Kitaran Hidup Daikon (Daikon Life-Cycle)

In the radish families, for us daikon is the easiest and suitable radish for us to grow. We also like daikon because its flavour does not turn hot quickly and do not need to be harvested quickly like other radishes when the flesh can become woody if not harvest quickly. Can be left for months on  the soil. But have to be cautious that when spring comes it may start to flower. Although sometime it is said that daikon can be grown all year round. In our case, spring-sown daikon tends to bolt quickly before producing much of a root. I am not sure what factor causes this. Can it be the day length or other environment stress factor, I am not certain. Water was still enough in spring so we can eliminate that factor. But we have tried 2 spring season consecutively and yielded same results. However, we have no such problem when we sowed daikon seeds from end summer through fall here. Daikon grows very well through that period.

Newly germinated daikon seeds.

Although daikon grows very big and long root, it grows really fast compared to other root vegetables. From front row to back row; daikon, carrot and parsnip. If you have not grown daikon before, you will be surprise how much daikon root can grown in 6 weeks in good environment. So it can also be a good inter-cropping plant.

Daikon is a good soil breaker plant.
If I am not mistaken, daikon leave is edible.
Well caterpillars and slugs do like to munch on daikon leaves.
Moreover, daikon is related to Asian greens and broccoli, the brassicas.

Daikon plants that is starting to flower. 

At this stage, the daikon root is still edible.

Daikon flower and seed pods.

Daikon flower resembles kailan (Chinese broccoli) flower.

However, daikon seed pods shapes is different from kailan or other leafy brassicas seed pods which can be differentiated easily. Our flowering daikon plants grows for at least 5 feet tall.

Daikon seeds.

Lenay harvested the seeds and I have not sorted it properly.

How do you like to prepare your daikon?

Detik-Detik Daikon (Lobak putih)

We are having a break from daikon at the moment. Lenay just sow some daikon seeds yesterday, which I planned for 1 row but she made 2 rows. Not that many anyway, there were only total of 8 seeds sowed. We are not sure whether it will germinate this month but we just give it a go anyway. We probably sow another small batch in another 2 weeks, succession sowing is the main goal here so we don't have a glutton of radish again like last fall. But sow some we must to fill in the gap when harvest is scarce while waiting for summer vegetables to produce. Hoping that by mid-end spring that it will be ready.

Since daikon seeds usually germinate less than one week, we probably know next week whether radish tolerate our weather at the moment or not. Wish us luck! If we have luck I might try turnip next. Turnip is one of the vegetable that I have not much success with it yet.

Daikon grows very fast. We direct-sowed daikon, carrot and parsnip on the same day.You can see daikon has grown very fast, follow by carrot and very slow to grow parsnip. I usually don't bother to thin our daikon at this stage.

Oppss, daikon grow so fast I could not catch up...hehehe...its time to thin them.

Daikon thinnings. 

Some space for other daikons to grow bigger. Daikon is good to break the soil if you have hard soil. If you see your daikon root are high above the ground, shows that those daikon root has reached the hardest soil under ground.

Have a nice weekend!

Due to poor posture working many times in front of the microscope this week, I am having back pain.

Will be blog walking again after a bit of rest.

White sweet potatoes and shoots with coconut milk dish

This winter we are growing many vegetables that are new to us and we don't have any idea on what best cooking method to prepare them. Any advise are most welcome and will be deeply appreciated. We harvested our first rainbow chard and baby beets (thinnings) last Monday. Both of these vegetables are new to us and will be our first tasting experience. There were 2 rainbow chards growing in the same pot, so I harvest one because it is getting crowded. Other vegetables that were harvested was tomatoes, giant purple mustards, snow peas, capsicums, chilies and corianders. Join in and see what other gardeners are harvesting all around the world in Harvest Monday hosted by Daphne.

