Do snails dislike Malabar Spinach?

Posted on by
Malabar spinach plants in the background with the beheaded cosmos seedling in the foreground.

Malabar spinach plants in the background with the beheaded cosmos seedling in the foreground.

I have a large flower pot that was home to a lone angled luffa plant. When I needed to find a place to plant out a bunch of Malabar spinach that I had rooted in water, I decided to put them in the same pot.

A few weeks later, I was busily dispersing cosmos flower seeds around the garden, and threw a few in the same flower pot, simply because there was space. Three germinated and two “mysteriously” disappeared. The last one looked like it would dominate the place when… you’ve guessed it! A snail decapitated the young plant. That naturally made me curse and swear, but the damage had been done, and the cosmos stem stood mute testimony to the appetite of snails. (It looks like it may keep growing, though, as the remnants of the last leaves have kept it alive enough to start growing new leaves!)

At this point, something occurred to me. There was a potful of nice, thick juicy stemmed Malabar spinach right there … so why didn’t the snails feast on them too? Do they not like the succulent spinach? Or is there something about the plants that they dislike? Methinks me is going to experiment with using Malabar spinach as a border around plants and beds just to see if there’s anything to this! :-D

© 2016 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share

Gardening tests your patience and hope

Posted on by
Low hanging green brinjals - the weight of the fruits drags the branches downwards.

Low hanging green brinjals – the weight of the fruits drags the branches downwards.

Anybody, whether an expert or wannabe gardener, will have high hopes when planting or buying any kind of plant. We want them to be prolific and beautiful in our homes, and the professionals at the garden centres know just what to do to make their plants look so irresistible that we just have to have them.

Angled luffas tend to take their time to develop, and then the plant takes a break before it starts fruiting again. I try to have a few vines growing at the same time, and to space out the seed sowing times.

Angled luffas tend to take their time to develop, and then the plant takes a break before it starts fruiting again. I try to have a few vines growing at the same time, and to space out the seed sowing times.

As a person who enjoys growing from seed, the process of getting those plants in the garden is a bit more torturous. Seedlings may be wiped out through carelessness or by pests… no, not just seedlings… Plants at almost any stage of growth are vulnerable to many different threats, and you just have to learn to understand what went wrong and try not to repeat the same mistake.

Whoops, here we go again with the banana plant - the weight of the fruits is too much for the stem to bear. We're waiting anxiously for the signal banana to show before harvesting the bunch, and have a bit of concrete propping up the plant for now.

Whoops, here we go again with the banana plant – the weight of the fruits is too much for the stem to bear. We’re waiting anxiously for the signal banana to show before harvesting the bunch, and have a bit of concrete propping up the plant for now.

This is especially testing when you’re growing edible plants, and you see the fruit flowers and hope for successful pollination. Then you see the fruits growing and hope that they can keep going safely until you can harvest them. There are just too many variables that are out of our control, and that’s where the patience and hope come in.

Apple of my eye at the moment - we're enjoying watching the pineapple fruit develop, but after reading up more about it, I know there are several possible threats to the fruit development. Patience and hope...

Apple of my eye at the moment – we’re enjoying watching the pineapple fruit develop, but after reading up more about it, I know there are several possible threats to the fruit development. Patience and hope…

Hope is fairly obvious, but the patience is key. You have to give the plants their due time to do their thing. In that time, you also have to look after them properly – not just watering and fertilising them, but also watching for pests and disease. This seems to be the season for mealybugs and cucumber beetles, because the former are trying to take over the papaya tree while the latter have been invading the cucumbers growing on the trellis. And let’s not get me started on the snails…

Obviously, all these won’t turn me off gardening, because it’s my favourite form of relaxation. It’s a good thing I’m an optimist!

© 2016 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share

Now you see them, now you don’t

Posted on by
The young long bean plants settling in.

The young long bean plants settling in.

I started off the new year with good intentions. When seeds that I had sown on new year’s day germinated and started to grow well in their little biodegradable cardboard rolls, I actually took the step to transplant them before they got rootbound – my most common failure when growing from seeds.

The angled luffa plants were repotted in bigger pots while the corn went into an enclosed patch where the plants were well mulched. I even cleared the trellis of the previous season’s long bean plants in anticipation of planting out the new plants, which I did on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon, there was a really heavy downpour that flattened two of the seven long bean plants. I straightened them and gave them more support in the hopes that they would keep growing anyway, and to be safe, direct sowed more long bean seeds in the bed.

Monday evening, I went to check on the plants to see if they’d recovered or not.

Leaves gone, stems left... I know what the culprit is!!!

Leaves gone, stems left… I know what the culprit is!!!

Not!

Again!!!

The darned snails had beheaded every single long bean plant, leaving the stems looking like weird skinny green scarecrows! I certainly hope my neighbours did not hear me, because I was cursing at the snails most vehemently. It had taken those plants two weeks to grow and the snails one evening to destroy them.

The snail pellets have been deployed. War has been declared!

© 2016 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share

Recycling cardboard rolls in the garden

Posted on by
First, cut the rolls down to your desired height. Stuff a small piece of newspaper to form a bottom that will hold your potting mix.

First, cut the rolls down to your desired height. Stuff a small piece of newspaper to form a bottom that will hold your potting mix.

It makes me very happy when I’m able to recycle items instead of sending them into a landfill, and paper products are among the easiest to introduce into the garden because they’re biodegradable. Paper can be added to compost piles – a very secure way of disposing of documents with personal data, by the way – or used as a mulch, among other things. In today’s case, I’m showing you how I reuse the inner cardboard rolls from toilet paper and paper napkin rolls.

I start off by cutting the rolls to a decent height. I like them to be high enough for a plant to germinate and grow a little. Then, I use a piece of paper – usually newspaper, since that’s always available and will disintegrate fairly quickly – that I stuff from the top to the bottom of the roll so that it forms a layer at the inner base that will cradle the potting mix.

Filling the prepared rolls with potting mix.

Filling the prepared rolls with potting mix.

Next, I fill the prepared rolls with potting mix, and sow the seeds. These are placed in a tray that can hold about half a centimetre of water. This allows the water to seep upwards, and if you keep the mix moist, and add a bit of water daily, will create good conditions for most seeds to germinate. I don’t recommend leaving them in too much water, because the rolls will fall apart faster, and it may make the potting mix too soggy!

I don't know why, but seeing my plants germinate and grow makes me really, really happy!

I don’t know why, but seeing my plants germinate and grow makes me feel really, really happy! Here you see the next generation of long and bush beans, corn, angled loofah, cherry tomatoes and green brinjals.

Sit back and wait for the seeds to germinate. When they do and are old enough to be planted out, all you have to do is dig a hole and place the entire plant together with the roll in it, and fill it up. It will be the easiest plant transplant you’ve ever done! The roll will disintegrate in time, and the plant will be happy because its roots were not disturbed in the process.

The best thing is, you’ll have done something to save the earth by recycling something and reintroducing it to the ecosystem. Everybody wins!

© 2016 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


Share