Super Sugar Snap Pea

Pea 'Super Sugar Snap' (Pisum sativum) Seeds

Today marks the beginning of spring in my garden because the first seeds that would grow in my little garden this year just got planted.  Our weather here can change swiftly from cold (Foothills-cold) to hot (Inland-hot) which poses a challenge in  scheduling to plant any of the cool season crops such as peas.  In previous years, the consistent problem has been having the temperatures get critically high before my peas produce pods.  Hopefully this time will be different.

Super Sugar Snap is an earlier variety, maturing within 64 days from planting.  It is supposed to have shorter veins than the older varieties which would make it snap better and more fun to eat.  Another favorable feature of this variety is its high resistance to powdery mildew and leaf roll virus. We need to understand that the conditions that favor the growth of powdery mildew is the same as the conditions required by the most of the cool-season crops: High relative humidity (RH) at nighttime; drier or low RH during daytime; and mild temperatures (70-80 ºF).  Therefore, in choosing a variety, diseases resistance must be given special consideration. 

Every day spent tending the garden is a beautiful day.

Radicchio in my Kitchen Garden

Radicchio (Cichorium intybus) made it into my vegetable garden when my husband sowed (literally poured) a packet of Salad Greens seeds in between tomato plants last summer (2013).  The seeds emerged quickly, produced healthy foliage till they began to bolt and produced flowers.  Autumn came; one type of the greens continued to grow and did not bolt.  Then winter came; the leaves of this plant began to form heads - like that of cabbage.  The new leaves also began to turn wine-red in color.  It was then when I began to wonder what this plant was - Radicchio!

When Monocle Magazine named radicchio Vegetable of 2014, I was determined to keep a close observation on these curious plants growing in my garden.  The mildly bitter and vibrant red radicchio is considered a super food due to its high antioxidant content.  It was tempting but I resisted harvesting them.  At this point they were more valuable as a learning tool than food.

Spring came and the radicchio heads began to unfurl and flower initiation began.  The plant finally began to bolt.  The ground-hugging salad item suddenly turned into seven-foot flowering plant.  Beautiful blue flowers opened every morning and faded in the afternoon.  This scheduled flower opening made the bees busy during the cooler time of the day.  Indeed, radicchio is a good insectary plant.  Being a member of the Asteraceae plant family (commonly known as aster or sunflower family), the flowers are designed in such a way that insects can land on them with conveniently.

 Plant radicchio for food, beautiful flowers and insectary plant.

Bitter Gourd

Momordica charantia L.

Family:  Cucurbitaceae

Common Names in the US*:  Bitter Melon; Bitter Gourd; Balsam Pear

One vegetable vigorously growing in my garden at this time in the season is the bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.).  This vegetable was a part of my everyday diet in my earlier years.  Sadly, it has increasingly become a rarity since I moved to California.  But this trend is soon to be reversed. With my success this year, bitter melon may yet become a regular item in my summer garden.

Bitter melon is an important vegetable crop in the Philippines and all of Asia.  The fruits and leaves are edible - both bearing a strikingly bitter taste that varies in intensity depending on variety.  

In my village, bitter gourd is believed to be purgative.  Newborn babies (before their first taste of their mother's milk) are given a teaspoon of bitter melon tonic - pure extract from the leaves of the plant. This blackish-green delight is bitter enough to squeeze every facial muscle of the infant.  As if this is their initiation into the world.  However, this does not diminish the fact that bitter melon is an acquired taste even to Filipinos.  For my grandmother, the more bitter the parya (Ilocano word for bitter melon) the better it is.  But to my grandfather, parya and food did not go together.

   

In the bigger world, bitter melon has gone a long way.  Extensive research has led to understanding the medicinal properties of the plant down to molecular levels.  Bitter gourd has emerged to be one of the most significant botanical remedies for type 2 diabetes.  Recently,  AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center spearheaded a project called the Bitter Gourd Project which "aims to improve the incomes and health of the poor in developing countries, particularly the quality of life of diabetics, through scientific research on bitter gourd (Momordica charantia L.)."  But as for me, bitter gourd or bitter melon is just one of my favorite vegetables in the world.  

Now let's talk about the plant. 

Bitter gourd is tender perennial - in this area it is treated as an annual plant.  The vine grows eight to ten feet in length with robust branching and foliage growth.  It looks delicate but its every node bears a tendril that allows the plant to secure itself easily on trellises or other plants.  The palmately lobed leaves are beautiful.  