Rainbow chards and other vegetables were chopped. They danced in the wok for the making of salted dried mackeral fried rice dish. We like rainbow chard and will plant some more again in spring. I still don't know what suitable dish for beetroot and how to prepare it since it really bleeds. Boiled those baby beetroots together with Rayyan's porridge. It was a really bloody dish especially after using the mixer to chopped them into pieces. We tasted Rayyan red porridge and it was sweet with beetroot blend together. 

We grow dill for the first time and I keep on forgetting that I planted them. Out of curiosity, Lenay keep on reminding me of those dills because we never used dill in our cooking before. So snipped some for the kitchen. We also harvested some baby leeks, capsicums and chilies last Saturday.

I was clearing up some containers and areas in the veggie patch. From that we got some onion leaves which did not bulb last year, ginger rhizomes and our last beans. Our wong bok were looking really bad with caterpillars and snail attack that we harvest some of it. It took a lot of washing to get rid of snail and slug hiding in between these wong bok leaves. We have not enjoyed any wong bok since last year and Lenay was really missing it. After she experience growing brassicas especially wong bok and cabbage and know they are so difficult to grow 100% organically due to pest, we keep on reminding each other never to buy brassicas again in the market. When we passed by organic market, we still see sign of minimal spray used on those cute cabbages. Ours might not be a beauty but at least it does not contain hazardous chemicals. Cut some of wong bok and onion leaves to make a vegetarian fried rice noodles for Saturday breakfast.

With the newly fresh harvested ginger and dill, I made stir-fried ginger chicken for Saturday dinner. Usually we used boneless chicken meat for this dish but they were only chicken wings in the freezer so we had to improvise.

Last weekend we harvested all of our daikons. The ones which is not forky or broken due to digging it out were shared with other generous gardeners. I did not preserved any daikons this time.  Hopefully there will be another empty space in our veggie patch this month to sow another small batch of daikon. We also harvested some chilies, peas and sweet potato shoots.

We harvested some white sweet potatoes this month and I wasn't sure how to prepare it since I never tasted one before. Cikmanggis my cooking guru gave me some nice tips. So with her help I cook the sweet potato and sweet potato shoots with coconut milk. In Malaysia, this kind of dish is commonly known as masak lemak putih.

Ingredients (this is roughly what I did)

White sweet potato (one bowl cut into chunks)

Sweet potato shoots (one bowl-washed)

4 medium size garfish (boil in 1 litre water with just a little bit of slice ginger, keep the boiled water)

Red onion/shallots (I used 1 Red onion)

Black pepper

150ml coconut milk

Salt

Take only the meat from the boiled fish and in a mortar mash it with red onion and black pepper.

Heat the boiled water again and add in coconut milk, the mashed fish with red onion and black pepper and white sweet potatoes. Frequent stirring.

When the sweet potato is almost tender, add sweet potato shoots and stir well. Add salt to taste. Done.

It was really delicious, I had many servings and I was a satisfied cat.This will be my comfort food. White sweet potato has the sweetness that I like and it is a bit starchy. It reminds me of young tapioca that I had in my childhood. Hopefully with our next white sweet potato if we have good harvest, I would like to try Cat-in-Sydney suggestion of making pengat (Malaysia traditional cake). But I need some lesson on how to make it. I think mama showed several time how to make banana pengat a long long time ago but I forgot. My knowledge in making traditional cake is very limited.

Join in Wendy's Garden To Table Challenge.

Stir-Fried Radish Cake

I have been craving for some stir-fried radish cake this month. I only have eaten it once and fell in love with it. I did not grew up with this dish although I am a Malaysian and it is a common hawker food. When we were working in Senai (Johor state), we frequently visit pasar malam (night market) to buy dinner. It was cheaper to buy food rather than cooking for only two people. One pasar malam day, walking on the bustling streets with rows of food hawker stalls lining up beside the street and trying to decide which to have for dinner, I saw people crowding on one of this food hawker stall. This heavily pregnant woman with her first child got curious and walk closer to see what kind of food that hawker stall is selling. The hawker is Chinese and most of his waiting customer were Chinese but they were one Malay couple waiting too. So I asked what food it is to the closest customer waiting beside me. She thought I was Chinese at first glance which is a common mistake that I am used too, they told me that the dish is made of radish and egg.    So with some persuasion to convince dear husband, we tasted stir-fried radish cake for the first time 4 years ago. That stir-fried radish cake made such an impact that we still remember the day we first taste it. So now skip the memory lane. We had so much daikon this year that I had to come up different ways to prepare it so members of our small dining table won't complain that much. On top of that, all of us are not a big fan of daikon yet. Last week, I posted recipe for Steamed Radish cake. Here is another way to enjoy the prepared steamed radish cake ~ stir-fried radish cake.

