Our humble plant nursery area

The regional haze is still blanketing us, and while I can’t do anything about the choking nature of the air, I’ve been coping quite well with our new plants…

Meet the three new pumpkin plants

Angled luffa

Two of our four new watermelon plants

Newcomer Little Leaf cucumber

And yes, the coriander is still alive and growing!

As you can see, the plants don’t look exceptionally healthy, and will need lots of TLC while the haze continues to pollute the air. I’ve been experimenting with heavy mulching and have had interesting results.

Heavy mulch of belimbing tree leaves at our bittergourd trellis has helped the plants to not dry out quickly.

Our bittergourd vines used to dry out quickly before we started mulching the bed with leaves mostly from our belimbing tree. They require less watering now, but the fruits are smaller than usual and ripen when they’re still quite small.

Here I have a green brinjal plant sharing a large pot with an okra plant and a cosmos plant. They look pretty happy.

I had a brinjal plant growing in a large pot, and not too long ago, I tossed in some old okra seeds. One grew into a rather healthy looking plant. I’ve been mulching this with belimbing leaves, too, and when we remember to water the plants, I think it creates a good growing environment, because these plants look happy to me! Mulching really does help. More on that another time…

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