Carting this guy home - hibiscus

This pot of hibiscus was from the cutting given by our late neighbor from next door. He was a bachelor who loved to grow flowers and look after injured pigeons and mynahs (seriously don't understand the fascination with those winged pests). It was quite sad really, he and his parents watched me and my brother grow up. First his dad died from a fall, then he died from cancer, and in the end, his mother had dementia and was taken away to live somewhere else. The apartment fell empty for 7 years until his remaining siblings were able to legally sell it and distribute the proceedings.  Till today, I consider them as our neighbors, and those people who lived in the apartment since, transient families. 

My parents have started reducing the plants in their garden and so my mom passed this guy to me because he had stopped flowering. I slowly carted him home on this trolley. I think he is suffering more because he can only get filtered morning sun now, poor thing, though he hasn't kicked the bucket under my care yet.

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.

[11 May] National Parks Board Advertorial campaign for Singapore Garden Festival

About a month ago, the newspapers ran a campaign called "Share a Plant" to promote the upcoming Singapore Garden Festival (16-24 Aug 2014).

Being naturally tight and greedy, I wanted to go and get one too. So I told Bobo to mentally prepare himself to wake up early so that we could go to Bishan Park to get one on Saturday. Both of us got up at 840am, by the time we found the place (Bishan Park is very big!), every single plant was gone even though the event started just one hour ago, at 8am. Some aunties were there complaining that the event planners should have brought more plants. According to the patient National Parks rep explaining to them, they already brought 200 more. Oopz too bad.

But I was also naturally very stubborn. So the next day, we hauled ourselves out of bed and went to Hort Park bright and early. A very nice volunteer brought his own spider ivy (see leftmost plant in above pic) to distribute to eager gardeners. I waited patiently for the plant only to have to fight off a lot of people (including this disgusting man who did not understand the concept of PERSONAL SPACE because he rubbed his crotch against my hip twice, only to receive a chair shoved between his legs by my clumsy hands. Oops I slipped. You play dumb, I play dumb too.). I was talking to the Bloke about it, that my desire to take part in this event had caused me to stupidly generate an additional 11km of carbon footprint. Not one for the environmental-friendly books. Also on retrospect, the plants also went against my requirements of "either edible or pretty bloom". Pretty leaves are not my cup of tea.

I toy with the idea of sharing these plants "as suggested by the website" come SGF. You can share the plant you got to someone else or use it in a display for prizes.

The two plants on the right are from the same family "Epipremnum aureum". The one in the middle has a cute local name called "money plant", I suppose the one on the right "golden pothos" has even better connotations because it is actually golden in color. Seems more fragile then the middle one.

The plants are pretty 打不死. They have survived my hands of death for about almost one month so far. In the meantime, I have encountered two snails. One from the golden pothos, the other from the new plants I bought. It couldn't resist the money plant and came off the plant (not sure which one, either the "fox glove" looking plant or gerberas. I don't know, the thought was equally disgusting because I carried both pots against my chest while hauling a bag of burnt soil), scaled the wall and somehow leapt onto the hanging leaves in the short minutes between my visits to the balcony. I was trying to find a device to somehow humanely transfer this particularly adventurous Mr Snail to the outdoor garden. 

I did see him the next morning scaling the wall, but when I came back again he was gone. Either he had leapt off the wall or into the stupid bird's stomach. I didn't really care.

See Mr Snail hanging off my money plant??

In case you missed him, here is Mr Snail, up close and in your face.

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.

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...

"A"ing coffee grounds from my Kollege

Today Mr Bear came back from his other office. Hadn't seen him in a while, so we had a lovely chat about our gardening efforts. He and Ms Bear are very into gardening in the office, and I started to move some plants there to stamp out the insect population in my home garten. 

I offered him some saltwater taffy which I got from my reddit snack exchange parcel, and he showed me this coffee grounds he got from Dr Cafe Coffee. He apparently went to two outlets and scored all their free coffee grounds. 

He told me that this was very useful for vegetables, because vegetables love slightly acidic soil. He also advised against dumping them on baby seedlings, because they would burn. He said that for himself, he likes to add a thick layer of coffee grounds for the bigger plants. 

Best of all, Mr Bear gave me the bag of coffee grounds. However he said I must use it within 7 days of him getting it from the shop, as advised on the packaging.

Coming home, I googled what edible plants flourish with acidic soil. According to gardeningweb, it seems that coffee grounds have a PH of 6.9 (almost neutral), because most of the acid is already boiled out of the ground coffee while brewing.

As a general guide, these are the vegetables and fruits that do well in acidic soil (even well down to pH 5.5):
Celery
Collards
Corn
Cucumbers
Eggplant
Endive
Kale
Onions
Parsley
Parsnips
Peppers
Potatoes
Pumpkins
Sweet potatoes
Turnips 

Tomatoes (more than PH 6) 

Strawberries

Blueberries

Limes (don't grow together with blueberries).

Vertical Gardens

I am researching on vertical garden designs because I am seriously running out of space on the balcony window. The egg shells, chilli plant, bean seedling, tomato seedlings. A lot of indoor gardeners rely on natural light from their flourescent lamps to grow their plants indoor. I personally think that flourescent lamps are really fugly, but I think the above idea is not bad, especially because it can double up as a room divider and provide additional lighting in a room. Not sure about the sustainability of the insect population though.