Gardens by the Bay

I have been very busy at Arbeit, so have been mostly inactive online. However I am running out of space in my SD card so I am forced to update... sigh.

A few weeks ago I went with meine Kollegen to Gardens by the Bay. Had a lot of fun with the camera there. I am toying with the idea of buying the polaroid camera on sale for SGD99 at Challenger, but I am such a tight pussy. I think it would be wiser to splurge on a long-distance lens for my camera than to buy the polaroid. After all, it can be such a waste of $ especially when you take photos of people like Bobo who like to pull stupid faces at the camera and the polaroids themselves are deadly expensive. S$15.50 for a box of 10!?

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

Sour Grapes

We went to play at Mutter's garten on Saturday. Her grapevine sprouted three grapes, same like last week she said. So she gave me the grapes. I went home to try the grapes. They were deadly SOUR!!

I didn't eat them but bit into them so that I can get the seeds for regrowth. I realized now that the grapes were not ripe. I am concentrating on grape growing because I like to eat grapes and I like that I can use grapevines to make wreaths, like the one I bought from Germany.

"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).

Peace Lily

I was at the zoo a while back and chanced upon this lovely lady standing by herself in a dress of green.

What Bobo got from the internet

On the same day that I received my reddit present, Bobo showed me the stuff he bought off the internet. He had shopped at this Dunecraft which sells gardening products in a very scientific representation.

The box on the left contain seed bombs, which you supposedly throw anywhere and herbs will eventually emerge. Good luck especially since my herbs are dying from the heat (so am I). The middle box is a coffee house, which you can grow your coffee plants. Bobo was annoyed when he realized that it would take three years for any bloody coffee beans to appear.

The third box is a special chili plant called Trindad Scorpion Pepper which supposedly has1.4M shu. I interpret that as it is very spicy. Finally on the right is the Dinosaur plant, which according to the box can live for a super long time. Don't water it, it will shrink back into a ball.

So far, only Bobo had tried the Dinosaur, which hasn't done anything outstanding like grow an actual dinosaur. Snorez.

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.