Uncles hibiscus

Wormery Blues

The only baby worm

I have been trying to start a wormery, which I started with 1 fat earthworm, and lots of veggie peels, especially carrot. I used an old planter which I had been using to grow daikon (quite successfully I may add), and dumped coffee grounds (from the nice cafe guys from my office), boiled egg shells,  and mowed grass. I also found new tiny worm (looks promising as if he belonged one of the worm species that are more conducive to composting, Apparently fattie earthworms from the garden are not conducive, though their castings are still good)

The veggies I feed the wor

I went to the community garden downstairs and dug up a couple of fattie earthworms when I was rummaging for plants for the Misses Bears, who are starting their own high-rise garden in their condo. These guys also went into the planter.

Side track here: I am not sure whether I blogged about this before, but previously I did a compost drip using a banged up drink dispenser, which also had some fun misadventures involving greedy lizards.

too dark to see the rotted down compost

compost from the water dispenser

So Bobo and I went for an uneventful cruise and since returning, I decided to stocktake the number of worms I have. I suppose they should have had naughty sex with themselves by now, those hermaphrodites, and I would have at least some more..

the soil in the wormery

Nope. Flipped the soil for half an hour, and only found that same tiny worm from the other time. What happened to my 3 fatties???

When I was complaining to Bobo, he asked me if I had forgotten about those pesky Mynahs which treat my L-shaped corridor garden like their local Kopitiam. 

"I wouldn't be surprised if they found and ate the worms. Don't you see them hopping on the grass downstairs looking for worms?"

Btw we also wasted this morning going to Seaview Aquarium to look for blood worms, because some helpful person from green garden culture forum said they sold blood worms.

Yeah, they do. Frozen. They only had live tubifex which are gross sewage dwellers. So if you ever come across that same forum, don't ******** waste your time driving to the "Bird no lay egg, Dog no shit" place.

Of course Bobo had a snappy comeback for this as well. His comment was "even if they sell blood worms, don't you think that the quality will be very bad? That's why when you researched for local sellers of the worm for gardening, versus local seller of the same worm for rearing fish, the price difference was so much different for the same worm?"

Argh. I know I should appreciate that he still accommodated my request and drove me there even if he thought it was a stupid idea. Anyway tomorrow I am going to risk Zika and rummage through my other community garden soil and look for some more fatties.

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!

[backdated] Community Garden event

A photo posted by Gardening Duckie (@meinkleingarten) on Feb 26, 2016 at 9:54pm PST

On the last Saturday of Feb, our community garden threw an event ostensibly to show case our gardening efforts (but actually to whore ourselves for funding). Was totally vindicated in my thinking when everyone avoided the garden tour (granted it was conducted during an extremely murderous noon) and focused on enjoying the buffet lunch and air con in the community hall.

In addition to the programme we had on offer, we also did a giveaway of extra plants we had (brilliant and green idea that Auntie S had), lucky draw on Uncle C's Desert Roses (which are sold very expensive in nurseries) and samples of dishes using our bountiful harvests.

A photo posted by Gardening Duckie (@meinkleingarten) on Feb 26, 2016 at 2:18am PST

Since I was asked to be one of the three lecturers, I decided to focus on the one plant I could always rely on for success. Basil.

A photo posted by Gardening Duckie (@meinkleingarten) on Dec 31, 2015 at 4:40am PST

I was really thrown for a loop when I realized that the audience was largely made up of senior citizens. Unlike our ABC who could rely on our outgoing chairman to translate for her, I felt too embarrassed by my years of education to not be bilingual, and used both English and Mandarin for my lecture in a deeply harassed manner. Unlike the other 2, I kept my slides really short and used samples to share the different varieties of basil. I was later very flattered by this elderly lady who asked for one of my samples as reference when she did her nursery shopping. Ooopz should have told I got my red basil, cinnamon basil and lemon basil at Jasons supermarket.

A photo posted by Gardening Duckie (@meinkleingarten) on Feb 26, 2016 at 6:58am PST

The event was pretty fun even though.

Gardening has been a nightmare

The past few months have been a nightmare for my garden. Firstly there was the haze, which stretched three months from Sep to Nov, then the welcomed monsoon season, which wrecked the community garden yesterday.

Luckily Mutter and I have the L-shaped drain which the rest of the gardeners filled in. So after the rain stopped, the water drained away quickly for our plot at least. I think it is time to discuss with Mutter how to further reinforce the border beside the drain. Initially we grew portulaca, but that unfortunately died from the combined effects of haze plus monsoon rain.

The only plus side of yesterday's rain was all the snails on my plot drowned. They have been a major pain since the rain started, eating and climbing my stakes to get at my malabar spinach.

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