The Curious Gardener | Gardening discoveries in Singapore

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Poor nesting instincts

Posted on February 1, 2015 by CuriousG

The nest, uh, nestled nicely where branches criss-crossed.

We know that some birds nest in our garden, but we can’t fathom why pigeons and doves don’t learn to pick better places to set up home.

A few days ago, one of our potted bougainvillea plants toppled over. It’s in a fairly big pot, but the plant had become top-heavy and although it had taken root in the ground, the tap root wasn’t strong enough to support the weight, and over it went.

The loss of this bird’s life feeds a bunch of insects…

This isn’t the first time that one of these plants has fallen, and I usually start by trimming the top so I can put the pot upright. Imagine my surprise then, in uncovering a shallowly-woven bird’s nest in a crook of the plant! The birds had obviously (to me) availed themselves of the cut grass I had been drying nearby to use as mulch, so they had lots of building material to choose from. While the nest was fairly well padded, we considered it rather shallow. As a matter of fact, there was a single roundish white egg that was unfortunately smashed on the ground below. I suppose no matter how deep the nest was, the egg would still have rolled out, because the plant was 90 degrees on its side, but we were still saddened by the loss of a new life.

The male Pink-necked Green Pigeon is gorgeously colourful

The nest belonged to the pink-necked green pigeon. We had noticed it flying in and out of the plant in the evenings, but thought it was merely roosting there for the night. These birds have, in the past, nested in our mango tree, and I suspect the palm trees as well. My mum once had the pleasure of observing the parent birds looking after a pair of nestlings, and became quite knowledgeable about the feeding routines. Perhaps I should ask her to write about it, eh mum?

The female Pink-necked Green Pigeon is less colourful but no less pretty

Well, we know that the birds will still be around. It’s probably in their nature to take these disasters in stride and start all over again. I just hope they choose a better location. This nest would have definitely caught the attention of our dogs because it was less than 2 metres off the ground. However, it would have given us a nice opportunity to observe the bird family life. Perhaps next time.

The abundant lime plant

Posted on January 29, 2015 by CuriousG

Harvest of fresh limes.

One of the must-have plants in our garden is the lime, or limau kasturi. We squeeze the fruits for the juice to be used in drinks or to season our food. These fruits are the smaller variety of lime, at 2-3cm in diameter.

Our lime plant today stands at least 2 metres tall.

When we first bought this plant from the nursery, it was about half a metre high in its pot. We planted it in the garden, and my dad fretted over it because it took a long time to show signs of getting bigger. As I’ve said, it’s a must-have plant, and my dad had to have some lime juice squeezed over his daily dose of sambal belachan. So, he anxiously watered it every day and willed it to grow. Part of his anxiety stemmed from our past experience of ants nesting in the roots of the previous plants, thereby killing them.

Lime flowers are a pristine white.

After several months, we were back at the nursery and mentioned the lack of growth to the owner, and he told us to stop watering the plant. This would force it to grow deeper roots to search for water he said, instead of being complacent because water was readily available at the surface. It was difficult to convince my dad of this logic, but when we heeded the advice, the plant began to grow!

A healthy bunch of limes forming.

It wasn’t instantaneous growth, mind you – just something that happened slowly over time – and the plant didn’t die from lack of water, either. It is now over seven years since we planted it here, and I reckon is over 2 metres high! It apparently enjoys the spot where it’s planted, because it has grown into a very productive lime tree.

Just some of the limes growing on the tree now.

Our limau kasturi plant is fairly fuss-free. We don’t water it. I rarely have to feed it any fertilisers, although I do “chop and drop” around the base of the plant once in a while. It occasionally has aphid and mealybug infestations, which I treat as soon as I notice them. In fact, my biggest concern is harvesting the many fruits before they get overripe and fall off. To help with this, I’ve begun to prune it down, but even that is difficult to do because almost every branch has a fruit at some stage of development, and I hate wasting them.

