[Singapore Garden Festival 2014] Propagating Torenia

I was looking closely at the torenia that I bought at the Singapore Garden Festival. The stems that touch the soil have developed roots, so I was convinced that it would be easy to propagate them by the stems. Mutter loves the flower, but the cuttings she took from her garten never survive and she really likes purple color. The torenia she got from the garten is pink anyway.

So I did a stem cutting and soak it inside some water. But it didn't work, possibly because the stupid wind in the corridor blew the stem onto the floor *roll eyes*. So now I am attempting layering, which is to bury some extensive stems into the soil while they still take in nutrients from the main plant. Kind of like a umbilical cord :D

Wish me luck!!!

Recent Rose Obsession

Like I mentioned before, I am into cultivating roses now. My three roses (one peach, one orangey red and one purpley red) at Arbeit are doing fantastic, and had recovered from that 4 day long weekend that nearly did in the orangey red rose. I had asked Mr Bear then to take a firm hand and trim my dying orangey red, only to have him snip off a new side shoot that was doing ok.

So regretfully, I threw it in some water and now I have a little baby that is growing roots! Hopefully in a month's time, it will be ready to be transplanted and brought home. My idea was to keep some pots of roses which I deem as the master in the lovely air-conditioned environment with loads of SW sunlight. I will use the master to cultivate little stem cuttings which I will bring home to survive in my L-shaped garden. 

I also have two roses in the L-shaped. One is a mini yellow rose, which has not been stolen yet, and a huge white rose bush (which is dying because of the soil and insufficient sunlight. So I have just transplanted it into burnt soil). I am toying with the idea of cutting a branch and bringing it to Arbeit to become a new master and as a precaution against thieves.

Rose Garten in the office

Admittedly I have murdered many thriving pots of roses since I started my gardening adventure. I ruefully have to agree that the indoor balcony is not conducive to growing roses. Neither is growing them outside which subjects them to thieving hands and winged pests.

So after お母さん's rose bush died shortly after she gave me a cutting and I made one cutting myself, my cutting survived (the one she gave me hasn't bloody grown roots and it has been 7 months!) to grow roots and all. I replanted it and gave it to お母さん again, saying that she should keep it and just give me the next viable cutting. She said, no she was trying to cut down on her garden in the office, and so she regifted it to me again.

I went around my floor looking for a good location, and asked one of the bigger bosses to let my rose hang out at her window seat (I am a windowless cubicle minion). She said ok, even though she is not into gardening.

Mr Bear knows of my obsession with roses (god knows, I moaned enough about them online and offline) and so one day while he was at Cheers (a 24-hour convenience store), he called me to ask if I still wanted roses. I asked how much, he said the smaller ones were S$6 a piece, so I asked for two pots. 

The extremely opportunistic me immediately brought them to the big boss again and asked if these pots can hang out at her window too. She said ok, but I think I should practise restraint now :D. Other than the weekends where the aircon is not switched on and no one is around to water them (one of them nearly perished after a long weekend of 4 days but managed to recover in time), the sunlight pouring through the windows are helping my roses bloom very well! Haven't killed any so far yet.

I brought this rose bud home from the office to show case my office rose, but it hasn't survived the trip in my bag. oops.

Splitting Blue Daze

Blue Daze

Blue Daze is one of my most favorite flowers, especially because the stupid winged pests don't eat it. So far they have chewed through a few of my edible leaves and ivy to make their nests or dinner. 

I have attempted several means of propagation for Blue Daze, such as layering and stem cuttings. The best method turns out to be splitting, as shown above.

Journey into Rural Singapore - Looking for acclimatized rose

Looks idyllic, isn't it? If you ignore the cranes behind me, moving the loads of fertilizer. Bobo and I were at a "ulu" nursery looking for an acclimatized rose (waste of time, owner wasn't around and I bought it at World Farm in the end).  Still, rural Kranji/Lim Chu Kang (depending on which way you drive in) farm area is a place you must check out, it is the last bit of peace in hectic Singapore.

