Hami melon emergency first-aid!

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The first tendril on the Hami melon plant before the disaster.

Nothing ever seems to go smoothly, for some reason. I was so excited that we had one Hami melon sprout from the seeds given by Novice Gardener. It had been growing slowly but surely, with the first few leaves and the first tendril, when disaster struck – the wind must have blown the stem about, and the stem snapped! It was hanging on by just a tiny strip, so I set it straight, hilled up the soil around it, and added a support in a frantic attempt to secure it.

One day later, the wind struck again, and the stem was hanging at a bad angle with the inner part of the stem exposed again. In desperation, I severed the stem two leaves above the break, re-hilled up the soil and placed the support even closer to the stem, with the thought that there would be less of the plant to be tossed around by the wind and that with less plant to focus on growing, it would be able to start healing.

The top of the stem that I broke off was treated like a plant cutting and placed in a smaller flower pot. I consoled myself with the thought that if the main part of the plant didn’t survive, maybe – just maybe – the cutting would survive and we would still have a Hami melon plant.

This is what the main part of the plant looks like now. See the bottom where I broke off the stem, and where the new stem is growing?

All this, mind you, happened in the last couple of weeks when the weather was hot and dry, so I wasn’t very optimistic about the Hami’s survival prospects.

Well, more than a week later, both the main plant and cutting are still alive. The main plant has started growing a new stem with a few sets of leaves, and a new tendril! It’s my hope that like other vining plants, it will grow more roots where the stem touches soil, so I intend to re-pot it in a bigger pot (I daren’t put it out in the garden where my plant foes, the dogs and gardeners, will likely damage it) where I can place it deeper and raise the level of soil around the stem even more.

The cutting has been quite dormant in comparison, probably putting energy into growing new roots. I can’t see them yet, though, but since the stem and leaves still look normal, I guess they are indeed developing in there.

Please don’t let any more mishaps hit these two plants!

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Too hot to garden

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The Smyrna kingfisher was one of the several birds seen just sitting with its beak open like it was trying to cope with the heat somehow.

Did I say the dry inter-monsoon period was over? I must have been mistaken! The past couple of weeks have been full of mostly hot, dry days that have had even the poor birds sitting around with their beaks gaping wide like they’re gasping for relief from the hot sun. What rain we had was just not enough to break the spell of the heat.

Needless to say, I haven’t done very much in the garden apart from trying to make sure the plants stay suitably hydrated. Instead, there’s been more gardening-related gallivanting going on.

It wasn’t planned to be a garden-visit period, but it sure turned out that way! I enjoyed seeing the lush garden that Skyfiery lives in, to all the different plants and veggies growing in the Weeds‘ garden, and a quick, tantalizing glimpse of Novice Gardener‘s green domain (still disappointed I didn’t have time to see the pumpkin patch!). While I am envious of what grows in others’ gardens, I’m practical enough to admit that not everything I like can well grow in ours…

These plant cages from The Weeds are more suited to tomato plants, but since I'm not growing tomatoes, I decided they would work well with the Simba bean plants, both as a support and to protect the plants from our dogs and gardeners. So far it's worked!

Besides going visiting, my wandering feet also brought me to do some shopping! It’s really funny how getting a new supply of soils and fertilizers from the plant nursery can make me happy. The Weeds also expanded on that joy by introducing me to the gardening knick-knacks at Daiso.

These plant supports from there have been dually useful in supporting my Simba bean plants as well as keeping the plants safe from the dogs and gardeners.

I was also thrilled to find some wire panels, because as you know, I’ve got a lot of climbing plants, and am in constant need of more surfaces for them to climb on. The grids, together with the nifty connecting attachments, will be put through some rigorous testing in the coming weeks and months.

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Grow kangkong in recycled bottles

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The kangkong plants grew extremely well in these hanging recycled PET bottle-pots.

In the wake of Earth Day, I thought I’d continue with the environmental thread. I like going green, and when I can combine growing plants with recycling things, so much the better!

When I decided to grow our second round of water spinach plants more than a year ago, I decided to give each plant its own space to grow. The first try growing them in a planter wasn’t stellar, as the plants were crowded in the limited space, and ended up attracting mealybugs. :( Spacing them out was my intent.

This is how root bound the plant can get, but it can keep growing pretty well! I literally top up the soil and it just keeps going.

Since I had accumulated a number of 1.5 litre PET bottles at that time, I decided to use some of the bottles to grow the spinach in. My recycled bottle design of choice was a hanging pot. (See this post for instructions on how to make one, and for other ways to recycle plastic bottles)

It actually turned out to be a good choice, because once established, the plants grew nice and strong, even when they became root bound. They also looked very pretty, and when left to grow as long as they wanted to, also produced lots and lots of gorgeous white flowers that I eventually harvested seeds from.

More recently, I attempted to grow a new lot of spinach in a recycled styrofoam box. It was one of the shallower ones that’s about 15cm deep. I had planted the spinach in good organic soil, and expected them to surpass the growth of the plants in the hanging plastic bottles, but to my surprise, the plants in the box kept struggling and didn’t grow well, and I eventually gave up on them.

This leads me to conclude that spinach plants don’t mind being root bound as long as they have good depth to grow in. My hanging PET bottles were filled with soil from bottom to almost at the top. All I had allowed was about 5cm space from the top for the plants to lean out and grow so there was a good amount of space for the roots to explore.

Kangkong grown in a wider planter didn't grow that well. Perhaps it dried out sooner, or the plants need a deeper growing space.

I also experimented with a PET bottle design where the top was lopped off so it was like a tall, narrow flower pot, but the plants were less lush than their hanging counterparts. Maybe more moisture was lost because the top was more open than the hanging pots. So, I am advocating the use of recycled bottles (the big ones of at least 1.5 litres) as hanging pots as good receptacles to grow water spinach in. Give it a go!

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.

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A Billion Acts of Green for Earth Day 2012

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Image from http://act.earthday.org/

I have to get on my soapbox for a little while…

While I assume that every visitor to The Curious Gardener already has something to do with growing plants, I feel obliged to encourage you all to take the next step, if you haven’t already, to be even more environmentally conscious. I’m sure you know the drill, but these are ways you could help:

  • recycle, reuse and re-purpose things
  • use less water and energy (petrol, coal, electricity)
  • cut down on chemical pesticides and cleaning agents
  • GROW MORE PLANTS :)

If you need more ideas, visit the Billion Acts of Green site, and if you want, join the millions of people who have already signed up to pledge their Acts of Green. I did; will you?

Earth Day 2012 is just two days away, on April 22. I hope we hit the 1 billion target.

© 2012 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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