Growing new ideas – from books

Posted on January 25, 2015 by CuriousG

Confucius said: “You cannot open a book without learning something.” And that is why I recently indulged myself in my on-off quest to apply permaculture principles in our garden. I’ve been browsing through online sources (videos and websites), but after a while, you run out of new things to watch and read. So, since I had derived a lot of pleasure and inspiration from a book, The Permaculture Home Garden by Linda Woodrow, (which I wrote about here) I thought it was about time to look for more good books.

Linda’s book was a great place to start, and I still enjoy reading it because I like how she has applied permaculture principles to her garden, and it gives me hope to achieve this myself.

It was this that then drew me to the next book:

Paradise Lot: Two Plant Geeks, One-Tenth of an Acre, and the Making of an Edible Garden Oasis in the City
I thought this was written by a pair of gardening geeks, because I caught a video about them at the Geoff Lawton website, but it turned out that they are both very qualified permaculture experts. To my delight, the book was highly entertaining – the tale of the experiences of a pair of friends on a mutual quest to create their dream permaculture garden while hoping to find love along the way.

Why I chose this book:

It was recommended by several sources I came across on the Web (if there’s a queue, it must be good)
They built up their suburban garden into a permaculture paradise (one of my dreams, although the climate is different from ours)

The main author, Eric Toensmeier, is also a writer, and reading this book was a delight. It was entertaining and informative – more of a novel, so you should be an avid reader to enjoy this book. That said, there is a short, 8-page colour section of photos showing the development of the garden, the plants and harvests, and the people. The rest is black and white text.

What I got out of the book was that it’s possible to build up a productive edible garden even when you start with a small piece of not very fertile ground. Eric, together with his gardening buddy Jonathan Bates, applied their knowledge to develop a garden that would provide them with fruits and vegetables that could be harvested almost all year round. It was interesting to read about what, how and why they did things, and how the garden eventually became a productive place that pollinating insects and other fauna were attracted to – in essence, a natural habitat. This is something that we also see happening in our garden, what with the bees, garden lizards, various birds and creepy-crawlies. The only thing I’m missing are the two-hundred-and-something plants that they have – not that I aspire to grow that many varieties! However, I like the vision that they have – for more people to use the little land they have to grow their own fruits and veggies. Yes, we don’t have large gardens here (by overseas standards), but even the small strips of land by the roads can be, and in many neighbourhoods are, used for growing fruits like bananas and papayas, as well as flowers and herbs. Why not bring the Garden City up to a new level? We can dream, can’t we?

Stay tuned for more book reviews in the coming weeks…

Cute no more

Posted on January 18, 2015 by CuriousG

Part of the horde of spiky larvae that we found ALL OVER the big bittergourd vines. I think there were close to 40 of them – give or take.

When I first saw spiky ladybug larvae, I was so taken up by the newness of them. After all, it was the first time I’d ever seen a ladybug larva with those fine, spiky appendages.

However, I’ve since learned that this is not a ladybug welcomed by gardeners as it eats plants as opposed to pests that harm plants. Here I thought that all ladybugs were considered beneficial insects!

[Read about the 28-spotted ladybug here]

These spiky larvae recently spawned on our large bittergourd plants and decimated the plants. Henceforth, their spiky novelty has worn off and they are no longer welcome here. I did a Mother Weed and killed as many of them as I could find after capturing their misdeeds on camera. I did not enjoy doing that but I was hoping to salvage the plants. The main stems are still green and I hope they will be able to grow new leaves. As it is, there is only one short stretch of vine with a few leaves on it. We salvaged some seeds from the last not-quite-mature fruits, but I’m not sure if they were ready just yet. Time will tell.

While the decimated leaves may look all pretty and lacy, they don’t have the capacity to photosynthesise any more. What a blow to the plants! :(

I still have not identified the adult 28-spotted potato ladybug, as it’s apparently known, but the larvae are easily spotted and will not be tolerated here any more. You should watch out for them in your gardens, too.

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