The flowers are bright yellow and very fragrant.  Just like all other plants in the Cucurbitaceae family, the bitter gourd is a monoecious plant - having separate male (staminate) and female (pistillate) flowers on the same plant.  Only the pollinated female flowers turn into fruits. 

Fruits of bitter gourd are generally warty with colors ranging from dark green to white.  They can be small and rounded (one-inch diameter) to large and elongated (3-inch diameter and 15-inch long).  The plants growing in my garden have small and elongated fruits with an average length of 3 inches.  

Growing Bitter Gourd

1. Choose sunny location - afternoon shade in hotter climate like mine.  Bitter gourd can be grown directly into the soil or in containers. Mine is growing in a five gallon bucket.
2. Incorporate compost or decomposed animal manure into soil.  
3. Plan and install support structures for plants (I attached wire mesh on the fence but you can used bamboo stakes or trellis). 
4. Direct sow plants in warm soil after the last frost.  Water the seeds thoroughly.  It takes about a week for seeds to emerge.  
5. Protect seedlings from snails and slugs - I've learned it the hard way.
6. Water regularly to keep soil moist but not wet.  
7. Mulch to conserve soil moisture and reduce weed growth.
8. Fertilize bitter gourd when there are two tendrils stretching out of the stem.  Repeat every two to three weeks. 
9. Yellowing of the leaves can be a sign of nutrient deficiency.  Remember:  Low-dose fertilizer applied frequently is better than high dosage at a less frequent interval.  
10. Check for pest and diseases regularly.  
11. Harvest fruits when they are green and shiny.  When fruits begin to turn yellow then it is too late.

Have you ever grown bitter gourd in your garden?  And have you eaten bitter gourd before?  What did you think? 

Edibles in Bloom

Fig. 1   Thai Basil (Ocimum basilicum)

This is a partial glimpse of my vegetable garden this year.  Instead of showing the fruits, I chose to focus on the flowers.  Flowers are generally the early indicators of a forth coming harvest for any food crop.  For some plants such broccoli and cauliflower, the flower directly translates to the crop yield. Still for other annual plants where the leaves are the harvestable parts, flower initiation marks the cessation of productivity. 

Fig. 2    Cilantro (Coriandrum sativum)

Basil
Basil and cilantro (Fig. 2) are among of my favorite herbs of all times.  Basil is generally a summer crop and a long-day plant, which means that it flowers when the daylength (photoperiod) is longer than 12 hours per day. Thai basil (Fig. 2) is particularly sensitive to increasing photoperiod - the seedlings almost always have flowers when I buy them from the nursery.  For a plant where the leaves are the harvestable/edible part, this poses a problem.  However, that is when management comes into play.  It is my practice to  decapitate my basil plants at the slightest hint of flowering in order to induce branching and prolong vegetative growth. 

Fig. 3    Meyer Lemon (Citrus x meyeri)

Citrus
The 'Meyer' lemon seems to be enjoying its current location (Fig. 3).  When my father-in-law and his wife could not get it to fruit in their shady front yard, they gave it to me - knowing that we have the sun here.  So far it is looking good. 'Meyer' lemon, which is believed to have originated from China, is different from the true lemons such as 'Eureka', 'Lisbon', and 'Ponderosa' in that it is sweeter and less rindy (thinner rind).  Such characteristics are attributed to a genetic relationship to the Mandarin orange.
Now there are two types of lemons in my backyard.  I have yet to succeed in growing the Filipino lemon - Kalamasi (Citrus microcarpa).  



Fig. 4     Celery (Apium graveolens)

Celery

Last winter I planted a row of celery (Fig. 4).  It was great to have something green in the garden during the dead months of winter.  It was but we could not use it all up.  I left the plants to flower to encourage the pollinators to linger around.

   

Every gardener in our area would be interested to know that celery is deer resistant.  But then again - as I always say when people ask me whether a plant is deer resistant or not - it all depends on how hungry the deer are. 

Fig. 5    Italian Sweet Pepper (Capsicum annuum)



Fig. 6     Phaseolus vulgaris

Beans

Not all good things are meant to be for the gardener. I planted beans and watched them grow all the way to flowering (Fig. 6). One morning after I took the picture above, all those plants were defoliated. Everything above ground was gone except for the stems. To say that I almost cried is an understatement. The voles are here and they are destructive! Some say that voles come every three years; 2012 appears to be third year. Sadly, we'll have no beans this summer.

