Accidental Blogger: The Vege-Mon is Back

Bird Eye Chili

It has been some time since I have blogged about my vegetables. About a year ago, I started a small patch in my porch to grow vegetables such as brinjal (eggplant/aubergine/whatever you want to call it), tomatoes, chili and lettuce. So today I am going to share the progress of it one year on.

The vegetables that made it:

1. Brinjal - I honestly did not think this guy would make it because the plant looked so frail and the stems were turning brown
2. Chili - I have 3 variations now namely bird eye chili (cili api/cili burung), your normal green chili and also a smaller version of the green chili (I think it is different from the green chili because the plant looks different and the size is slightly smaller)
3. Spinach - this guy is slow and steady. Not enough leaves to harvest yet but looking good

The vegetables that did not make it

1. Cherry tomatoes - It bore fruit for a while then it died because I went on vacation and nobody was around to care for the plant. Also, I never had a taste of it because this god damn tupai (squirrel) kept getting to the fruits before me.
2. Lettuce - technically, it made it but harvested only once and it is the first of my produce that I consumed. I need to go buy new seeds now.

The plants that suddenly appeared

Chili

1. Different variations of chili - these plants grew as a result of me using the leftovers of vegetables used for cooking for compost. The seeds were not separated and they managed to thrive.
2. Pumpkin - this guy did not make it but looked promising. another result of seed not being removed from the compost. It died about the same time as the cherry tomatoes.
3. Turmeric/cucumin - growing out of the blue because my mother just threw it into the pot and miraculously started to grow. But again, I cannot really say if it is turmeric, ginger or galangal because they all look the same and this plant just started to sprout. All these plants belong to the same family by the way. Other close relatives include heliconia and banana. They all grow from rhizomes and belong to the order of Zingiberales

The brinjal and chilies

Last weekend I managed to harvest the brinjal and my mom made curry out of it. I did not know when to pick the fruit but a good way to estimate is to see if it shines. If you leave the vegetable too long, it will taste bitter and have too many seeds. I have two variations of brinjal, one is the purple brinjal and the other is green.

To summerise, I now have only the plants from the nightshade family, brinjal and chili. All I need now is tomato to complete the family :). Not all plants belonging to the nightshade family are edible namely belladona or commonly referred to as deadly nightshade. Deadly nightshade does have it's benefits in small quantities such as the extract is used to give clear eyes hence the name Bella Donna which means beautiful woman in Italian. Other plants belonging to this family are tobacco and potato.

Note: All these vegetable have been grown organically with no pesticide whatsoever and fertilised using only leftovers from vegetables and fruits such as potato shavings, onion skin and garlic skin leftover fruits such as bananas, apples and tomatoes. Once in a while it is also advisable to pour the water in which you cleaned your fish before cooking. But do please avoid including the guts of the fish... not a good idea.