The great sweet potato hunt

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It’s been six months since we planted the sweet potatoes, and we thought it was time to poke around and see if we had anything to harvest.

My first point of attack was where I had planted the sweet potato that had started everything. I my mind, I envisioned a nice mass of sweet potatoes that had joined the original potato. Cautiously, we started digging our way in, and found…

Just roots, no potatoes...

Nothing. Just a mass of roots, actually. So we started looking for other points to dig in, but still found nothing. :(

That sweet potato patch occupies about 5 square metres of real estate, and keeps spreading unless I pile the vines back on themselves. Not only that, the patch has become a magnet for whiteflies. I’ve realized how too much foliage attracts whiteflies – but that’s a rant for another post – so I’m considering whether or not to continue growing the sweet potatoes. After all, their attraction for pests compromises my other plants in the vicinity, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever succeed in getting sweet potatoes. Hmph.

Decisions, decisions…

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First ginger harvest

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We were out of ginger to cook with, and decided to see if our home-grown ginger was ready to be used. After all, the clump was about 8 months old and had expanded quite a bit. So, spade in hand, we went a-digging.

Our first clump of young ginger!

It wasn’t a clump that you’d throw a parade for, but it was our first – not to be scorned – young ginger. After all, it grew from one of these thumb-sized pieces of ginger below:

Cut pieces of ginger rhizomes with growing buds.

Pretty cool, huh? :) I can’t wait to see what an older clump will look like!

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The little Tailorbird

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A Common Tailorbird perched on a bush of dracaena surculosa.

As I’ve mentioned, we have a number of birds that visit our garden every day. Until I began to use a camera to photograph the feathered visitors, I was under the impression that all the tiny, perky birds that swooped and hopped around in the mango tree were sunbirds.

Both species of birds are about the same size, and they frequent shady spots to search for food. They even have a similar olive colour on their backs.

The tailorbird, however, has a rounder body, a russet head and a light-coloured belly. It is sharp-eyed and flies in quick, darting motions.

It appears to be unafraid of people, as long as you keep still, and seems more intent on catching prey of insects that it finds – in our case – in the shady areas under trees and bushes. I’ve observed tailorbirds swooping into and navigating through large bushes in early morning and late evening, searching for food of insects and grubs.

They have a melodic song, as well as a loud tic-tic-tic call. And I must say that for such a tiny bird – approximately 7cm long – it’s got a loud voice!

It’s not easy to observe tailorbirds because they move so fast, but they tend to perch for short periods while their alert eyes search for the next round of food. In the circle of life, everything has a form and function, and I appreciate that these birds serve to rid our garden of some pests. And they’re cute to watch, too.

Read more about tailorbirds.

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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The fast developing Roselle

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The Roselle was an unexpected but most welcome addition to our garden a month ago. Still in the frameset of growing mulberries, I thought I would have to wait weeks or months for anything momentous to happen. Well, I forgot that these were rooted cuttings, and that they are more mature than the mulberry cuttings I got.

There were a few buds on the roselle cuttings when I brought them home, but they aborted, I assumed, because of transplant shock. However, new ones began to form and grow bigger…

Roselle flower bud.

For a while, I forgot myself, and thought the fruit was already forming!

Roselle flower bud beginning to open up.

But then the bud began to split open late one evening and I could see the furled pink petals within.

The opened flower of the roselle.

The flower was open bright and early the next morning.

The flower closing up after just a few hours.

However, it only lasted until late morning, and the petals folded up by the afternoon and fell off by the next day.

The roselle fruit beginning to grow.

Within days, the fruit began to swell and grow.

Ripening fruit of the roselle.

So now it’s a matter of waiting for the fruit to mature. Both plants are still in flower pots, but one is in full sun while the other gets full to partial sun. Yup, I have to experiment and see which works best…

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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