Fig. 7   Thai Pepper (Capsicum annuum)

Fig. 8     Fingerling Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum)

Potatoes 

From last year's harvest, I saved the really small tubers and planted them in early spring.  If it is still true that the condition of the foliage (Fig. 8) is an indication of what lies underground, then these spuds must be hiding some gold in the ground.  Unless, of course, my enemies (voles) have dig a secret tunnel to get to the tubers.  

Fig. 8     Tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica)

Tomatillo

This is my first time growing tomatillo.  So far the plant is doing what it is supposed to.  Flowers hang from the branches but there has been no sign of fruit as of this time.  I keep my fingers crossed on the possibility of homemade salsa verse. 

What's flowering in your edible garden today?

Sweet Potato

 Fig.1     New sweet potato (Ipomea batatas) plant.

Nostalgic Introduction

If anyone would make a movie about my childhood days in the Philippines, sweet potato (Ipomea batatas) would show up over and over again in the background.  Sweet potato is a must-have crop. The roots are eaten as source of carbohydrates prepared as dessert or snack food.  Although it is nutritious and readily available, it does not have the reputation as a staple food unlike rice (Oryza sativa), corn (Zea mays) and cassava (Manihot esculenta).  As a root crop it has a low acceptance possibly due to its flatulent characteristic.   The young leaves, however, have a better reputation as green vegetable.  They are cooked in stews or prepared as wilted salad.  When wilted (not over-cooked) they taste like spinach.  Believe it or not, some varieties taste better than others.   The vines and the older leaves are used as feeds. 

Growing sweet potato is very easy.  In fact the American expression "Piece of cake", can be translated in Ilocano (my native dialect) as "Kasla agmula ti kamote" meaning "It's like planting sweet potato". There was a time when the roadsides in my barrio (village) were all planted with sweet potatoes.  They were beautiful.  Here on the temperate side of the globe, there is also an increasing popularity of the Ipomea (sweet potato) as an ornamental plant mainly for its foliage.

Fig. 2   Sprouts arising from stored sweet potato roots. (January 31, 2012)

Fig. 3 A clean cut on one side of sweet potato.

Regenerating Storage Organs
Now in my house, away from the barrio where I grew up, sweet potato only shows up on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  A month ago while cleaning my pantry, I was in luck!  I found two large sweet potatoes that were sprouting.  The immediate thought that came to mind was planting material.  They have been sitting there for at least two months.  Sweet potatoes, commonly known in the US as yams, are storage organs where food and moisture abound. Because of that, the cells within the root are kept alive and capable of regeneration - starting a new plant.  This is true for most of the food we eat that come in various forms of storage organs such as bulbs (onions - Allium cepa and garlic - Allium sativum); rhizome (ginger- Zingiber officinale); tubers (potatoes - Solanum tuberosum); and corm (taro - Colocasia esculenta).  All of these examples will regenerate when the right conditions are met.  In the home, the pantry seems favorable enough to initiate new growths on such vegetables.

Fig. 4 Wet paper towel encourages root growth on a sprouting sweet potato.

Conditioning the New Sprouts.

Plants grown in the dark, such as those shown on Fig. 2 are etiolated and lanky. This, however, can be improved by exposing them to diffused light.  What I did was cut one side of the root (Fig. 3) to provide a flat surface that would rest on the wet paper towel on a dish (Fig. 4).  It has been my experience that growth of adventitious roots is enhanced by moisture - so the paper towel was kept wet at all times. 

Fig. 5     One week of exposure to light resulted in healthy-looking sprouts.

Garden-worthy Plantlets.

After eight days of exposure to light, the sprouts showed a significant change in coloration (Fig. 5 and Fig. 2).   The young sprouts begin to produce chlorophyll giving the leaves a green color.  They have grown to be more stocky and strong.  The same principle applies to potato (Solanum tuberosum) seed tubers. When their sprouts are pale, give them some time to get exposed to diffused light before planting them.

The roots  (Fig.5) look like they are ready to meet the soil but I will have to keep them inside for a little bit longer until the temperatures get warm. 

 

The Role of Sweet Potato in Another Country

I invite you to watch this video to see how sweet potato is being used to end hunger in Mozambique.