Stir-fried Radish Cake (recipe adapted from Terry Tan's The Thai Table cooking book)

Ingredients:

200gram steamed radish cake (previous post linked)

2 tablespoon cooking oil

2 Eggs lightly beaten

2 tablespoon sweet soy sauce

Your favourite chili sauce to taste

One spring onion finely chopped

Slice the steamed radish cake into bite size pieces. 

Heat oil in a wok.

Stir-fry radish cake and eggs for about 3 minutes (you can also add chicken, prawn or other vegetables).

Add sweet soy sauce and chili sauce.

Mix well and remove from heat.

Garnish with chopped spring onions.

Don't you love to cook food that don't use many ingredients and taste so good.

I can't live without a wok in our kitchen. If you happen to visit Malaysia and have the opportunity to visit pasar malam or any hawker stall do try this tasty dish. If you can't do any travelling this year. Then you can make this dish. As we like this dish, daikon has confirmed its place in each of spring and fall season planting plan. In true appreciation for this dish, all the members of our little dining table has agreed.

Wendy is hosting Garden To Table Challenge.

First winter harvest and a jicama

Keeping up with winter colours, our veggie garden has given us white colour vegetable to harvest such as daikon and snowball turnip. Other regular harvest are snow peas and yellow cherry tomatoes. We also harvested our last angled luffah for this year.

Harvested some sweet corn and chili last week.

Ilhan had some buttered sweet corn for breakfast.

Clearing up old plants in container which is not productively producing last weekend. We were surprised to harvest some sweet potato tuber that were invading carrot container. Due to that, carrots were so much smaller than sweet potato tubers.

Da Cheong Chae look so terrible from pest attack that I pull out all of them. Bitter gourd still produce female flower but the fruit won't grow that big so I harvested them last weekend. Clearing up the containers with unproductive old plant for new planting given us some leeks and spring onions. We don't usually allocate space for spring onion usually inter-planted them with other plants.

End last spring, we sowed jicama (sengkuang/yam bean) seeds for the first time in our veggie garden. The sad thing that direct-sowed seedlings on our patch that received full sun all day died on the first heat wave of 40+degree Celcius.  Jicama plants that survived are growing in containers which received only morning sun. As we had already enter winter, jicama plants does not look good. So I am a bit worried at the moment whether we actually have some tuber to harvest or not. Moreover, I worry if too much rain will make the tuber rot if we don't harvest them quickly. So last weekend, gently I moved the soil away from one jicama plant to see whether we get any tuber or not. Surprisingly, the root went very deep, I had to dig about 20cm deep to finally see some white root. Our first home-grown jicama and look like a top.

See other gardeners around the world harvest this week at Daphne's Dandelion Harvest Monday.

Japanese Radish Cake

I was worried at first with so many daikon seedlings that Lenay sowed while we were away for Rayyan surgery almost 3 months ago sprouted. Germination was 100%. I don't think we can possibly harvest them all. I was only planning a row of daikon but Lenay made 3 rows. She and Ilhan must be very bored while we were away. Now I have stop complaining because it has help fill in the gap until other winter vegetables are starting ready to be harvested end of winter or early spring. What is wonderful about daikon compare with other radish variety is that it does not need to be harvest quick because it does not become woody quickly. Moreover, it grow so big very fast. If you have a pet and worried about them trampling on daikon seedlings, don't worry, they are almost stomp-proof. We grow daikon at the back of our fence on a reserve land and one day a driver who wanted to test his car during dusk drove through those young daikon seedlings which just sprouted true leaf. Those seedling look pretty bad and I thought they won't survived as some were totally squash out. I don't say those word out aloud because Lenay is having tears in her eyes since it is her project patch. She planted and hill up the ones that were uprooted. Surprisingly they did grow pretty good (photo as evidence).

