I finally got a caterpillar to morph...

Mr Bear was disgusted with my interest in caterpillars. He felt that I was being unnecessarily cruel to them because I kept trying to keep them. Actually I wanted to keep them so that they would morph into butterflies and pollinate my garden. It is a long flight to reach where I live. So far I have encountered some moths in my garden, and one giant butterfly (which was rather scary). While I rushed in to get my camera, it disappeared. Such a waste.

So far, I had 3 failures in rearing caterpillars. There were the two which I picked up from my new herb from the nursery. They were eaten by the cunning birds that live upstairs (they also have a very annoying taste for portulaca and enjoy lining their nests with my lime leaves). Then there was the one that fell on Bär's backpack. It died of starvation. It was then I realised that pennywort is inedible.

Two weeks ago, while coming back from a very trying meeting, I came across a caterpillar dangling from the roof of a shelter. So I picked it up, against the disgruntled shrieks of my team and carried it back to the Büro. This time I also remembered to pick up a leaf. 

The caterpillar ate around the leaf and "died" overnight. I forgot to bring it home to feed it sweet potato leaves. Well it just stopped moving the next day, even though there were still a lot of leaf left. I was like oops. Maybe it was thirsty (ok I am stupid), and dripped some water in. It started moving a bit. So I thought ok, let's bring it home. 

The cocoon after the moth has emerged

The next morning, I woke up to find the caterpillar inside a brown cocoon. I was ecstatic to say the least, because it was practically expediting my desire to have a pollinating butterfly. Well, what happened was that seven days later, during the worst of the haze, it emerged from its cocoon to reveal a moth...

Talk about anticlimatic. Oh well, I was glad I got to take a photo. After that, I wandered off to have dinner, sure that it would not be able to escape the apartment, because we had closed all the windows due to the haze. I was sure that it would pollinate the flowers in my balcony. 

The moth. Looks like one of the common species. Disappointing.

I hadn't seen it since. Hopefully it didn't get eaten by the lizards....

お母さん Mini Rose

お母さん gave me a mini yellow rose cutting. It has faded to a nice white, and I have now cut the plant a few inches from the flower to make a new cutting. Wish me luck in having 2 mini rose plants!

<u>Updated!!!</u>
Not sure what I did, but after I snipped off the top part of the rose, the bottom part of the rose plant died... wtf... Now I am praying the upper half (which bottom has been soaked in water) will survive.

I didn't throw away the bottom part of the rose, since the stem was still green. Now new leaves have sprouted. I guess it went into shock when I cut it. The top half still hasn't grown new roots yet.

Organic Sources of Nutrients

from Stuart Robertson's "Tips on Container Gardening"

Alfalfa meal (nitrogen)
Blood meal (nitrogen)
Bone meal (phosphor)
Cottonseed meal (nitrogen)
Crab meal (nitrogen)
Egg shells (calcium)
Feather meal (nitrogen)
Fish meal (nitrogen)
Fish bone meal (phosphor)
Granite dust (potassium)
Gypsum (calcium, sulphur)
Hoof meal (nitrogen)
Kelp (potassium)
Limestone (calcium, magnesium)
Manure (nitrogen, phosphor)
Rock phosphate (phosphor)
Shrimp meal (nitrogen)
Soybean meal (nitrogen)
Woodash (potassium)

Have you taken your N, P, P today? Seriously, where can one find some of these more exotic nutrients?

Hey Gardening Noob 1 - [自给自足 种植法] How to grow herbs

Hey Gardening Noob - Reading Chinese Horiculture Books

I am reading horiculture books voriciously, specifically those on edible container gardens. While I am expending into perenial flowers in the L-shape nowadays (for a bit of color), my preference is still vegetables and fruits.

I started borrowing horiculture books in Chinese last Monday, having exhausted the usual English ones. I liked the DK series. But I get a bit of the green eye when I read about the gardens in temperate countries, because I live in the supposedly zone 10-11 (USDA), and I don't have a lovely garden that gets lots of sun. Instead I get a long corridor which gets the morning sun at an angle and a bit of balcony, which gets the afternoon sun at an even worse angle.

Most of these Chinese books are translated from Japanese. So far the one I am reading <<自给自足 种植法>> which teaches how to cook with ingredients from your edible container garden. It describes how to water your seeds and seedlings (which I have come to recognise as very important, after killing massive numbers of tomato seedlings).

Before sowing:
Before sowing your seeds and seedlings, you must water the soil. The seeds will form little hairs (?), which require moisture to grow. After sowing, you should water gently to prevent seeds from being washed off. Thereafter water once only after germination. This is the same for seedlings, as they grow better with moisture.

Watering the entire container of soil:
Herb and vegetable roots not only absorb moisture, but oxygen at the same time. So if you water a little every day, wetting only the soil surface, but the rest of the soil is hardened, the root system cannot absorb oxygen (did not know that). So when the soil appears dry, you should water enough so that the water wil drain from the bottom of the container. The soil under the surface should be wetter so when you water the plant, the older air and water can be passed out and the root system can absorb new oxygen.

You should not water the leaves, but all the soil around the roots.

Limes

I think the limes are getting a bit heavy, with the strong winds blowing through the corridor, the crazy shaking of the branches are causing the leaves to drop. On top of that there was the stupid birds that like to steal the leaves for their nests. That's why I have to secure the plants with double layer netting. The first netting had holes too big so the birds still tore bits out of the leaves with their beaks. So I had to apply a smaller netting.

 <u>Updated!!!</u>

I harvested 3 times this week (I harvested a few more several weeks ago). So far only 1 baby lime is still growing, which is quite disappointing. Well, at least this means that the plant is still healthy.  Bobo advises me to grow the seeds from this crop and grow new lime plants.

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.