The story of Amaranth tricolor in our garden

Amaranthus tricolor

or bayam.

young amaranth tricolor 

It all started 2 years ago. Kakdah bought a bunch of tricolor amaranth or simply bayam merah or bayam batik.She picked the leaves for her usual fried menu. I saved the stems as she was about to throw them into the bin. I experimented getting  cuttings of the tricolor amaranth to grow. A few grew.... but they flowered quickly because they were behaving like the original plant which was almost matured. Then our little garden witnessed the most prolific example of reseeding or resowing again and again.

In the kind of weather that we have, and the limited time and space that I have, amaranth has been behaving well in pots and keep producing excellent and healthy veggie.

Amaranthus tricolor is simply the most prolific vegetable that will never leave our garden.

We will soon be heading home, for Raya Holidays. The blog will rest for a week, 
in time to capture changes that may occur 
due the current  active rain spell .

Selamat Hari Raya or Eid ul-Fitr  

bangchik's garden

with amaranth tricolor

So radish offers me seeds

I was reading about blessings that come across the street in Kelly's blog at the end of August in Can you feel it? Now this is about radish, that has been with us for months ever since Gittan introduced it here in Putrajaya  early this year. Growing new veggie always comes in with expectations and adrenalin running high. We are done with the enthusiasm to see if the plant can grow here, how to cook and so on.

I have been waiting with this. It is about blessings not in form of seed packets from the supermarket but to actually see seed pods on a single radish plant.

I can see 3 seeds developing in the pod on the left

the little pods on the right are empty I think.

radish were still small, April this year.

After 5 months one plant continues to maturity, producing seeds, while the rest were taken young for their lovely bulb and some died along the way. I may just wait a while longer until the seed pod turns brown and about to split open.

bangchik

on radish

Bittergourd joining Garden to Table

a ripe bitter gourd

seeds are coated with red flesh

the red flesh surrounding the seeds 
must be the best shade of red I ever seen.
( I collected five good seeds from this fruit)

The seeds are saved for next planting, the bottom half goes to the blender with carrots and orange for a unique colourful fruit juice. The top half is used for a simple fried bitter gourd (goreng peria). Ingredients include, onions, dry chili, and tempeh.  (Tempeh or tempe in Indonesian, is made by a natural culturing and controlled fermentation process that binds soybeans into a cake form. 

bangchik