I have only started growing plants on this area last August so the soil is still very hard. Since I can see white roots on top of the soil, I reckon those daikon is already having a very hard time to push into the soil for bigger and longer root growth. I pull several out last weekend and it was not an easy thing to do. We have to be careful or the roots breaks in the soil and you have to dig out the rest part of the root which is not easy since the soil is very hard. Avoid pulling the top but hold on to the roots and try to turn them right and left gently to pull them up. Some of the daikon has reach their limit to try breaking the soil to grow some roots and start to become forky. Daikon can grow at least 40~50cm long and like potato, it is a good soil-breaker. Because of that, I have already planned to grow garlic on this row of daikon after I finished harvesting this long white root.

Fresh home-grown vegetables are the best thing but eating daikon many times a week will probably make you wish for other stuff as well. So last weekend project was about searching and trying new recipe with radish other than soup or stir-fry daikon with anchovies which what has been prepared in our kitchen since the daikon harvest started in our garden. If you have a glutton of radish and run out of ideas to prepare it, here is a recipe that I tried from Terry Tan's The Thai Table cooking book ~ Steamed Radish Cake (Khanom Chai Tau). I am not a very good student for following step-by-step instruction in cooking but it is not difficult to prepare.

Steamed Radish Cake (Khanom Chai Tau)

Makes one 200gram cake

Ingredients:

Daikon 900gram , peeled and grated

Rice flour 400gram

Tapioca flour or Corn flour (cornstarch) 55 gram

Water 125ml

Salt 2tsp

Cooking oil 2Tbsp

Vegetable Stock cube 1, crushed

Place grated radish in a blender and blend until fine. Set aside.

Combine both types of flour and sift into a mixing bowl. Gradually add water and mix well. Mixture should be thick and moist. Add salt, oil, stock cube and radish. Mix until well blended.

Transfer mixture to a non-stock, medium-sized pot. Cook over low heat for 10 minutes, or until cake is firm. Remove from pot and steam over high heat for 30 minutes. Radish cake is ready when an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Set aside to cool before use.

A very healthy vegetarian cake.

Note: Some people needs to get used of the strong daikon flavour before having this. When I asked my husband what does it taste like? Taste like you are eating daikon...hmmm...I would probably used 2 vegetable stock cube next time. This is our first taste of Steamed Japanese Radish cake and I think it goes well eating it together with sambal ikan bilis (chili anchovies). Looks like kuih bingka when its cooked.

Wendy is hosting Garden To Table Challenge.

White Wednesday at Faded Charm.
It is the first day of winter here and it is such a fine sunny day today, although cold if you go outside.
Hazel is celebrating our first winter day this year with Winter Wednesday.

Not the Backyard

It seems growing vegetables at the other side of our backyard fence has been a good project. We started using that space because we wanted to prevent cars or trucks to park at our side of the fence that made a lot of noise so the kids can have a nice nap during the day. We started growing things there last spring and mostly sunflowers and onions. It is still less than a year from the time we started to plant our first batch of sunflower seedlings last spring. All the sunflowers are gone and were composted on the same place it has grown. Here is the update of what is growing at the other side of our backyard fence since a month ago.

The Redland Pioneer bush bean has already given us first bean harvest this week from this batch. I sowed a row of Dragon carrot seeds 2 weeks ago in between rows of this bush bean and found some carrot seeds have already sprouted last weekend.

Our first batch of Telephone peas has start to flower. We have already eaten many daikon thinnings growing in between the pea trellis. I have already plan to transplant some cabbage seedlings in between these pea trellis after those daikon are harvested. The cabbage seedlings have just sprouted and I have already daydream of transplanting them at that spot. I hope I can fool the white cabbage butterfly using the pea white flower that there are other butterflies around here. So they won't lay eggs on the cabbage later.

