New additions from DG

Posted on by

My young marigold adoptees.

I visited DG at his community garden a few days ago to adopt some young marigold plants that he was giving up. I thought I was getting one or two plants, but he gave me eight! It was like striking the lottery… :)

Now I have to admit that I’m nervous getting growing plants. I have this fear that I’ll put them in the wrong setting and make them die. Or not care for them properly and make them die. Or do something to make them die. You get the picture. It’s so much safer to grow them from seeds because you know immediately that the plants like where they’re growing, because they grow where you plant them.

Or not. :|

Thankfully, I have the chance to do just that with the seeds that DG also supplied me with. A stroll through the garden to admire the plants that the community gardeners grow ended up being a demonstration of the proud gardener’s tendency to want to share plants. I ran out of hands and packets to hold the different varieties of seeds and ended up mixing two or three varieties. I’ll just have to plant them all to see what is what…

One set of seeds that I can’t confuse is that of the lemon basil. It has an unmistakable scent of lemon that absolutely fascinated me. I can’t wait to grow it to add that lovely scent to our garden!

My loot of seeds from DG!

All in all, I walked away with seeds for a couple of varieties of Zinnias, as well as Bachelor’s Buttons (gomphrena globosa), Dahlberg Daisies, sunflowers and lemon basil. It felt like it was my birthday! ;) Ah, the simple things that please a gardener…

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share

Gah, pests!

Posted on by

Several of my veggies have reached the end of their fruiting season, and while I get more seedlings going, I’m greedily hovering over what plants that are left – the okra, in this case. So it was with dismay that I saw how something had been nibbling at the developing okra fruits, and the leaves. A careful inspection of the plants led to the discovery of thin, green caterpillars that move like inchworms. Don’t know what they were, but they’re history now. The only problem is, they blend in so well with the plants that I could only spot them when they moved.

And no, I’m not going to contemplate the possibility that I’m colourblind… :P

Eggs of the spiralling whitefly on the left. More developed larvae on the right. *censored* pests!!

So, knowing that caterpillars were attracted to the plants, I began cautiously inspecting the undersides of the leaves for eggs and juvenile caterpillars (if I could spot them). I found some individual eggs and a young caterpillar that I naturally removed, as well as an intriguing spiralling line of white dots. Naturally, I brought my problem to the GCS forum, and was told that they were probably whitefly eggs. Spiralling whiteflies, no less. So, since I want to be an organic grower, I’m not going to use insecticides even though I have them ready and waiting. A double-pronged approach lies ahead – manual checking for pests combined with companion planting.

I know that companion planting doesn’t mean that just because you plant two or more plants in close proximity, the pests will stay away. In theory, the mixture of scents from the different plants is supposed to confuse pests. Or, one of the companions is set there as a sacrificial lamb – it is more appealing to the pests, and they’ll pay more attention to it than your more precious plant. Or, one of the companions attracts predators of the pests, and since they’re there and they see their prey, they eat them.

Ladybug checking out the cucumber flower.

Another theory about pest control that I’ve heard is that predators of the pests will come to your plants because their prey is there. If there’s nothing for them to eat, they’ll go live elsewhere. There’s something to that, because I rarely see ladybugs in our garden. However, I recently spotted a couple browsing on the cucumber and okra plants – where, incidentally, I’d also previously seen whiteflies and other tiny insects. So I guess there’s truth to that.

No sane gardener would want to have pests in their garden, but unfortunately, that’s how nature works. If you grow something that pests like, they’ll come over. We have to accept that. And, rather than try to be the superior I’ll-kill-you-if-you-mess-with-my-plants creatures that we are, we ought to learn how to work with nature to balance the pest population out, because everything has it’s place in nature, and balance is key to everything. It’s just a very fine line to walk.

Some possibilities open to me now are using a mild soap solution, or a steady spray of water, on the undersides of the leaves. I should also prune the lower leaves to allow sunlight, wind and rain in. Fewer leaves will also give less real estate to the pests. And, of course, I need to keep fertilizing the plants to keep them strong and healthy, so they can withstand the onslaught of pests.