Slaughtered veggies drowned in salt solution

During our wasted trip, we popped by Bollywood veggies. The food isn't great, pretty salty (which is pretty horrifying when I read the sign that said reduced salt in dishes), but there aren't many choices where we were. Still I appreciated the idea of a quiet, functioning farm that has restaurant facilities, especially since a farm is what I would like to have when I retire (the irony that I deliberately bought a flat in a very noisy but accessible area is not lost on me). 

I ran my fingers through the Southenwood (some say dill) until Bobo pointed out the bug in it...

As I was telling the Misses Bears, one of whom wanted to have a orchard in Australia, I wished that one day I could retire and operate a farm in Germany, preferably Schwangau. But the likelihood is almost zilch, I think I would like to operate a farm in Taiwan. At the very least maybe Singapore...

I would have a farmhouse where people could stay and decorate it like Amazing Spaces. Then have farm tours and a cafe on-site so that visitors can pop by and appreciate nature. Sigh...

Third week of grapes

First week of grapes

My grapes never learnt to climb, but one of them actually tried to sprout some grapes.

I was so shocked!

I had three bunches. Since this photo, there have been many ants. I lost 1 whole bunch and half to them/wind that keeps bashing my vulnerable grapes.

I should take an updated photo. The remaining grapes are growing well :)

Rare Sight - Flowers blooming at the same time

It's rare for the flowers in my planter to bloom at the same time. But what is bizarre is that there seems to be two camps of flowers. I think I will try to get another flower into the space. What was upsetting is that someone stole one of my S$2 Daiso wind vanes, that used to occupy the space. So lame.

Lantana, Blue Daze and dunno what is that yellow flower...

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.

Easter 2013 Blooms

My Chrysanthemums are going on a protest by refusing to bloom. I suspect that they are suffering from blight. My principal crops are grapes and tomatoes ( I have a few fledgling plants), especially the former after I did "mulching" with egg shells. Shielding the soil from the crazy ass sun has helped encourage the growth of baby grape leaves. I am very hopeful that they will do better and climb up the ladder of success.

In the meantime, here are the rest of my flowers. I realize that all my flowers are really tiny, especially the cuphea. Hardly the sea of color I was going for, though my Anagallis has subsequently given me 7 blue flowers one morning (but I am too lazy to take a photo because it will require me to transfer the SD card in and out of the camera. zzz)

As for my other portulaca variety (the one that is edible- I realized that after seeing beak-shaped damage on the leaves, I had thought the birds were going for the aphids), I have taken to transplanting some in the kitchen balcony, in my office and among the aloe veras in the L-shape. I dare those birds to get at the portulaca among the poky veras!

Cuphea

Portulaca - can you see my neighbors' clothes hanging in the backdrop? :D

Anagillis, Lantana and Turnera Ulmifolia

My Flower Bed

I was outside mourning the death of my baby tomato plant. I think it suffered from nermatodes (and lack of watering), based on the little swollen bits on the roots. I think that pot of soil is jinxed. Every plant that was transplanted there has died horrible deaths. Let me see, potato (though that was more because I didn't know I was supposed to hill the soil), then the chilli, and now the tomato. I also realized that it was dumb of me to separate the tomato plants. Cluster f*ck was the way to go if I wanted to pollinate multiple flowers at a go.

Well, part of the learning process. But as I was sourly saying to the lady next door, if I were a farmer, I would have starved to death already. So many weeks and my other tomato plant only yielded one tomato which is taking forever to ripen. My edible garden is not working out too great.

On the other hand, my lantana and Anagallis are doing pretty well. Thank god, because there was one day I didn't water (I am switching to a two day water once habit, unfortunately with the heat nowadays I sometimes need to water at least once a day, especially for the sweet potato leaves), and I hadn't watered the day before, so everything drooped. Lost the tomato plant because of that...

I wanted to do a container bed arrangement, but everything looks a bit sparse huh? I think I need to fertilize them somewhat to get them to bloom better. 

