You need a lot of patience when you dabble in gardening.
Seeds sprout only when they’re ready. The sunflower and rudbeckia seeds are still playing hide and seek with me – I seek, they don’t germinate. 
I’m still trying, though – somewhere in my lot of seeds, there must be a few that will grow here! Luckily, other seeds have been more accommodating:
Little sprouts of green shiso.
On a whim, I tossed some chilli seeds into a small pot instead of the kitchen bin, and they started sprouting!
There's something oh so satisfying about seeing a bean seed germinate! These are long bean seeds.
Plants flower and fruit only when they’re sufficiently matured:
Flower of the purple brinjal. No fruits yet though!
Okra grows and fruits easily. I like that!
Cuttings take time to grow new roots and stabilize:
A good, healthy root system after planting the roselle cuttings just over 3 weeks ago.
My healthiest vitex trifolia plant grown from cuttings received a month ago.
While waiting, there have been other chores to keep me busy – pruning, fertilizing, planning. I’ve also been trundling – gradually – my ton of compost around the garden. Some has gone to create planting beds while most, so far, has been used in top dressing:
Weeded away the grass then laid on about 3cm of compost up to the edge of the tree line of this mangosteen tree. Hopefully the ring of bricks will keep out the invasive grass for a while.
I also wanted to level out parts of the lawn, but that’s going to take time because every time I spread out the compost, especially over the deeper dips in the lawn, I come back the next day to find doggy paw prints pockmarking my previously level surfaces! As I said, you need a lot of patience in gardening… In this case, I’ll probably have to wait for the grass to grow through and hide the tempting-to-my dogs compost, then sprinkle on a hopefully shallower layer to level things out. Grass grows so rapidly that it should be a only matter of a couple of weeks!
In the meantime, I hope more of my sowed seeds start germinating. The waiting game isn’t fun when there are no results!
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Yay for the shiso seeds and other seeds sprouting! Becky seeds are a bit tricky (my seedlings are being very moody and mood-swingy; lol).
Your garden is looking quite good!
Thanks, Sky! I wish my seeds would stop PMSing and just grow – that’s all they need to do to make me happy! Anyway like I said, there are always other things to distract me …like the remaining half ton of compost
LOL. I just bought another 15kg of the compost. I dunno if I should be thankful that I don’t use so much compost! XD But it’d probably be great if I had the space to. Haha.
Well our soil needs the kickstart. A lot of it has been depleted to sandiness over the years. That’s what you get for being “neat” and throwing your trimmings away. Wish I’d known we could buy compost when we went to the plant – my young plants could do with the fine grade. My MO was the medium grade, which is great for out in the garden.
Maybe ask them to deliver again?
I don’t need that large an amount – not this soon!
Besides, over time the medium grade will become fine grade…
Hi, I would love to grow some shiso here in Singapore too. May I know where you have gotten the seeds from? Thank you very much in advance!!
Maria
Hi Maria,
I got the seeds from a fellow gardener at the GCS Forum. Take note that although it grew well at first, it then died very fast. I suspect that it may not grow well in our climate.