The Curious Gardener | Gardening discoveries in Singapore

A pumpkin tale

Posted on November 2, 2013 by CuriousG

The pumpkin plant originated from the orange pot on the extreme right, then started exploring to the left, finding the mulberry plant, then moving on…

I realize I haven’t been giving the pumpkin plant much of the spotlight although it has been giving us quite a bit of entertainment. After all this time, and I think four different types of pumpkin plants, I’ve still not had the pleasure of harvesting a pumpkin. The only reason I keep trying is that I have seeds (haha) and my buddy Novice Gardener has managed to grow and harvest different kinds of pumpkins in her garden – which proves to me that they CAN grow in our climate, so I have to persist. Until I run out of seeds.

Advance of the pumpkin vine - here you see its descent from the mulberry plant and quick climb up the compost heap.

Advance of the pumpkin vine – here you see its descent from the mulberry plant and quick climb up the edge of the compost heap.

The type of pumpkin currently growing is a generic one grown from purchased seeds. I don’t care what type it is, as long as it grows with no or few issues, and bears edible fruits…

Because I never can decide where to place plants that I know are going to spread, I started this one in a small pot and transplanted it to a bigger pot when it germinated and started growing true leaves. That pot went to a sunny spot on the side of the lawn, where of course I thought I’d leave it temporarily, but waited too long.

It grew out from its pot to explore the lawn around it, but when I wasn’t looking (it was raining almost every day back then so I didn’t visit the plants often enough), it discovered the mulberry plant nearby and started climbing up. By the time I noticed it, a female flower bud was sitting demurely right at the apex of the pumpkin stem. Of course I couldn’t bring myself to do anything to jeopardize that bud!

So it continued to grow, causing the mulberry stem to dip groundwards, until the pumpkin plant was back on solid earth, where it promptly set a course for my untidy compost heap nearby.

The tip of the vine today, with the latest female fruit bud. It’s just teasing me; I know it’s going to abort as well…

Of course the female flower bud eventually aborted, as did the one after that, and the one after that. What I noticed, however, was that the vine looked so much happier and more robust.

I think the plant appreciated receiving a dose of sheep poo pellets as well as banana peels over the last couple of weeks. Every time I ate a banana, I would go out to the garden and try to decide which plant would benefit from the nutrients in the banana skin, which I buried near the base of the lucky plant.

A nice cluster of male pumpkin flower buds, at different stages of maturity. Hm, maybe the plant knows what to do to start bearing fruits! And, yes, this is the part of the vine that’s up on the mulberry plant.

Along the way, I also worried that a single plant might not be sufficient to produce male and female flowers for pollination, so I’ve started two new plants, that need more time to grow bigger, because at this stage, a single adult snail would finish them off in no time.

After they started growing, though, I noticed that the first plant had started to develop multiple male buds at its nodes! Maybe a single plant can take care of itself.

Maybe this will be the bud that sets fruit; maybe it won't. It looks pretty, though!

Maybe this will be the bud that sets fruit; maybe it won’t. It looks pretty and full of possibility, though!

So, in the meantime, the first pumpkin plant looks set to take over the compost heap, while at the other end of the vine a new stem is also starting to grow. I think that I will be renaming that part of the lawn “the pumpkin patch” before long! If they give me pumpkins, I’ll give them more real estate; if they don’t, I’ll take a page from Mother Weed’s book and do some massive pruning.

Lotsa loofahs

Posted on October 25, 2013 by CuriousG

What I like to see – lots of fruits growing in the garden! Angled loofahs in this case.

Our angled loofah plants have been doing rather well. I planted a pair of plants in a large pot to see if they would fare better than those grown direct in the ground. The latter only lasted about two months before they became unproductive, you see. So I used one of my largest flower pots and added a large-scale tomato trellis for the vines to climb up. The plants seemed to like it.

Of course, there were some stems that died out along the way. I diligently pruned them away and kept the plants alert. It seems to me that when you don’t “interact” with the plants, they decide to move on to the great compost heap in the sky… well, our garden, actually…

The loofah plants with their giant tomato trellis. I’m surprised it worked so well for them!

