The Curious Gardener | Gardening discoveries in Singapore

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Heat-loving plants

Posted on March 4, 2014 by CuriousG

Since our month-long drought has been wreaking havoc on the edible plants that I usually talk about, I thought I’d swing the focus onto our ornamental plants that have been in full bloom.

I wasn’t referring to cacti when I mentioned heat-loving plants – although we do have a couple of those…

Would you believe I grew these from seeds? It was one of those times when I bought a pack of cactus seeds and got these two plants as a result. The third one doing a photobomb was a purchased one.

…as well as the obligatory aloe vera plant:

Keep an aloe vera plant confined in a pot long enough and it will start multiplying…

But these aren’t the only plants that love dry weather. The bougainvillea plants absolutely thrive in the heat, and I have to say that my dad chose well. (I have to give him credit because I wouldn’t voluntarily bring these plants into our garden because I hate the thorny stems.) We have a nice selection of colours, as you can see:

The standard purple/pink bougainvillea flower.

A lovely pink-white blend. Sometimes the pink is more dominant, and other times the white shows up more.

A pleasant salmon-orange bougainvillea

Also on the salmon-coloured plant is a lighter orange cluster of flowers

So yes, while I appreciate the different colours of our bougainvillea plants, I still don’t enjoy pruning them because I’ve never completed that task without some bloodshed on my part, even wearing protective gear.

A month without rain

Posted on February 27, 2014 by CuriousG

…and plants everywhere are suffering.

In January, I was going to moan about the change of the monsoon winds that not only stripped moisture from the air and soil, but also blew so strongly that even big, strong trees were showing signs of wind burn. Our curry leaf and belimbing trees lost practically all their leaves. I was too upset to photograph them at their worst, but did snap this:

Leaves from the belimbing tree covering our lawn in late January.

But who was to know that a month later, the lawn would look like this:

This is our lawn today. Really.

Yes, the lawn looks crappy, but I refuse to waste water on it because I know how prolific grass is, and that it will bounce back once the weather changes.

This, by the way, is a record dry spell here, according to the National Environment Agency.

It’s been so dry that our latest marrow aborted, despite my efforts at keeping it watered. Last week I noticed some odd discharge near the bottom of the fruit:

I thought this little cluster of round things at the base of the marrow were insect eggs…

I thought they were insect eggs, because I had discovered one or two on the fruit a few weeks ago – but those were small butterfly eggs. These were bigger. When I used a leaf to push them away, I discovered that they were soft and slightly spongy – and when I removed them, a little hole was revealed in the fruit. The next day, there was more discharge from the fruit – brown and sticky, and dripping down to the ground. I guess something got into the fruit, seeking moisture that is missing everywhere right now. The fruit finally gave up today, dropping to the ground and splitting open. The bottom half of it was hollowed out. So we are saying a final goodbye to the marrow plant and will start a new one.

But speaking of starting new plants, I find that I’m in that phase again when seeds don’t want to germinate for me. I’ve had a 20% germination rate for long beans (which usually have a better response), and 100% success with my recently harvested cucumber seeds:

Four for four – all the cucumber seeds sowed germinated!

Nothing else has grown despite our efforts at keeping the germination soil nice and moist. So I’m blaming the weather, and I think will be curbing my gardening activities until the weather improves. Even my compost piles are not composting because they’re too dry…

Well, I’m hoping that my whining here will bring about a change in the weather, because that’s what happened in the past – every time I complained it was raining too much, the weather changed the day after I posted my complaint; and vice versa with dry weather. You can read about that here and here and here and here. I’m willing to make a public fool of myself again here because it is for a good purpose…

I hope your plants and gardens are doing better than ours.

Safeguarding the mulberries

Posted on February 22, 2014 by CuriousG

A large square of netting folded around ripening mulberries, with a long bit of tie-wire threaded through it to hold it together is all we need to protect our crop.

Ah, the things we do to ensure a harvest… When I spoke about our upcoming mulberry crop two weeks ago, it looked like it was going to be really bountiful.

However, I’d forgotten about the birds. They happily started pecking at the fruits even before they were halfway ripe, so we lost a lot of fruits over the first week and a half.

Once I realized what they were doing – after observing a mother-baby pair of mynahs feeding, and a few bulbuls swooping in and out – I put up some protection around the last two bunches of mulberries.

This was what we got in a day’s harvest (minus the pair I ate while plucking them… hee hee):

Our harvest yesterday – not too shoddy!

It was a decent little haul, considering that we only used to get two or three at a time in the past. In fact, we got slightly more than that two days ago! So I’m rather pleased with this season’s mulberry harvest.

The birds should be more pleased, because they got at least three times the amount of fruits!

Well, I’ve got a few cuttings beginning to take root, and hope to have more mulberry plants growing in the garden so that we can begin to harvest a more decent amount of fruits while still sharing with the birds. After all, the birds have lost a lot of food sources over the years, and they’re welcome visitors here. Yes, really.

Attempting to marcot the kaffir lime plant

Posted on February 16, 2014 by CuriousG

Here is our limau purut plant back in 2009. See what a healthy plant it was then?

Many of the plants in our garden are really old, and maybe past their prime, because they were planted years back when my dad was more active in the garden. The plant in question today is the limau purut – or kaffir lime.

This was planted sometime in the 1980s, if I remember correctly, and has had a very good run. It grew into a nice big tangle of beautifully scented leaves and occasional fruits, and has been a favourite perch for many birds. The problem now is that the curry leaf tree that is growing next to it seems to be choking it with a vengeance.

The limau purut plant now. The main stem and a couple of others, are beginning to rot, and it is not growing as many leaves as before. If you look at the right corner, you will notice a couple of plants; those are curry leaf plants that grew from the underground roots of the main tree.

I didn’t notice how dire its situation was until I recently looked at the trunk of the plant and saw that it was beginning to rot away. This called for some action. Fertilizers have not had a noticeable effect on the growth, so I decided to look into propagation – marcotting, in this instance.

I’ve never in my life tried to marcot a plant before, although I recall learning it in Biology class eons ago. So, after doing my research on the topic, I decided to just go ahead and try…

The first step was to choose a slightly woody stem and make a pair of light incisions through the bark.

Next, remove the ring of bark between the incisions. I wasn’t too sure how deep to cut, and have my fingers crossed I didn’t do too much or too little. One source also recommended roughing up the exposed layer a little, so I did…

Next, I took a plastic bag and made a slit in the bottom that I then threaded the plant through. I twisted the end up and tied it up.

Just to be kiasu, I added some rooting hormone to the exposed layer, then stuffed the plastic bag with presoaked cocopeat. It’s damp, not soggy.

The final step – try to squeeze as much air out as possible (I doubt I did enough!) before sealing the top end as well.

Now, we have to wait several weeks to see if this works or not. I will probably try a couple more just in case this one doesn’t work, because I’m afraid the plant may not have much time left, judging from the amount of rot going up the main stem. It’s been a good tree and I’d like to try to keep it going if I can. Let’s hope I have something good to report in a couple of months. Silence on the subject usually means failure…

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