Companion Planting week : Eggplant & Basil

I love the idea of companion planting and the reason why I started gardening is because I learned the fact the right combination of plant can help each other in term of deterring pest, provides some sort of nutrient or to help cultivate the soil. Anyway, of all my companion planting experiences, the one that worked the most is planting basil plant side by side with eggplant. It helps to prevent aphids from attacking your eggplant. I did some experiment and found out that the one without basil plant is heavily infested with aphids while the one beside my basil plant don't even have a single Aphids. So that is my bit of companion planting for now. Happy planting everybody!

Like a perfect couples. It attract the bees while keeping away the aphids

Safely with basil

Infested with aphids!

They are going to eat my chill and garlic juice pretty soon..

For more info on companion planting please check out MKG

This is why I love rain

I'll let the picture do the talking.

P/s: the calendula, larkspur, nastrium and poppy was actually the seed from MKG.. thanks a lot!.. still trying to grow the evening sunflower.. the other day my daughter pluck the seedling.. :(

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April Garden Update!

Wow it already have been half way through the semester and I barely have time to spend in the garden. Thanks to my wife who keep a look at the garden and It is still in a good shape. However, I did try to spend one or two hours in the garden on the weekend to tidy things up. We did uproot our corn, lettuce, broccoli and rockets because they have matured. But we do save the seed. Now we have plenty of seed and no more container to store the seeds. They are everywhere in the house. Anyway, here is some snapshot of what is going on in the garden.

though the strawberries are not that big but they constantly have fruits

This space use to have corn before but now Celery has taken over

Butternut pumpkin

We already harvest some of these eggplant and there are more coming

New look of our vege jungle. Out the old one and in the new.

Kangkung and chilli plant

Corriander and carrots pots for easy harvesting

Pumpkin plant at the end of the space and ginger at the side fence

Can anyone tell me why can this happen?

There are 3 slugs in my carrot!

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Carrot that looks like a turnip

I've been very busy lately as semester has started. Got soo many thing to share with you guys but need to find time to update my blog. Anyway, as you all know in my previous post I mentioned about my forked carrots. Yesterday, I dig some carrot (which was among the first batch) from my garden and found out that it has a shape of a turnip. Shape does not really matter to me although it is quite difficult to deskin the carrot. I cut the carrot and use it in my cooking and it was the sweetest carrot i ever tasted. Got few more batches in my garden and hopefully it will look like a carrot.

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A visit to the Garden World

Mum came over to Melbourne last month and we had a good visit to the Garden World in Springvale, Victoria. It was really an enjoyable visit to be honest with you. I would highly recommend that whoever come to Melbourne have a visit to the garden world. It is like the zoo for gardener. It has a variety of shops that sells rages of items from cactus to hydroponic watering system. I'm really bad on explaining my experience in words so I'll let my picture do the storytelling.. enjoy the pics!

This is actually a cactus that looks like a stone.

Love this cactus landscape

Feels like I'm in Mexico

Furry and weird shape cactus.

They create a cactus landscape in one warehouse.

I Malay this plant is called 'Periuk kera' which mean the Monkey's pot in english but looks like they  prefer much more modern name for this plant.

'This would be 'The' plant that I would like to have in my house.  I wanted to give a try just for the experience.

More plants that looks like a parade of trumpets.

Love the raise bed garden which is just outside of the shops and the wall is made out of recycle plastic from the printer cartridge.

A must stop place for gardener who come down to Melbourne

Plenty of beautiful flowers too! but I'm more into vege though.

Tonnes of seeds variety.

While waiting my daughter was busy playing the seed packet that she has to hold for us.

Ideas for the garden.

Back home we use the big wok for a communal event cooking such as wedding and such but here it is used as a pot in the garden.

This is really the place that awe me

They utilize the whole space for planting.

Just look at that!

This is actually a combination of variety of plants such as tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, melon, cucumber and eggplant.

To my surprise, the 'hanging garden' actually used the same concept that I wrote in my last post about my dream garden. In fact they take it to another level where they use solar as their source of electricity. They also had a rainbow trout in the pond which could also become another source of food. Go sustainable solution!

Giant Zucchini!

Almost a month ago I give it a try on manual (hand) pollination on one of my button Zucchini. Since it grows big, I decided to save the seed. I let it grow mature in order to get the seed. Until yesterday I decided to harvest it since it does not grow big anymore. The button Zucchini actually weight about 920 grams which is almost a kilo. We did actually cut it open to get the seed and also did an experimental cooking for this matured Zucchini. It is kinda hard on the outside but soft in the inside. So what we did was peel the skin off and fry the inside with butter. Surprisingly it tasted like a pumpkin but less sweet and the texture is almost like a honeydew. So it is still edible actually.