A ladder to climb on

I have a ladder from the double decker bed left by the previous owner. We threw the bed away but I kept the ladder, ostensibly to refurbish it as a towel hanger. Instead it languished in the storeroom as I couldn't bear the thought of using a towel that was hung on a rung that used to be stepped on by strange feet. 

So it was an easy idea to move it out to the garden, where I could have my grape plants and Anagallis climb all over the rungs.

Climbing the ladder to sunshine...

I have to admit that my garden is getting on my nerves because it is not aesthetically pleasing enough.  This is the reason why I started growing flowers to have a bit of color. I also understand now why did my former neighbor chose to stick fake flowers among her greenery.

I chose loads of clay pots to hold my plants, which is a displeasing but uniform dull yellow. I am toying with the idea of painting either the pots or the garden furniture. But my smaller plastic pots are such a pain to paint. How about bright yellow for my ladder? 

Nasturtiums vs Pennywort

I am still trying to develop an edible garden. Let me see: I have 2 lime plants, 2 grape plants, 1 chilli plant, 5 sweet potato leaves, 2 bean plants, 1 oregano, 4 tomato (only 1 has tomato - 1), loads of aloe vera etc. Other inedible plants: portulaca, lantana, chrysanthemum (not the tea making kind, sigh) and blue pimpernel.

However I have more or less stopped buying plants after failed attempts to get nasturtium seeds or plants. But I kinda remembered that nasturtiums have circular leaves, which were edible (so were the flowers).

So what happened was that I was at NTUC(supermarket branch which has its own nursery section) walking around when I saw plants with circular leaves.  Nasturtiums!!! They were only S$1.90 a pot, so I bought 2. Now that I was diversifying my risks a bit (as in isolate my plants from insects by having some in the office), I brought one to the office.

Mr Bear pointed out that they weren't nasturtiums. But I insisted that the stems and leaves looked really edible. So I ran "circular leaves" on google and found ... pennywort, also known as duckweed. Semi-aquatic... edible plant :D

Great for salads. Yum yum! I am toying with the idea of steamed pennywort and sweet potato leaves with some oyster sauce.

Butterfly on my Portulaca

I have two kinds of portulaca, I think one is grandiflora. I am not sure what is the other one which has small tiny flower petals. I will take a photo of that soon. I love portulaca and how it is so cute as to open its petals only for a few hours per day.

If you look closely at the photo, there is a butterfly or moth resting on one of the portulaca flowers.

Vater maintains that if the insect has its wings together, then it is probably a butterfly. Mr Bear thinks it is a moth. I don't care, as long as the damn thing pollinates the rest of my plants, which will take a miracle because I live so damn high up. I am almost tempted to have my own bee hive at one point (just kidding, I had a nasty bee bite when I was in Salzburg).

Anyway I will be running around the housing estates looking at different plants grown by high rise residents. I hope I don't get scolded. I am very interested to know what plants people have success in growing in Singapore, especially those living in high rise apartments. Say for example, last week, I forgot to take something from the apartment, and got off at the 13th floor. I saw an auntie planting two radish bodies into the soil. It is quite a funny sight because the radishes are only 1/3 in the soil. I asked her what she was doing, she said she is growing them for their leaves. Again, not understanding the fascination with white radish leaves...but it piqued my interest, high-rise gardening.

Zinnias - The Perfect Beginner Plant... for some Beginners

Actually the chrysanthemums were not the flowers I intended to put outside my door for Chinese New Year. My initial plan was for the two pretty pots of zinnias that I bought from the nursery. 

However 3-4 days into living at the L-shape, they started to look AWFUL. Dried and miserable. I watered thinking that they were thirsty. Nope, didn't work either. 

I started deadheading the blooms, especially when one of them had like white mold growing on it. I also found a cotton-seed-looking seed at my door. Later Mr Bear would tell me that this was actually the seed of the zinnia plant.  

But that was later, after I had found out what I did wrongly. In the meantime, desperate I turned to the Internet, and posted the fotos on gardening web and reddit. In the meantime, usual tips on zinnias said that they were a really easy annual to plant, sun-loving and somewhat drought-resistant.

