Blooming Friday

Year 2010 is divided into two phases, before Putrajaya and after Putrajaya. Putrajaya has been our home for almost three years. With 2 months left in year 2010 I have to say goodbye to Putrajaya, and slowly get my hands and feet into Tanah Merah, Kelantan. The obsession with gardening never fades....

Basil has been very central to our container gardening, quietly letting out  slightly purplish   little flowers and puts up pagoda like structure reaching for the sky. The leaves had gone into Kakdah's menu for aromatic taste many times.

The plant goes by many names; bunga bakawali in Malaysia, wijaya kusuma in Indonesia, Queen of the night, Night-blooming Cereus, Dutchman's Pipe, Gul-e-Bakavali  in Hindi, Kadupul in Sinhala. Bunga Bakawali is in fact a cactus. It has been with us since April 2010. Now the plant is letting a bud..., and God knows when it is going to open. It has been reported that the blooming stage starts off around 9.00pm, fully opens around midnight and closes around 3.00am. It opens only for one night. The famous Arabian Nights mentioned about the Rose of Bakawali, There is mystic behind this flower at least in this part of the world. I am not going to miss the rare and one-night-only-bloom.

 

Oxalis Triangularis:  The plant never stop flowering. Now that the weather is so wet, the flowers stay closed and heavy.

The slight purplish colour is so pleasing.

 luffa offers nocturnal insects nectar
in return for pollination for future generation.

 On the other hand bittergourd
prefers daylight to display it's yellow five petaled flowers.

bangchik and kakdah.

bunga, kebun sayur dalam taman

tanah merah kelantan

vegetables on raised bed

Rhythm of life is somewhat different now , more because it is only two of us staying in Tanah Merah home. Whenever I have to go outstation, kakdah has to join, leaving the whole garden to fend themselves. Two days without rain is enough to yellow any delicate plants. For now, I really have to go slow with vegetable gardening.... But some plants are enjoying secluded spot, with just a few hours of sun . So no watering for a couple of days wont hurt them.....

Angled Luffa or Petola is something new to me. They germinated fast, with 100 percent success. Now they are crawling up the white stakes. The solitary bitter gourd seems to be doing fine. Honey dew seedlings are not so lucky. Bugs mutilated their tender leaves to the veins. No choice, they have to be pulled out.

Trellis. I have to thank Ahmad, Anwar and PakNgah for their help, in setting up the structure. Trellis is something we cant happily do alone.... I have come to a point where, whatever I do with vegetable gardening should satisfy certain criteria. Tanah Merah is not used to seeing white painted bamboo stakes as trellis...... I suppose Tanah Merah is about to see new things...

angled luffa or petola
green and healthy.

petola climbing up

another petola climbing up

trellis for angled luffa or petola,
all painted white.

bitter gourd, 

same age as petola on another trellis

both trellis, 

one for six angled luffa or petola and another one for bitter gourd. Bamboo stakes for bitter gourd are not painted.


Sand was earlier added and mixed thoroughly with the clayey red soil. Peat soil was also added to soften the soil. Fertiliser has always been poultry pellets. Occasionally I will spray liquid fertiliser to the leaves.

 bangchik and kakdah

home vegetable gardening, Tanah Merah

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

Yellowing of leaves.

It is not necessarily a pest or disease issue that a plant foliage turns yellow. These disorders may be caused by environmental factors which includes too much scorching sun and lack of nutrients. But there is another natural factor that plants had to go through, AGING PROCESS. A plant, come to a time, will have to go. Our bitter gourd plants are going through just that. The whole plants, foliage and all are yellowing, new leaves getting a lot smaller, a few gourds are still dangling, probably the last. The two plants have been doing well, producing exotic fruits again and again. But now is time to go.

 The whole bittergourd plant is yellowing.

Soon the site will be allowed to rest for a while, first to allow a few periwinkle to establish themselves and a few winged beans probably as ground cover to reestablish the nitrogen prowess of the soil. But again a plan may change....

bangchik

Art in the garden.

a butterfly viewed from the top

a butterfly from the side

tendril and its shadow
for a bittergourd plant.

definitely not an ordinary tendril.....
for a bittergourd plant

Oh, we can define art in many ways.
Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings
Art is the human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.
Art is the high quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value.
Art is a male personal name, both in its own right and as a diminutive form of the common name Arthur.

