latter, I have no idea!). I chose the potatoes that already have little shoots but some of them are black, I hope the potatoes were no treated.

My single garlic plant is doing pretty well and I'm looking forward to harvest it next June. I've also planted two more garlic cloves today. I should start to find out on how to cure them since I've already know how to plait them. 

I'm so impressed by elephant garlic but I don't think I have ever seen any here. One bulb can feed the whole village!