Mammoth sunflowers growing slowly and the chili plants growth are stunted. A row of carrot seedlings at the front can be harvested soon.

Mostly root vegetables on this veggie patch with fast growth sequence ~ daikon, 2 rows of Afghanistan carrots and 2 rows of parsnips. I sneaked in some watermelon radish seeds in between parsnip and leeks which has just develop it first sets of true leaves.

Rainbow chards seedlings at the front. In the middle new potato plants interplanting with Giant Purple Mustard (Potato seeds from Berry Gnome). At the back, a mess of self-sowed tomato plants and peas have just sprouted. Not sure whether that one papaya tree that my mother planted last summer will survived through winter or not but I will just let it be there as it please.

Sweet corn seeds sowed in middle of February has already have cobs. Some of the silk from the female ears has beginning tu turn brownish. I wonder if we get full kernal or not this time. I did not help with the pollination as I usually don't pay much attention with the plants growing at the other side of the backyard. Hopefully, a few will be ready to be harvest this weekend, after a long week coop up in school.

This is Ilhan sweet corn patch growing much healthier and taller than mine which were sowed in March. His sweet corn plants are taller than the ones at the other patch. We were making remarks that Ilhan sweet corn follows Ilhan growth like weed. So we voted that Ilhan will sow the next season for sweet corn. He will be taller and understand more what he needs to do by then. But he is still growing taller at that time which make him the best candidate to sow sweet corn seeds.

I am assuming that this veggie patches will be providing us food on the kitchen table this month.

Daikon thinnings

I was a bit worried during the second half of April whether the garden will have any fresh vegetables for the kitchen. Fortunately, daikon seeds that were sowed around middle of March were growing really fast. Daikon seeds were sowed very closely, I have been putting root vegetables seedlings thinning task at the bottom of list to do in the veggie patch. As daikon grows really big root compared with other radish, our daikon thinnings were already the same size as white icicle variety radish. Daikon thinnings have been the main fresh harvest in the kitchen together with chilies. Okra is loving the warm weather we had last week and we spied many promising pods that can be harvested this week. Once again, I forgot to harvest bittergourd growing in the front yard, some fruits have over ripen.

Glad I did not gave up on the white spine cucumber plants that have been growing since spring but were only producing male flowers. As the day is becoming shorter, it starts to produce female flower. Now, it is the main cucumber variety that is producing for us in fall. After second year of growing this cucumber variety, I now understand that this is a very sensitive day-light hours cucumber plant. Some cucumber variety don't produce female when the days are getting longer but the shortening of day-lights will trigger the female fruits to form. Some carrots that were growing in containers sowed in January were harvested.

I was clearing some veggie patches and harvested leeks that were planted in spring. Using some of this harvest (leeks, cucumbers, capsicum, chinese celery cut in bite sizes), prepared Sweet and Sour Tempura coated Salmon dish.

Different variety of capsicum plants are producing in our garden. However, it makes us wait a long time for it to ripe. I am so tempted to harvest these capsicum when there are green several times. Results of waiting until last weekend got to harvest 2 purple bell and banana capsicum. Spied some banana and golden bell capsicums which is ripening and might be ready for picking this week. Lenay fried the eggplants with tempura. Probably this was our final chance harvested 3 varieties of cucumbers (apple, green gem, white spine) in one day this fall.

We don't have much luck with melon family this year compared last year. Last year we have many big honeydew melons and watermelon to harvest. This year we only had some small melon harvest. The biggest melon this year did not even matured to the size of smallest melon harvested last year. Honeydew, Rockmelon and Turkish Leopard melon plants were fruiting but I discovered too late last week that cucumber beetles have make a grand nest on one of the veggie patch. The plants died when the fruit were half-way developing . Although the ripe melons were small this year, it tastes much sweeter than the big ones.

What is your most favourite melon?

Visit Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday.