Stupid is what stupid does

I grew this daikon using seeds from Ban Lee Huat (the adorable uncles who drink chinese tea all day). My first attempt using a container was successful though my mother grumbled that they wouldn't be very big. This is my second attempt, this time Mutter was more accommodating when I said that we need to cover those little white darlings with soil. 

Tempted by this little daikon peeping through the soil, I was too tempted and dug him out too soon only to realize he was still an itty bitty baby. SHIT! By the way, we also had him and his greeny head for breakfast today, and Bobo complained that the greens were too chewy. Oh please, Koreans preserve the greens as kimchi ok?!

#ihavebeenconned. A #Daikon that protrudes out from the earth doesn't mean that it is equally long underground...sigh. #scherbergarten #allotment #communitygarden

A photo posted by Gardening Duckie (@meinkleingarten) on Aug 30, 2016 at 7:06am PDT

[backdated post] Jianguo Flower Market

Since I was still on mission to buy white bittergourd (white, mind you, not green, as demanded by Uncle C) and had failed on two attempts while at Taichung and Cingjing, it was  #1 on the buy list as we made our way to Jianguo Flower Market on Sunday. Note: the trip was especially timed because the market is only open on Saturdays and Sundays from 9am. 

Bonsai Bonanza

How to get there?

Take the red line towards Xiangshan/Taipei 101, then get off at Daan Park station. I forgot which exit you should take, but it is the exit with the endless stairs. Turn right upon exit, then walk past some shops, including KFC, 7 Eleven, etc. 

I love the European flair of this stall...

The market is under an expressway.

It was super fun to visit, and being a sucker for cute things, I bought way too many cute ornaments that would eventually be stolen from my L-shaped garden.

Super Cute!!!!!

So cheap but cannot buy back. Sobs!

Jicama 沙葛 harvest

Ever since our move to our new location in the community garden, I planted these jicama seeds for nearly 8 months! 

 I kept hesitating to harvest them because I was worried that there would be nothing edible to collect therefore the long wait. By the way for jicama, only the root is edible, everything else is inedible, even the seeds and leaves. Which meant the plant was a pain to get rid of by the time it came to harvest. 

So I harvested one for myself, left one for my mother (she was very fortunate to find two buried in the same vein), and gave the rest to the old folks to the garden, who split each jicama into two because they were very big.

Next time i will grow #jicama for only 6 months instead of waiting nearly 8 months. Had some monster sized ones, my mom weighed one. Was 2 kg! #gardeningsingapore #allotment #gardening

A photo posted by Gardening Duckie (@meinkleingarten) on Nov 7, 2015 at 2:07am PST

Mutter weighed the bigger jicama she got and it was at least 2 kg, she said.

Well, the plant was useful on sunny days where it provided shade. But other than that, it might be too much effort to grow. Now that I had relative success, the old people wanted to attempt as well, taking the seed pods off me. Well, they are welcome to them as I won't be growing them for the next three months with the monsoon season coming.

How tall the plant was:

We often call Bang kuang (also known as 沙葛) as turnip. But after some failed attempts at Googling "turnip" (because the old folks at the #communitygarden wanted to know if its pretty purple flowers and recently emerging seed pods are edible), I found out that its English name is #Jicama. And it turned out that other than the edible tuber, everything else on the jicama plant is poisonous, esp the seeds which contain rotenone. I had to spend my evening cutting down the pods as they take away the plant resources, thus impacting the tuber size... 🐈 Anyway the super yummy tuber is great in stews, salads, braises and is most famous as the filling in #popiah.

A photo posted by Gardening Duckie (@meinkleingarten) on Jul 7, 2015 at 9:26am PDT

Miss Bear went to Netherlands

Glamorous Miss Bear got to go to Netherlands this time for work. According to her, the location was in a ulu town (so bad that they didn't accept credit cards, but had upstairs coffeeshops *interesting priorities*). Nonetheless she still managed to go to Amsterdam during the weekend. Since it was my birthday and her mother's as well, she got both of us seeds for our birthdays.

Yeah, so I have to grow this guy in the office, sigh. For those who are mildly interested, her mom got gerbera daisies.

Emergence of Edamame pods

I love to eat edamame so when Mutters friend grew them in their garten, I asked for some pods to start them off in my own garden.

I was given a few pods which I ate up... and had to ask for two more. As instructed, I sunned them really hard, before growing them. Only two succeeded, tiny twisty twiney things that climbed up my balcony and pole (in the L-shape).  One died later, after I forgot to water for days. That was very regrettable, because it started having flowers already, so it actually needed more water. I was set back for quite a while, because the one outside the apartment did not get as much sunlight so took a much longer time to climb and grow. 

