What you could (possibly) still plant

Ok so as you know planting season in UAE is reversed to what you may be used to. One of the most important things to consider when planting a vegetable garden here is when to plant. Plant too early or two late and your seedlings will probably never make it. Surfing the web I have come across a few resources and a few facts. Our climate is very similar to that of Arizona in US. So what we could do is follow their growing calendar and use available resources specific to this state. Note that even Arizona itself has a few major groups and planting dates for them. We could use the group one, which is elevation below 1000 feet.  If you have semi shaded location or location under shade cloth (my plan) you could use group 2 dates or use the next month as planting date. So after checking the guide for UAE here , guides for Arizona, here and here, all available at the downloads  page, and a chat with Yasmin, from UAE Agriculture group, I have come up with the following list of things we could probably still plant now.
I AM NOT STATING WE CAN, I AM SAYING WE PROBABLY CAN. I am going to try and see what happens. The results are not guaranteed so do it at your own risk.

All kinds of beans (except broad beans aka Fava beans): Green,  blackeye beans (cowpea), soy beans, yardlong beans, pigeon beans (toor dal), winged beans (if you can find them here do let me know), adzuki beans, chickpeas (, hummus, bengal gram, channa), mung beans, lablab (hiyacinth), vigna mungo (black gram, urad bean), cluster bean (gawar beans, if you can find them let me know) and etc.

Melons

Watermelons

Cucumber

Eggplants

Okra

Sweet potato

Taro

Yam

Radish

Summer Squashes

Winter Squashes (???)

Corn (???)

Garlic

Peanuts

Beets

Chillies

Peppers

Amaranth

Malabar Spinach (basella)

Molokhia (jute leaves).

Roselle

All kinds of gourds

Basil

I'm sure this list is incomplete and there are other crops still possible to plant now. If you know of any please comment and I'll add them to the list.

Happy Gardening

Environment Agency Abu Dhabi - publications and more

In my previous post I posted a link to Jewels of the UAE which is an initiative by Environment Agency Abu Dhabi. It has a section with publication which you can download in pdf format. Lots of interesting info. Check it here publications.

Jewels of the UAE - your guide to UAE flora and fauna and more

As you can see from my precious post I have found this really interesting website Jewels of the UAE. It lists the species of plants currently growing wild in UAE (and also animals and lots of other things). If you have weeds/plants growing in your yard and you want to identify them, or you are just plain curious, this is a must see.

Solanum Nigrum edible thing in my garden

A couple of days ago I was taking a round in my garden and noticed a little plant in one of my flower pots. It had little green berries and I left it to see what it becomes. Today I checked on it and some berries are black already. I was worried that the kids would eat them and told them not to touch it. I was convinced it's poisonous but either my intuition or my curious nature wouldn't let me pull it. Off to search the Internet I went. I first posted on the Agriculture UAE group on facebook, link in this post, and then went searching. I came across this very cool site that describes UAE flora and fauna. Check it yourself Jewels of the UAE I scrolled through the pages and found what I thought was my plant but wasn't sure about it, whether it was the same plant (some plants do look, similar). It's scientific name is Solanum Nigrum (and has lots of common names, have a look at wikipedia).  While I was searching, Sisily, a lovely member and admin in the above mentioned group, replied to me. It's a plant called manathakkali and it's not a weed and it's edible and is actually very good for ulcers she said. Yay. I'm glad I didn't pull it. And now that it was confirmed that what I have is edible I was relieved. You can read more online cuz I don't know much about it yet myself.

Free farming library online

I have mentioned this site, Journey to Forever,  in my earlier post but I thought I'd share a link to their online library. Lots of free books and interesting info. Check it out here.

Edibles - Radish Pods???

Do you grow radishes? Have you ever forgot to harvest one and it became too big and then maybe you cooked it? You may as well left some for too long and it started flowering and even producing pods.  Or you may be like me and grow white radishes with smooth leaves that you eat, we call this Ruwaid. This radish is very quick to produce flowers and pods. So either way these pods contain seeds. But even if you were to save the seeds it would be too many. I never had enough patience to harvest all the seeds and would simply cut the plants (note I said "cut" not "pull" cuz I leave the roots in the soil) and throw them into compost. Ok by now you may wonder what's gotten into me. Well in search of more edible things to grow I have come across something interesting. Turns out all parts of radishes are edible - roots, leaves and pods. The green pods can be cooked, pickled or eaten raw. Note some of the pods in my pics are already dry so you can't eat those.
More info here and here.

More tomatoes

Ok so I thought I had not much tomatoes left. But I did get 3 bowls full, one big and 2 medium sized.  I have noticed that birds have been eating tomatoes a lot lately. I don't mind them but what annoys me is that they'd nib on one and then leave it, so I have so many tomatoes just rotting there. I can't harvest them so I decided to at least harvest what is untouched. There's still a few left that are still unripe. I left them alone. Birdies seem to like very ripe ones.

