Red shiso...

My missus bought a red shiso plant some years ago...

And for all the following years, they have been self-seeding in our potager...

They are part of the mint family, so they have 'relatives' like the basil, sage, lemon balm...

Flowers are rather minute and quite pretty...

There are not many ways to use this herb...

I sometimes make juice out of it...
And occasionally, I boil them to use in our baths...  

The Japanese folks use them (together with salt) to preserve plums...
Of course, we do likewise too... with plums from our potager....

Akebi aka Chocolate vine...

This plant is a novelty... native of Japan...

The Japanese folks call them 'Akebi' while the English speaking world labels it 'chocolate vine' because their flowers seem to smell like chocolate... 

We are very lucky to have these vines growing wildly in our property...

Ours is the three-leaved variety as opposed to the five-leaved ones that can be found in the nearby hills...

The fruits do not look attractive when green...

However, they take on a very pretty pinkish-purple tone as they ripen...

At the same time, the fruit splits vertically from top to bottom, revealing a whitish pulp....

Birds love this flesh as we sometimes observed empty fruits that are either left dangling on the vines or have dropped onto the ground...

We carefully split open the pulp and were pleasantly surprised to see the insides being quite 'intricately designed'...

The taste is faintly sweet... the seeds can be quite bitter if chewed on...

Just out of curiosity, we tried cooking the skin with some miso sauce...

The taste was slightly bitter and some Japanese folks say that it goes well with Japanese wine (sake)...

Pumpkin 'art' and the two loofahs...

Pumpkins are believed to originate from North America...
The Japanese call them 'kabocha', which rhymes with Kampuchea...
Apparently, to the Japanese, the pumpkin came into Japan from Cambodia, hence the name...

Our pumpkin harvest is not too bad this year...

All in all, we manage to harvest seven fruits of this 'Ebisu' specie...

With no scissors on hand, I just ripped the stalks off from this pumpkin...
And woah, do I see a 'bird' here?

And this one... a little monster flexing its muscles?

Now, the loofah is supposed to originate from India...
We grow both types...
The pictures above shows the Egyptian loofah which is rather smooth-skinned...

I observe that it flowers in the morning...

The second type is the angled loofah...

They seem to prefer flowering in the evening...

My sweeto haato prefers the smooth-skinned Egyptian... better taste, she says...
Rather unfortunately for her, our angled loofahs were more productive this season...
Perhaps, 43 angled loofahs compared to about 30 Egyptian loofahs...
In any case, we usually make soups out of them...

Chestnut, pumpkin, beets, and rocoto...

Tried planting chestnut for the first time last year...

The strain we chose is called 'Porotan'...

Don't ask me why it is called such a name, but they are supposed to be easy to peel...

We could manage only one fruit... yes, only one, weighing a great 35 grams... ;=)

 

Actually, there were four fruits forming...

They eventually dropped off before they could fully mature...

Our butter scotch pumpkin did not do as well this year...

Yes, we could harvest only one fruit...

Compared to 6 fruits last season... 

Wonder why, really... 

Beets... just harvested a bunch of them, and was quite amused to see one of them taking on the shape of the bottle gourd...  

Rocoto peppers... yes, from seeds given to me by a former student from Peru...

Their color combination on the insides are really fascinating to observe...

I plan to ask my sweeto haato to preserve them in vinegar...