More "Veggie Tales"

(The lavender flowers are finally growing up towards the sky! More lavender flowers are blooming!)

Please bear with me, this 'city bumpkin' who gets easily excited about her gardening exploits. I have been extremely pleased with my garden in the past week!

A week ago, my FIL gave us 10 pots of changko manis plants. This is a type of asian vegetables that you cannot buy outside (I've not seen it being sold before). Apparently it is easy to grow them and we can harvest the leaves every now and then to cook them up and eat them. We were also given a passionfruit plant which is still small and hopefully it will grow and be able to bear us a fruit or 2 in summer. I am not a big fan of passionfruit and I probably have not eaten passionfruit until I first came to Australia to visit my in-laws. They have got a couple of passionfruit plants/trees in their garden. Since then, I like it a little more. Often I will dig out all the pulp and freeze them in a container. This is so that I can use it in future to make a drink or bake in cakes/cookies.

2 rows of 10 changko manis plants in the background. In the foreground (L-R), sage, coriander, sweet basil, sweet basil and sweet basil

Both my chilli plants are also flowering. I am a bit surprised that by this time I can count about 18 green chillies. Good thing I pruned the plants in winter and hence they can now survive a bit better and able to flower and bear fruit. The chillies seemed healthier and bug-free now and there are more flower buds that seemed like blooming soon! I am only afraid that the harvest of chillies may cause the plant's branches and leaves to hang over too much (due to the weight of the chillies on a single branch) that some may break.

The 6 chillies on one single branch. Can you find them?

This birthday, I received a box of 6 lettuce seedlings and a pack of potting mix from ST. I had to plant them on the ground (soil in a styrofoam box) the next day because they seemed like they were withering. I have since eaten some lettuce leaves from the plants. They have also been growing (but not as fast as one could in a garden with full sunshine) and I am glad that they grew a bit better after the rain yesterday.

Lettuce seedlings and plants

I think what I am most excited and looking forward to, are the tomatoes (cherry?) that are blooming. There are so many small tomatoes and yellow flowers (which eventually grows into tomato) on those 3 plants. I can't wait for all of them to turn red!

Some of the many cherry tomatoes which are still green. I last counted 53 of them amongst 3 plants... and there were still many flowers that are waiting to grow into tomatoes

What I need to get now, is small water crystals so that the plants continue to be hydrated during those days that we are not in Brisbane and unable to water them daily. If anything, seeing flowers bloom and fruits grow into harvest, is the best thing for summer :)