Finally someone pointed out that these plants were actually adult bloomers and that the plants were overcrowded and the roots were not drawing enough nutrients. By then, 6 of the 8 zinnias were dead. So I deadheaded all the blooms and replanted three of them that still had some new leaves. One more died later. Sigh.

Since then, the other two recovered. The yellow was going strong in the first place. It was the only bloom in its pot to still have new leaves, while it was almost gone case for the peach zinnia (it didn't have any flowers by then so I couldn't remember what was the color of its flowers). Took a really long time, but here it is, somewhat recovered. Ok, it wasn't my effort. It really was going to die at one point, so I moved it to the wall, where the incessant rain seems to have perked it up.

This is a very painful lesson learnt. I felt really bad for killing the zinnias with my lack of knowledge. 

Tomatoes are worrisome

I am fairly obsessed with my tomatoes. When I bought the plant, it was full of blossoms and had 3 fruit. Since putting it outside in the L-shape, I found it suffering a massive blossom drop, and only 1 more fruit developed. I am not exactly sure but I think it is the extremely high humidity at the apartment, and the insufficient sunlight. But I feel vaguely comforted by a fellow redditor's reassurance that the fact that I am near the equator would mean that the sunlight that the plants get in those few hours would be sufficient. I try to water them in the mornings before I go out, to ensure consistency in the fruit.

My Zinnia which I have barely rescued from my noobishness

The tomato plant I bought came with a smaller "sub-plant" in the pot. A few weeks ago, after the great Zinnia mystery, I decided to split the tomato plants. So using a spade, I mercilessly cut downwards between the plants and pulled out the smaller plant and replanted it in its own pot. It was a good thing I did that because the main plant seems to be developing some bacterial disease. It has some yellow spots on its leaves.

Yellow spots on my tomato leaves

I just found out that my little tomato plant (I call it the "sub-plant") is sprouting 2 flowers. I am very glad, because this means I am doing things correctly. I am waiting for the flowers to come out and then I will invade them with my paintbrush to spread the pollen.

Tomato sub plant on right and Mr Aloe Vera on left. I am super great at aloe vera. It is the only plant I have never killed

Chrysanthemum Tea anyone?

Mr Bear is very knowledgeable about growing plants ever since I knew him in uni. As a belated gardening noob, I have been learning a lot from him. 

The transplant activity - erdbeeren runners, chrysanthemums and soaked sweet potato leaves

Last Friday at NTUC (the supermarket has the most accessible, cheapest nursery near us), we were talking about chrysanthemums, because it is very popular to showcase these flowers during Chinese New Year. He wanted to get some "mums", whereas I am turned off because I consider them as flowers you make offerings with to the dead.

However last Samstag at the nursery, I was hunting for portulaca in vain. However, I saw all varieties of chrysanthemums for sale. Then the leaky cogs in my brain started grinding. Why not grow my own chrysanthemums for tea?!

After all, I buy a lot of these flowers for tea as they have cooling properties and has detoxification purposes. Chrysanthemum tea is great for people with diarrhea, sore throats, fevers and swollen joints (translated and summarized from the Chinese explanation below).

So I pored over the flowers, ultimately choosing two cute little pots to bring home. After the great Zinnia scare, I decided to split one pot of flowers into a deeper trough, reusing the one I had been using to regrow sweet potato leaves in.

I lifted the plant out. Looked like they were grown tightly in the pot because their roots were interweaved, collecting at the bottom of the pot. I dipped the entire plant in a bit of water then tried to loosen the roots a bit at the bottom before separating them slowly. I am sorry for the transplant shock! Hope they are resilient enough to withstand it. I watered the plant sparingly after the transplant.

After transplanting the chrysanthemums

The joke is that after all that effort, it turned out that I might have gotten the wrong variety for making tea. Oopz~!

菊花食疗作用：

菊花味甘微苦、性微寒，归肺、肝经；
清香宣散，升中有降；具有疏散风热，清肝明目，清热解毒的功效；
主治外感风热或风温初起，发热、头痛，眩晕，目赤肿痛，疔疮肿毒。