Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Allowing vegetable bed to rest

I am not really into timing when i work through the garden. There is no specific timing like summer, autumn, winter and spring to make us very calculative on timing. So Gardening is very much like putting in new plants to replace the old. Grasshopper is still a menace in our garden. So in a few sections of the garden, beans are planted to deprive grasshoppers of their leafy veggie diet. I notice grasshoppers are not into leaves of beans. The vegetable will rest for a while, and the soil will regain its nitrogen prowess through roots of beans.

 Kale is defenseless against grasshoppers. 
Its sweet green leaves is too soft for the sharp razor-like teeth of grasshoppers. I have fluffed the soil around kale and sow 4 sweet peas seeds. The two black plastic markers are quite visible in the photo. They are meant to remind me where to expect the new seedlings.

Ulam raja are the only plants left. 
The rest are all pulled out which include ground nuts, radish, tomato and marigolds. So this is the site for the three sisters garden. The seeds are sown as planned. Within a week or so, little seedlings will appear. Ulam raja is still blooming, so i thought it should be allowed to stay a little bit longer. The moment the three sisters seedlings are showing the little shoots, ulam raja will go. I have collected a lot of ulam raja seeds. The other day, Charim, Fazidah, Fauzi and Rokiah came over for a visit with their kids. They went home with lot of ulam raja seeds...


 bangchik

9 comments:

  1. Your kale is gone? Oh no! No more veggie to cook except ulam raja...

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  2. My garden is in constant attack by aphid and mealy bug! I have seen many white colour flying pest too!
    Hope your three sisters method works well! Hope to see your seedling! I have good idea from your black plastic marker! thanks

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  3. I can hardly fathom being able to garden all year around. I think we would have to curtail our gardening efforts. We always look forward to winter as a time to rest, recuperate, and plan for next spring.
    I tried chard for the first time this year, can you believe it, and now plan on growing some.

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  4. It would be strange for us to be able to grow fruit and vegetables right through the year without changing which type we grow - at least i suppose our winter gives us time to do other things and have a bit of a break.

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  5. My sweet-cones were attacked by young-warms of a hawk moth...leaving them standing dead.

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  6. Gardeners and gardens need rests! I too cannot imagine what it must be like to live in a climate that allows for gardening outdoors year round. I think winter is our forced rest time.

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  7. One
    Yes, I just kissed goodbye to kale on vegetable bed. But those in pots are doing fine. We stripped the lower leaves for "kailan ikan masin", allowing new shoots to keep appearing.

    Malar
    Pests will always be around, in fact garden is a part of their world. Unless we have a very clinical greenhouse, pests will come and migrate. We can reduce them of course.

    Aaron.
    Garden needs a vacation too!!

    Kim and Victoria
    We don't have real winter to stay indoor. Good luck to your chard.

    Green Lane Allotments
    The fact that we are able to grow vegetables non stop, the skill and the necessity to store and pickle them is not fully developed in this part of the world. There are dried and salted fish to last the tropical storm, and this happened out of necessity I think. But seldom with vegetables, except for pickled chili or lobak masin maybe.

    takaeko
    so sorry to hear that. never get too disheartened.

    Jeanne
    A forced vacation or a built-in intervals. For gardening resting period, we do have a choice here, to spread them as we like.. yes, such tropical freedom!

    cheers,
    ~bangchik

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  8. Wow, Bangchik, those ulam raja plants are really tall. Mine is now over 3 feet. Yours...I assume is over 6 feet?

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  9. JC
    well over 6 feet. 9 or 10 is more like it.

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