The Curious Gardener | Gardening discoveries in Singapore

Mulberry orchard in the making

Posted on July 13, 2014 by CuriousG

Our main mulberry plant is really spreading out now!

There will be no dancing around the mulberry tree in our garden. Well there could be, but you’d be trampling the pumpkin vines if you did.

As you can see, our mulberry plant from Novice Gardener has taken firm root in the garden, and has consequently been growing nice, strong, long stems. A most pleasant side effect of the plant having nice, strong, long stems is the bigger quantity of mulberries that have been appearing.

A glimpse of the latest crop of mulberries currently growing.

My issue with this is that the birds keep beating me to the fruits. They sample part of a fruit and leave part on the plant, or they get so excited (or clumsy) that they knock the fruits off. (That’s one thing about mulberries – they can drop off at the slightest touch.)

So, I’ve decided to take another page from Novice Gardener’s book – to grow more plants so that I can hopefully harbour a few for ourselves – maybe cover them in netting or something.

One of the successful cuttings. I wanted long stems to give the plants more space to grow fruits if they grew. Hehe.

At my last major pruning of the plant, I kept several long, thick stems and just poked them into the nearby brinjal plant pot. (Doing cuttings the careful way doesn’t work with me because I keep forgetting to water them; sticking them in a pot with a plant I have to water or gets rained on means they’ll get watered, too.) A few died, but a few have started growing. The latter will be transplanted to individual pots and moved to other parts of the garden, as part of my little dream of being able to pluck and eat mulberries as I wander through the garden; and I’ll try to propagate more at the next major pruning, which is very soon. I guess it’s a good thing the original plant has grown so big, but once I have more mulberry plants growing in pots, I’ll probably remove it, because I’ve seen how big these plants can grow (big trees), and don’t want that where it is now. The plants with the smaller fruits have not been bearing fruits much, either, but have been contributing to the compost piles. I may keep them for that – or maybe not. We’ll see.

Bittersweet harvest

Posted on July 9, 2014 by CuriousG

Our best bittergourd harvest. I plucked the yellow fruits as well so that the plants carry on fruiting. Once a plant has a fruit that goes to seed on the vine, it tends to think its job is done and dies off.

Our best bittergourd harvest – such a shame that almost half of them were past their prime! I plucked the yellow fruits as well so that the plants carry on fruiting. Once a plant has a fruit that goes to seed on the vine, it tends to think its job is done and dies off.

We’ve just had a couple of impressive mini bittergourd harvests. Between the pair of vines, on the best day, we harvested over 20 fruits. What dampened the happiness was that some of those sneaky fruits had hidden themselves so well that we completely missed them until it was past time to pluck them.

I figured out that the best way to search for the fruits is to stick your hand in among the leaves and just wave it around a bit. If you hit something solid, it’s a fruit dangling there in the mass of leaves. The only problem with this is that there are a few hairy caterpillars on the plants right now, and I’m afraid of getting stung by them. The solution? Use something inanimate like a stick or spade instead. We really don’t like the fruits going to waste any more than they already have.

This is currently my favourite way to eat bittergourd – lightly coated in flour and fried until it’s crispy.

The heart of the matter

Posted on July 5, 2014 by CuriousG

Aussies call it the banana bell, but locally, we refer to the bud on the flowering stalk of the banana plant as the heart, or “jantung” in Malay.

The banana heart when we first noticed it (the leaves hid it from us until it dipped down)

Calling it the heart of the plant makes sense, because it is first formed in the corm, then is pushed up through the stem of the plant as it grows and matures. In my mind, I see it as an orderly process, with the leaves growing out one by one, like one of those pencils with stacking leads, all leading up to the emergence of the fruit bud.

The first bract lifting away from the inflorescent to display the first hand of bananas

Once the entire bud is out, it starts drooping downwards until it’s hanging like a pendulum. That’s when the good stuff starts happening. From the (now) top of the bud, bracts start to lift away from the bud. Each bract contains developing bananas. The female flowers will appear first, and are bigger than the male flowers. The former will go on to develop into fruits while the latter eventually fall off.

A few hands of bananas revealed after the purplish bracts protecting them started rolling up.

I’ve read some online quibbles about whether or not to remove the heart once the fruits are forming. Well, we usually just leave it be (this is not our first banana plant, but as a special “miniature” one, I’ve been observing it more carefully). After all, in nature, it would just stay on the plant. It can also be used as a sign of when to harvest the fruits – it looks small, and I’ve heard will be about 50cm away from the fruits. Yes, I’ll probably measure it this time just to see if this is true…

The flowers at the tips of the fruits look so succulent!

For now, we’ll wait and watch as the fruits grow.

When a fruit falls…

Posted on July 1, 2014 by CuriousG

…the birds will come.

Nothing goes to waste. The birds can’t afford to let an edible fruit rot or leave it to the worms and fruit flies when it can still be eaten. So, when an over-ripe fruit falls from the trees, the birds still partake of it, taking turns.

A glossy starling in the midst of a meal.

A "vent" associated to a bird refers to its rear end, and here we see why this is called a Yellow-vented bulbul!

A “vent” in association with a bird refers to its rear end, and here we see why this is called a Yellow-vented bulbul!

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