The Garden: Things are growing

Here's a mostly picture update of the garden veggies. 

Things are growing well, much more green

TOMATOES

The 30 of so tomato plants are doing really well and have started to flower and give fruit. No harvest yet as I'm waiting for them to go red...

Flowering Tomato plants. You can see that I've failed to cut the
"suckers" in time, so the plants are quite bushy.

Tomatoes Lined up in a row

Some fruit showing, hope to have some red juicy tomatoes by next week
especially because their price has doubled in the market :(

CAULIFLOWER

We've got about 100 or so cauliflower that we planted in December. Wow, does cauliflower ever take a long time to grow. They are getting very leafy but no flowers yet!

Cauliflower seedling

Rows and rows of cauliflower to be enjoyed when?

Some are doing better than others. There are about 50 that are very leafy
while the others see stunted and  are being enjoyed by caterpillars, doh!

Most recent pick of one of 3 beds of cauliflower

BROCCOLI

Pretty much the same story are the cauliflower, although I planted these guys in January so they grow much faster. They are getting very leafy but still no flowers yet!

Some broccoli are coming up strong while others are lunch for caterpillars.

Leafy, apparently the locals here harvest the leaves to eat so I've given the go ahead to our Mary and Joseph our security/gardening team to enjoy some for themselves.

PEPPERS

We've got about 40 or so pepper seedlings that are growing well but again the are still fairly small and I've come to terms with the fact that I will likely not be able to enjoy the peppers before we go in May. At any rate, someone will enjoy them!

Green and red pepper seedlings after a couple of weeks

After about 6 weeks....Doesn't look like I will be enjoying them before I go.
Any suggestions on speeding up fruit growth?

One of three beds of peppers

Ok! so I noticed a flower on one of the plants today...maybe I will have peppers before May.

The HERBS

The herbs we have are parsley, coriander, dill, and sage. 

Dill! Thinking of making some pickles with the cucumbers....any good recipes.

Yummy fresh cilantro. Has been used lots for our chili and curry dinners. 

Sage...wow, I didn't expect this plant to get so big...plus I have no idea what recipes to use sage in....any ideas?

Sage flowers

Parsley and Coriander bed

The parsley is a slow herbs but has been problem free and consistent.
 I've harvested it twice now to sell in the local market

One of several parsley and coriander harvests (and radish) to take to the market!

To harvest the seeds of coriander (to use in delicious Indian Cuisine) I had to pluck all the
overgrown and seeding plants and hang them upside-down to dry.

Once they turned from the above greenish to a brown, I had the "fun"task of plucking them by hand one by one..... the thought of a nice dhaniya curry got me through the tediousness.

WATERMELON

"I  have worms" is what I told Danielle after dealing with the first crop of watermelon. Worms had eaten the roots of most of my watermelon crop not to mention that they were the victim of several rain floods and were in a kinda crappy location in the garden (shaded corner). So about 10 plants have succumbed and are dying but luckily I planted another 20 plants in another location which are doing much better and are flowering. Out of all the crops this one is the one I want to enjoy the most, so with fingers crossed I might be able to enjoy a small watermelon by the end of April.

Trying desperately to keep the watermelon alive against root rot, worms, shade and weeds.
Not the best plant to put in the farthest forgotten back corner of the garden.

Second batch of waternelon

Second batch is doing much better and is flowering

CARROTS

Carrots are another plant that I'm hoping to harvest soon. It's hard to tell what is happening below the surface, but about there is alot of green which should be a good sign.

Carrots are showing alot of green.

LETTUCE

I think I went a bit nuts on the lettuce planting. The seed package I had contained hundreds of seeds to I planted several beds of lettuce, perhaps 200 plants in all are now growing well. The leftover seeds I gave to Joseph, our daytime security's husband, who I also hire time to time to help in the garden.

Small lettuce seedling coming up

Instead of waiting until the full head is ready, I'm just harvesting leaf by leaf to have a continuous harvest until we go.

Only leafy lettuce exist here as far as I can see. I'm growing it with dill as they grow well with eachother...apparently.

SPINACH

Well not quite spinach but swiss chard. It is really sketchy that in some areas it is growing really well and others it is stunted or dying...maybe it's the worms again. It is ready to harvest but I'm not really sure how to cook it properly. 

Swiss Chard

Not sure how to consume all this spinach...where's Popeye when you need him?

PUMPKIN

So most all Malawian farmers grow pumpkin with their maize. The maize grows tall and strong and the pumpkin vines climb up the stalks and cover the ground floor keeping things moist and weed free....a kind of symbiotic relationship (I've try to do a bunch of "companion planting" in my garden). Needless to say there are lots of pumpkins in the market at this time of year and so my fruit seller gave me a pumpkin to try. After using the pumpkin I thought, hey why not throw these seed in the garden and see what happens.  To my surprise a few days later seedlings were showing and now the pumpkin patch below is out of control and starting to flower. Pumpkin pie anyone?

Pumpkin patch from a pumpkin I got in the market.

Starting to flower

Second pumpkin patches

RHUBARB

I had to grow some rhubarb as it is Danny's favorite. It is very rare here as only select expat's buy it but luckily I found a guy who sold me some seedlings. 

Rhubarb, one of 3 plants that survived the worms

STRAWBERRIES

Yum! Bought 60 or so seedlings which are growing well and are starting to produce fruit. Hoping to have enough for some jam.

CUCUMBERS

Cucumber patch is growing really so well that I planted
another 70 plants around and outside the garden.

OK, so out of all the plants, the cucumbers are doing the best. They grow easily, no hassle, and are producing tons of cucumbers after only 6-8 weeks. There are doing so well that I planted about 70 other seeds around the garden which are all doing well.

Little cukes coming up

Pickle sized cucumbers, almost ready to harvest.

Doing some companion planting as the locals do to save on garden space, the corn is a naturally trellis for cucumbers to climb up on and produce dangling fruit which reduces rot,  and the vines cover the ground to suppress weeds and keep in the moisture. Besides that I added some easy growing radishes in between to keep away the cucumber beetle and corn borers. Thanks Google for the info!

Freshly picked english cucumber!

First cucumber harvest gave about 20 cucumbers with a second harvest of the same amount.

Off to the market to trade these veggies for onions, carrots, broccoli and basil.

RADISH

Radishes grow easily, are hassle free and are needed in the market, so I've planted another three beds of them and wherever there is a bit of extra space in the garden. If you want to see some ruby red radishes, check out my last garden posts.

Planting radishes wherever I have extra room

CORN

So why plant corn when literally everyone plants corn...well not exactly corn, but maize. Maize is a white corn that isn't very sweet and whose kernels are very tough. On a couple of occasions I bought some maize thinking it would be sweet, but was impossible to eat by boiling it. The locals either eat it grilled on a fire (still pretty tough) or more commonly they dry the kernels and grind them to form maize flour which they cook into nsima. Nsima and grilled maize is all very good and but my Danny loves her yellow corn so I was quite happy to find yellow corn seeds and it has grown well.

200 or so corn all in a row

Tassels up top after 2 months

Small cobs after around 2 months

Wild dogs trampled about 8 stalks of corn one night

One night wild dogs trampled 8 or so stalks of corn. Not sure what they were looking for, but it is common to have them making noise and roaming around. So although those corn could not be enjoyed fully, I plucked off the baby corn on them to enjoy them in a stirfry. Very nice!

A few baby corn to go into a stir fry.

Well that's about it for now. Thanks for taking the tour of the garden. It's been alot of work but it's nice to be harvesting some veggies to make it all feel worthwhile. See you in the market!

Papaya tree overhanging my garden