The Curious Gardener | Gardening discoveries in Singapore

More pumpkin tales – flowers, this time

Posted on November 22, 2013 by CuriousG

Pumpkin fruit flower in bloom

Since we’ve never successfully grown pumpkins (unless you consider having the plants for ground cover), I’ve been slightly obsessed with the current plant that is growing. I think I’ve given it much better growing conditions this time, and from the number of female flowers that have been appearing, I’m feeling rather optimistic.

An elusive male pumpkin flower blooming about 3 days before the fruit flowers started showing their stuff. When will these flowers get in sync?!

Since my last update on the pumpkin plants, we’ve seen a few female flowers in bloom. It started a little unexpectedly for me, because I did notice a fruit flower bud that looked rather big (compared to the predecessors), and two days later, when I remembered to go look at it, found that the flower had already bloomed and was already dying off. As the garden gods would have it, there weren’t any male flowers in bloom at the time …until I noticed one on the ground that had just dropped off, and quickly attempted some late hand pollination.

Sadly, it didn’t work, but one must keep hoping.

More female fruit flowers bloomed after that, but they were woefully out of sync with the male flowers, so I just had to admire them when they did, for they are pretty, and they represent great possibilities. One actually stayed open for almost 3 days before giving up. (Stupid male flowers!)

Bees clustered at the base of the pumpkin fruit flower. What are they doing in there? Pollinating? With what?

One morning, though, I saw the latest flower in bloom, and when I took a closer look, found that there was some dark stuff collecting at the bottom of the flower. I wondered what could have fallen into the flower and was surprised to find that they were actually small bees! They were very excited where they were, and I guess the flower must have been emitting something to attract them to it. Pity there were no male flowers in bloom at the time.

This is the latest female pumpkin flower after blooming – yes, the one that the bees had a party in. If it does grow, it will have been pollinated either with marrow, angled luffa or cucumber pollen. Haha. But I like how each new fruit flower appears bigger and stronger. I have hope!

And so the wait continues. The two new plants continue to grow bigger, and the current vine continues branching out, hopefully multiplying the chances of having more flowers and fruits. Looking at the latest fruit flower, I am optimistic that the plant will eventually bear fruits. How could I not?

Tree pruning – an occasional responsibility of gardening

Posted on November 16, 2013 by CuriousG

Two of the broken branches in the centre.

I miss having my dad around to make those mundane (to me) decisions about tree pruning. He was the one who was interested in growing fruits, while I focused on ornamentals and in recent years, veggies. My plants were mostly annuals that eventually died off while his were – or rather, are – perennials that grow for a much longer period of time. They also grow much bigger.

It’s been several years since we last had the professionals in to do serious pruning, and it looks like the time is nigh again.

The reason for this post is our green jambu air tree (syzygium aqueum), which is big, has long, lanky branches that are more than 4 metres long, and currently laden with forming fruits. It’s in the spotlight because the heavy rainfall we’ve been experiencing caused a few big branches to break, starting last weekend, making us aware that all the other branches have the same potential, which is not good – especially since they are hanging over the fence.

(From Weed’s blog, it appears that tree pruning is a hot topic in other gardens now, too.)

About to start reducing this pile of broken branches with a mere pair of garden loppers…

Knowing that the weather pattern here now seems to be hot mornings-rainy afternoons, I made sure I had an early start today, cutting up the fallen branches for disposal. The first branch that fell last weekend was cut and gradually put out for the garbage collectors to take. However, even before the last bags had been put out, more branches broke! I think it’s six, so far, with the last one still stuck up in the tree. I had a great workout today reducing those on the ground into two stacks – one for the larger lengths of wood that we’ll tie and put out, and the other of leaves, softer twigs and fruits that can be bagged up.

I would keep them to make compost, but they don’t break down very well, unfortunately. And gone are the days when we could burn our garden waste…

In the meantime, I expect we’ll need to call in professional tree pruners to reduce the height of the tree. It’s two storeys high and with those long branches hanging over the fence, will require heavy duty equipment to prune safely.

I managed to cut up the fallen branches because the wood of the jambu tree is surprisingly soft. All I needed to use was gardening loppers – basically gardening shears with really long handles – a great investment that we made some time ago. If you go at it from a few sides and angles, it cuts through a 2-3 inch wide branch fairly easily.

Finally done – branches separated from softer parts of the branches for easier disposal.

This episode has me looking warily at the other trees in the garden that have grown rather big. Instead of looking at them with pride for their fruitfulness, I find myself thinking that I’d better do something to keep them short and manageable…

Mighty harvest

Posted on November 13, 2013 by CuriousG

The marrow in comparison to our average-sized angled luffas and short cucumber – what a joke!

After growing on the vine for more than three months, it was time to harvest the Mighty Marrow. After all, it had developed the “whiteness” that I had been instructed to look out for, and the stem was beginning to dry up.

Besides that, there have been a few new fruit flowers that didn’t set, so I figured if I harvested the Mighty Marrow, the vine could have strength to bear another marrow or so.

This baby was much heftier than Marrow II. It logged in at 74cm long (29 inches), with a 50cm circumference at the widest part, and weighed a whopping 7kg or 15.5 lbs!

Just to give some perspective as to the size of the Mighty Marrow…

We have yet to cut it to cook it, but it will be going to a few homes when we do. If it is any different from the younger fruit, I’ll let you know.

Be merciless with mulberry plants

Posted on November 9, 2013 by CuriousG

New mulberries growing on the mulberry plant from Novice Gardener.

This is one situation where I have to agree with Mother Weed about pruning plants. Mulberry plants will only fruit profusely if you prune them – hard.

It was just two months ago that we noted the slew of fruits developing on our mulberry plant from Novice Gardener, and although they weren’t exactly bountiful, we (and I use the royal “we” here :p ) had great pleasure in being able to pick the fruits off the plants and eat them while making the garden rounds.

And yes, we did have to share some with the birds. The same thing that happened to Novice Gardener happened here too – the birds ate part of the fruit and left the top half hanging behind. I wondered why those fruits looked so short until I recalled Novice Gardener’s post.

New fruits growing on the smaller variety of mulberry plant.

That aside, it was such a pleasant feeling being able to pluck and eat the fruits that I was determined to keep the plant fruiting. So, when the last fruit had been consumed, I immediately pruned the plant all the way back to where the leaves started on each stem.

Well, all but one stem – that one had the pumpkin plant attached to it, so I left it alone.

Naturally, the plant began growing new stems, and before I knew it, there were new fruits forming!

At the same time that I pruned Novice Gardener’s larger variety plant, I did the same to the small mulberry plant while admonishing it that if it didn’t fruit as profusely as its cousin, it would become compost.

I guess it listened.

The moral of this post? There are times when hard pruning works, and mulberry plants need this to induce fruiting.

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