What We Did Last Sunday : 16 June 2013

Body aches and fatigue that’s how I describe our condition (my maid and I) last Sunday. Both of us never do a hard workout before, but last Sunday we went down to the muddy area down the hill to plant some herbs. Salem, Pegaga, Kesum dan Keladi is the species that needs a lot of water or muddy area to grow. Since our back yard quite dry and we never trust Sari and Wak Mus in watering our herbs, we have to look for muddy areas to plant them. We have no choice except to go down the hill along the rubber tree terrace to reach the muddy area near the stream. Go down the hill was not a problem but going up was a different story. Once again Wak Isa, my husband's office mate, become our main seedlings contributor. He provides us with yam suckers and rooted cutting selom (water celery),  pegaga (pennywort) and kesom (Vietnamese coriander).

My maid in action, she is a diabetic patient, I felt worried if she can't stand in the afternoon heat, but she said "boleh.."

We don't aspect the area so muddy, we only use slipper and sock, supposedly we use farm shoes

Water celery, they need shady area but we can't provide that, let's see whether they can stand direct sunlight or not

pokok kesum

A line of pegaga

close up the pegaga

Some said muddy area suitable for yams.

We also relocated some yams that I planted nearly six months ago, they look unhealthy and small maybe because I planted them in a sandy area.

Beside planted marginal water plant, we also planted pokok kari (curry tree) and Scrambling Gynura (I do not know what Malay call it but Indonesian call it as pokok sambung nyawa) in our back yard. We got stem cutting pokok sambung nyawa and pokok kari (curry tree) from my house in Kuala Lumpur.

This was the condition of our potted pokok sambung nyawa in my house in KL, not so healthy

Behind our cabin kitchen

Since she has a green fingers, I asked her to plant all the herbs

Hopefully our pokok sambung nyawa would be in a nice condition after we left them for a week

Curry tree seedlings I am going to check its condition this weekend

My Kitchen Garden : Ginger flower

My ginger flower has been flowering! It’s almost a year after I plant it. From my reading I know that it took a year or more for ginger flower to blossom. So we never go near the clumps to check whether its flowering or not. Last week I went to the area (where I planted 8 suckers of ginger flower I got from Wak Isa a year ago. You can read My ginger flower), to collect some spinach. Unexpectedly I saw 6 buds of the ginger flower, beautifully shooting from the clumps. 1 of them already brown in color, another 5 buds look beautiful and fresh. I collected them and give it to my maid. That very afternoon she cooked delicious asam pedas fish with Bunga Kantan for us. 

My Ginger Flower

I was introduced to Ginger Flower or Bunga Kantan in Malay in 1998 when I moved to West Malaysia. Bunga Kantan was used to add good flavor to Laksa Penang or Laksa Johor. Till 1990’s it’s hard to find Bunga Kantan in my home town but now it’s become popular herbs in the market. I think it is because there are a lot of West Malaysian who resides in my home town now. I never got a chance to plant Bunga Kantan before, according to my mum; this herb is very difficult to grow. Its need watery grown and take two years to flower. Well, since I am a fan of Bunga Kantan, I guess it’s worth waiting. My husband told me one of his staff, Wak Isa is a successful Bunga Kantan supplier. So I ask Wak Isa, how to grow them. Wak Isa told me a few tips and supplies me with 8 suckers of Bunga Kantan. Thank you very much to Wak Isa then with Bismillahirahmannirrahim I plant the suckers by the stream of my little farm. Not enough with that, I stop by the road and plucked two dry flowers of wild Bunga Kantan to get some seeds. According to my reading on the internet, Bunga Kantan from the seeds take more time to grow and to flower than Bunga Kantan which grow from the sucker. Whatever... It's ok with me, better be late than never and no harm trying. So I also try to grow Bunga Kantan from the seeds. I have been four months since I grow them, just take a look of them.

This is the seedling.. Thanks to my maid green fingers, it took 40 days to germinate

We transferred them to the poly bags

This is the wild ginger flower 

The dry ginger flower that I took

This is the ginger flower bud

We brought the poly bags to Wak Nan house

I don't know that Wak Nan chicken likes ginger flower leaves, So Wak Nan covers it with some net

This is the ginger flower that I grow from the sucker

This is another healthy young Bunga Kantan

Another young Bunga Kantan