"Regrow It" aka "cut and come back"

There are perennials, annuals and biennials plants - in short plants that live for more than two years, plants that live for a year and plants that live for 2 years, respectively. In some parts of the world one can act like the other. For example eggplants are perennial  but is treated as annual in some climates.
Probably most things we grow in our kitchen garden are annuals or treated as such. But does that mean that once we harvest the plant it is done? It depends really. Do you know that there are plants that you can regrow or other wise treat as "cut and come back"? I had no idea this was possible and I was really skeptical about it at first. But guess what? It works. Today I'll write about plants from my own garden that I harvest over a period of time. Imortant: if you do this leave at least 2 inches of growth above ground, start harvesting early and preferably outer leaves. So here they go:

Lettuce
Most varieties suited for this treatment are lose leaf varieties but I have done this even with Romain lettuce. See the pic below.

Kai Lan
This Asian green is so tasty and you can just cut the stems and more will grow from that spot.

Rocket
I just keep harvesting the outer leaves. This is a heavy producer by the way. I just love it. You can even cook it. Another blog on the way?? Maybe maybe ;)

Chard
This one is probably meant to be harvested this way. It keep regrowing new leaves. Make sure you leave 2-3 leaves in the center each time you harvest.

Bok Choy
This is one of the best producers in my garden. Harvest outer leaves or cut the head leaving around 2 inches above the ground.

Curly Endive
I harvested them a few days ago and I can't believe they have grown already. Will probably do another harvest next week. I harvested the whole thing a couple of inches above ground.

Red Amaranth
I had harvested it and gave it to a friend. Next harvest I'd probably leave for myself.

Rapini - also known as broccoli raab or turnip tops. I'd read that they won't regrow but because I'm the person who won't believe it till they see it I had to see for myself. And guess what? It does regrow.

Beet and white radish greens - you may grow beets and white radish for their roots but or you can also grow it for their greens. Or you can do it for both (but then you wouldn't want to over harvest the greens).

Herbs
Parsley, basil, mint,coriander and dill respond to this treatment very well.

Keep in mind that with some plants like lettuce you'd want to replace the plants after 3-4 cuts or when they become bitter.

Other greens are also possible to grow this way, above mentioned is just my personal experience.

UAE gardening/seed swap groups

So I have been wanting to do this for some time now. I thought something like this was already there but it looks like not really. There are gardening groups in UAE, about this in a while, and some seed swap happens at their meeting. But what if you can't attend the meeting? What if you can't or simply don't want to wait till the meeting? Wouldn't it be cool to swap seeds from the comfort of your own home? Well almost. So facebook is loaded with seed swap groups so why not have our own. Well we now have. This group is strictly for swapping seeds. It's called Seed Swappers UAE. You can join it here Seed Swappers UAE

Another group I have been a part of for some time now is Agriculture UAE group. I thought I had written about it bit turns out I didn't. I check it out daily. Lots of contents are not in English but you ask questions and usually you get them answered. I like looking through the posts and pics. Very inspiring. You can see it here:  UAE Agriculture group

Happy Gardening :)

Leafy greens harvest

So in my earlier post I mentioned that I harvested radishes along with their leaves. I also harvested rocket, bok choy and curly endive. There was about 9 liters of radish leaves, around 8 liters of rocket, 6 liters of curly endive and around 5 liters of bok choy. All of this came from around 7 square feet of growing space only. And this is in addition  to what I harvested from these before. These plants regrow which is the cool thing about them. I am expecting to have a little more of bok choy from same space, rocket and possibly endive. Overall I'm very satisfied with the result. I have blanched the leafy greens and now waiting for them to cool before I pack then and out them in the freezer. 

Harvesting Radishes

So a couple of weeks unattended and radishes went out of control. I think we'd had enough radishes so we didn't pick them as often. And the results you can see in the photos. It's unbelievable but all these radishes and their leaves came from just one square foot or 30 cm square.  Yes it's unbelievable. This is a big collander which is 14 inches across and its full of leaves. And there's around 12 radish roots. And we had harvested from this spot earlier so one square foot goes a long way. I don't think we can eat all of these before they go bad plus there's the leaves which I plant to do something with as well. I'll be cooking some for dinner and freezing the rest.

Hey hey hey I WON

Ok I'll he quick, but I'll write in details later Inshallah. I was among the winners of the "Grow Your Food" contest organized by Dubai Municipality. :))) I'm so exciteddddddd

Tomatooooes

Ok I've been harvesting tomatoes like crazy. I even froze 3 crushed tomato portions (around 400 gms each) and I'm looking forward to making more. Now that I can't eat all of these tomatoes fresh I decided to chop them and freeze them for later when the season is over so we can enjoy home grown organic produce even then. This year we have lots of varieties and they are doing extremely well. I can't describe how excited I am.
We also harvested a few beans and 3 Melons,  Sugar Baby and Charleston Grey. I can't say they were super sweet but they tasted good and definitely much much better than store bought. I don't know maybe I have a different expectations for Melons. Greens are doing perfect but the Lettuces have gone bitter. I think next year I need to do successive planting for Lettuces, all of them ready to eat together is a bad bad idea. And I will dedicate less space to them and more to the greens so I could freeze some.
Harvested first 3 eggplants this season. This is the first time 8 have eggplants that I grew from seed. What I had last year was from a transplant I got at the nursery.
Cuckes are done, I only got to make 2 jars of pickled cucumbers, variety Little Paris. 

There's even a cauliflower ready to be harvested soon and one to be followed later, I really didn't think I'd have any this year because of last year failure.
I have harvested one pepper and have a chili ready too. I lost my journal so have no idea what pepper varieties are growing where. Lesson learnt.