Interestingly
I found one definition of gardening as the art and craft of growing plants.

where is art in your garden?
bangchik

bitter gourds; a perspective

picture 1

picture 2

picture 3

looking up.
picture 4

The whole bitter gourd plants are lightweight in nature and look. The two plants climb up and spread at the top of the trellis with the help of flexible tendrils. Tendrils just grab anything in sight, most on the bamboo structure but sometime on their own stems and stalks.  The fruits are allowed to hang and by doing so the fruits will develop nicely and proportionately unless beetles choose to bore at some stage of the development. Some branches that has gone out of the way and fall, require our help to put them back where they are suppose to be... going up and rest on the trellis.  A branch was more adventurous by stretching far and get attached to the hibiscus nearby. I have to entangle that..

Watering is still twice everyday, morning and evening.  Fertiliser is once every fortnight, poultry pellets and liquid fertiliser spray. So far insects shy away from bitter gourd plants. Beetles that have been munching cucumber  leaves are very busy there, and have not considered bitter gourds their second home. Yesterday Kakdah took one gourd, and fried the sliced gourd with shrimps. Tasty!
At the moment there are 8 fruits dangling at various stage of maturity.

When ever there is wind,
the fruits will sway sweetly,
welcoming the rare visit of natural friend.

bangchik

bitter gourds: the male flowers

a male flower

a male flower

a male flower

a male bud

a male flower

with many male buds

queuing for their turn to make appearance

Bitter gourd plants look very pretty when yellow flowers start to emerge. Most never end as fruits. These are the male flowers. The plant decides early which flower should end up having fruit.  The chosen flower will emerge with elongated and bulging stalk with flower bud at the tip. The lucky female flower is lucky indeed to be surrounded by many males.....

what's so exotic about bittergourds

exotic

a bitter gourd hanging nicely

another bittergourd

the intricate design

the leaves

flower, partly hidden

tendrils

the little bitter gourd

the flower, so soft and delicate

The last post on bitter gourds was done on Monday, June 14, 2010 with the title 
Bitter gourds are blooming and fruiting.

Within a week, the fruits  really grow and take the shape and the look of a matured fruit. The whole look of the plant is very soft and delicate. The plant itself is lightweight, and resting on the trellis without any real pressure on the light bamboo frame. I am beginning to see the exotic nature of bitter gourds....

So far, pests has been shying away from the plant. The smell coming the plant is almost identical to marigolds and tomato.  We can walk blindfolded through the garden and can really recognize the smell coming bitter gourds. The aroma is exotic!


Once the fruit is ready to be plucked, 
I will do a post, 
and show the inside of a bitter gourd, the secret of its beauty,
definitely another glimpse of paradise.

bangchik

bitter gourds swelling with art.

It is the surface that is really attractive. The design is artistric, no doubt about it. Nature seldom offer reasons for its design, and the best we can do is to appreciate and seek peace in its artistic great design.

Fashionable Tendrils of cucumbers and gourds

Bitter gourds are blooming and fruiting.

bitter gourds

It was early in the morning just around 7.45am. The sun had waken up, blinking and hiding behind houses. I was about to make a move to the office.  Light is not enough to capture bitter gourds well, for the sleepy sun had not opened up its eyes fully.  Lately, the office is going through its toughest phase, thus requiring me to get home late.I decided to capture the progress of bitter gourds at that very moment. It's now or never.

The plants had grown up and rest on top of the trellis. Flowers were emerging, some had developed baby fruits in its elemental stage. Some flowers are males, thus lacking the bulging stalks. It really warmed Kakdah's mood, to see plants maturing and ready to give birth. It is much quicker than anticipated.

the plant resting on top of the trellis

baby bitter gourd with flower at its end.

baby gourd with flower wide open.

 baby gourds

flower had dried up, and the fruit will continue to bulge.

 the sterile flower.

the sterile flower

 baby gourd

 bangchik

bittergourds are reaching out.

two bittergourd plants climbing up.

the tendrils

the exotic looking leaves.

the tiny bud is a hint of readiness to bloom.

the plant is getting higher

The two plants are settling down fine I think. It is now just a matter of time for the flowers to appear. With bitter gourd, it is easy to identify flowers that will bear fruits, because we can see the mini fruit behind the flower bud. I can start counting future earnings now with bitter gourds. We cannot do the same with other plants where fruits will develop after flowering.

bangchik

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