So I guess you could say that these two plants have surpassed the ones I’ve grown in the ground. It could be because I’m paying more attention to them, especially in watering them. Potted plants are especially at risk when you forget to water them because when the soil dries out – especially if the pot is on a manmade surface – they have no other source of water unless it rains heavily on the plant, which it probably won’t. Not sufficiently, anyway.

It also appears that the pot is large enough that the plants are not confined and root-bound yet. This has surprised me, because in my past experiences with the loofah plants, they have usually lasted about two months or so before the vines died out. I had anticipated this and germinated a new pair of loofah plants that I planted into the pot, but the plants seem to be happy enough to keep going – for now, anyway – so I hope the young ones will be able to grow without feeling constricted by the older ones.

Our loofah harvest this week – not too bad, eh?

We’ve had a pretty good harvest from the plants, and I’ve noticed that the fruits – while not as large as the commercial ones – have been bigger than what we normally get from those planted in the ground. I suspect it’s because I grew the plants in a good, organic soil and also because they’ve been getting more water than the ones in the ground did. (I tend to like to leave things too much to Mother Nature at times…) Ah well, live and learn.

Yellow ladybug paradise

Posted on October 22, 2013 by CuriousG

There are seven yellow ladybugs in this photo. I’ve never seen so many ladybugs congregated at a single time!

If I didn’t consider yellow ladybugs beneficial insects, I would be rather aggravated.

It seems that they have found the marrow plants to be a breeding haven, and whenever we visit the marrow trellis, we now see not just a lone ladybug or three on a leaf, but four to eight, on adjacent leaves!

While they’re cute to look at, the fact that they’re still around – and happily so – just tells me that the powdery mildew is still there, even though you can’t see it as easily as a few weeks ago. However, the fact that you can’t see the white mold on the leaves means that the yellow ladybugs are being beneficial by helping me to control that problem, so that’s fine with me.

Seeing this many ladybugs at the same time is such a novelty for me!

It just demonstrates once again that we gardeners don’t have to leap to control every issue that threatens our plants, and that nature can take care of things for us, organically. We “let” the mildew fester for several weeks before the yellow ladybugs came to take up residence. Was it tough to have to tolerate the spread of the mildew? Yes. But I think it was worth it to manage this issue – rather, leave it to nature to manage it – naturally. Besides that, the marrow plant has shed the diseased leaves and is now sporting healthy new growth that the ladybugs are keeping clear of mildew. I think the plant is having a second wind and may start producing new marrows!

Does lunar planting really work?

Posted on October 19, 2013 by CuriousG

I’ve been talking about growing new aubergine plants for a few months now, and I was beginning to think that our seeds were no longer viable. That being the case, my seed sowing efforts increased from once a month or so to every weekend. Persistence had to show something eventually, right?

Besides that, I’ve also read about lunar planting, where different phases of the moon are supposedly suitable for different kinds of plants…

The new moon is said to be the best time to sow seeds of leafy veggies. The second quarter of the moon is best for fruiting veggies. The week after the full moon is best for root veggies, while the last quarter is apparently not good for planting, but for harvesting, transplanting and pruning instead.

Well, you know I’m normally a doubter until I see results, and the fact that I’ve spent the last four weekends sowing the same seeds weekend after weekend meant that the seeds HAD to have been sowed at the right phase of the moon at some point. If it really works.

Wahoo! The first pair of brinjal sprouts. Another just started showing today!

Well…. maybe it does. After a few months of half-hearted attempts at sowing brinjal seeds that didn’t do anything, followed by the last few weeks of weekly seed-sowing, we finally have a few seeds that have germinated! So the seeds still have life in them! And perhaps – just perhaps – lunar planting does work.

Since it’s the full moon now, maybe I’ll finally open up the packet of carrot seeds and give them a go. This is, after all, supposed to be the best time to start root crops…

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Dec
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31