Sounds like a plan.

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share

Strange cucumbers

Posted on by

We’re all familiar with commercially grown cucumbers. They’re straight, uniformly shaped and normal.

Growing cucumbers, however, has given me a whole new perspective on the fruits. This is just my first time growing cucumbers, and I’m already highly amused. Just take a look at these funny little fellas….

The pomegranate wannabe.

The comma wannabe.

The peanut wannabe.

Aren’t they just the cutest little cusses? :D

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share

The Great Bangkwang Experiment (Part 1)

Posted on by

Okay, you should be familiar with me and my methods by now – I see something and I want to plant it to see how it develops.

I was at market one day when I saw a small bangkwang that had part of the stem and root still attached and apparently still alive. Of course I bought it to plant it! Before committing it to earth, literally, I paused to do some quick research so that I’d give it a fighting chance to thrive.

For those of you unfamiliar with the name bangkwang, I’m talking about jicama – also known as the Mexican turnip or water chestnut, or yam bean – from the Pachyrhizus genus.

What I found was fascinating to me…

The bangkwang plant is a vine in the legume family. The edible part of the plant is the tuber, produced underground, as tubers are. After it flowers, it produces pods that aren’t edible …but you can grow new plants from the seeds in these pods.

I was hooked – I had to get it to grow to seed stage so I could start the cycle from seed!

So began Part 1 of my great bangkwang experiment…

Top of the vine. See how hairy and serpentine it looks?

The bangkwang was rapidly planted in my veggie patch with a 1.8-metre tripod set above the little tuber. It took 2 weeks for a green shoot to appear, and it was a pretty sinister looking shoot. Hard, covered thickly in white bristly hairs and looking very serpentine, it reached upwards and kept growing straight up like a spear. It was tough enough to support it’s own weight until it was more than 10cm high. As it grew and toughened, the stem lost the bristles and turned green. The growing tip – at least 5cm of it – remained whitish and hairy.

Once the stem found the support of the tripod, it curled around the leg and kept growing until it’s weight caused it to lean over and find the next tripod leg. It took only 3 weeks for it to wind it’s way to the top of the tripod. When it couldn’t find anything else to latch onto, it slowed it’s vertical growing and started putting out leaves in earnest.

The bangkwang plant puts out leaves in threes. If they were in pairs, I’d say they looked like a bowtie or a butterfly with wings spread. However, they also have a tendency to curl in at the edges, and I later discovered that certain insects find this alluring… :(

Picture-worthy flowers of the bangkwang plant.

The plant was just over a month old and quite full of leaves when we had some heavy rainfall. Since it didn’t have a secure grip on the bamboo tripod, the whole vine fell in loose loops around the tripod. I still had it in my head that it looked very serpentine, so I left it as it was. My other reason (excuse) was to see what would happen next. Well, it continued growing, but once the growing tip grew under a bunch of it’s own leaves, it stopped growing and other branches that were higher up began to expand and work their way up the tripod again. It was fascinating.

The plant was about a month and a half old when I noticed what looked like flower buds developing. I watched for about 3 weeks while the buds grew and swelled into green buds that eventually opened to allow pale purple petals to push their way out and open into the most delicate, artistically coloured flowers I’ve ever grown – white with purple streaks that looked like an artist had brushed them on with incomplete strokes. Gorgeous!

Bean pods of the bangkwang plant.

So now that I had flowers, I began waiting expectantly for the pods to develop. Insects were visiting the flowers regularly, but it took a whole month before I noticed the tiniest curl of a hairy pod hiding in a cluster of flowers. Just in case my eyes were deceiving me, I got the camera, took a picture and zoomed the picture.

We had beans!!!

And once they started appearing, it was with a vengeance. Need I mention how pleased I am? :D Now it’s a matter of waiting for the pods to mature enough for me to harvest seeds and begin the next stage of my bangkwang experiment – growing the plant from a seed… :D

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share