And for a while, Mutter and I were debating over whether the pods were actually edamame or another plant which blue flowers were used for coloring in Peranakan cakes. Thankfully I was proven right, because finally the other plant started sprouting tiny pretty purple flowers.

Then I became worried and wondered if I needed to pollinate the damn things.

I am pleased to announce... I don't have to. This week I was very excited to discover that the edamame pods have finally started growing.

Now it's a question of when they become big enough to be harvested. I shall try very hard to restrain myself from eating them. Instead, I will use this harvest for seeds. Too bad edamame is an annual plant. Sigh. I think I will have to wait like bloody months again... before I can get a bumper crop from my new growth.

Making my own tomato seeds

I was reading You Grow Girl, which was basically a collection of gardening advice and tips from yougrowgirl.com. The one tip that arrested my attention was how to make your own tomato seeds from eh.. tomatoes?

So what I did was to scrape off the pulp as much as possible off the seeds and dump them into water. I soaked the seeds for 3 days, pouring off the water and flotsam everyday before replenishing with new water. At the end of three days, all the seeds at the bottom of the jar were the viable seeds.

I dried them on a plate. However B仔 told me that there were a lot of fruit flies flying around the seeds. Frustrated (and thinking the seeds were no longer viable), I threw the whole lot into a peat pot... Guessing what?

I had 11 seedlings. Ok, 4 died so far, but at least we know that this method works!

My heart is broken

I hadn't posted in a while because my new camera had a lens error (which made me very sad) and while I was at work on Monday, my little town experienced strong winds so much so that my little sunflower seedlings which I had been cultivating, bent over in defeat.

I put them outside in the L-shape because they get better sunlight there. Unfortunately when the chilli plant was thrown out, there was no more natural wind break standing in front of the smaller plants in the corridor. So they were extremely vulnerable to the insane sudden wind.

Depressing is not sad enough a word to describe how I feel. Especially since it had been bloody hot in Singapore since last week, and I was totally feeling it because our air-con went kaput.

 

Egging my seeds on

I bought dwarf and big sunflower seeds. So far, I have tried the big ones. All but 3 didn't succeed. And the the 3 that did? One died because of all the rain (not enough sunlight coming into the balcony). So when I tried the new batch, I planted them in egg shells.

Some marigold and one solitary sunflower seedling (keeping fingers crossed)

So far the egg shell one (you see the one in the foto? top right eggshell) is doing well despite my lousy transplanting skill. I cracked the egg shell, ok? So I was frantically trying to bury it, seedling and egg shell into the soil and hoping no one would see my mistake. Other than my portulaca with the tiny red flowers. I only have yellow chrysanthemums and am now raising sunflowers and marigolds (I am having better luck with them). I am toying with the idea of buying more plants from the nursery but I feel like it is kind of like cheating.

feathered perpetrator - "your <s>base</s> leaves are now belong to us"

This morning, I was on leave. Walking around the L-shape, I thought to myself that Mr Lime (the taller one) looks kind of miserable. I had thrown a green net on the two lime plants to dissuade the naughty black birds (we call them mynahs here) from plucking their leaves for their nests. However the strong wind accompanying the rain seemed to choke the poor things with the net despite my efforts.

So I decided to take the net off. Less than 10 minutes later, I came out of the apartment to see the bloody black birds doing window shopping at the lime plants. zzzzz.

Back went the net again. Sigh.

Finally a flower from my edamame

Patience isn't really my thing. I have been very upset that my mom's edamame plants have grown pods and died and my 3 haven't even sprouted flowers. Just loads of leaves. 

Check out the purple flower!!!

Then I saw this little side sprouts that look suspiciously like new leaves (argh) or flower buds. I was holding out against hope that it was a flower bud because  I can't eat the bloody leaves *damnit*. 

Anyway it turns out they were flowers. phew. I am pretty excited, at this point, even if it doesn't translate into flowers I will still be happy.

Just now I went home for dinner. As I was walking out, I look up into Mutter's nightmarish container garden (I will take a photo. I don't mean the one she rents). I was like wtf, that whole mass of green that I have been ignoring was actually all edamame with loads of purple flowers. Some people just have green fingers I guess.

Also note to self: I shouldn't tie my plants so tightly to the stake. Yesterday, grumbling, I was trying to scrape off white fly larvae from my edamame (I have 3) and the poor top snapped off. I thought I was going to have a coronary there and then.