Fortified and A Little Crack On on the Gemüsegarten

I'm officially on leave for holiday today and we have a late noon flight out so I'm spending the first half of the day doing a bit of gardening. I noticed that there are small flies flying around the gemüsegarten after the last round of fertilizing - it's either the vermicompost or the coffee ground that attracted them. Or both. Heh.

Kaffir lime seedlings and basil seeds, still not germinated yet.

I transferred the larger kaffir lime seedlings to the newspaper pots so I can give them to FTS. It seems one of the seeds grew another seedling so now I have 8.

Some unknown seedlings growing from the carrot seedling pots - I wonder if they were poppies because I reused the pots when poppy seeds didn't germinated.

Yippee. Two more lavender seedlings! They germinated quicker this time as I moved them to a different place. I also moved the bigger seedlings to the plumeria area for more sun exposure.

The kaffir lime seedlings growing nicely. I also planted some shallots from the kitchen that had shoots growing.

 Amped up my self-watering game. Hydrangea itself has 4. The rest has one each.

Arugula on the left, Red Romaine on the right. The Arugula seeds have germinated but not the Red Romaine. 

Can't wait to see you soon, Bali Hai Gold!

My Hands Itched...

So I couldn't help but to do a little more gardening after posting the last entry! Equipped with my wide-brimmed summer hat and suede gloves (I forwent the latter as I was not able to have a good grip of everything, I made a mess), I braved the hot weather and I:

1. transplanted my arugula seedlings to a planter after I noticed the roots grew out of the sowing pots, maybe that's why they are yellowing. I hope I'm right.

2. halved the arugula seedling planter with sowing two rows of Red Romaine

3. also transplanted the English Lavender seedlings to a pot as the roots also grew out

4. transplanted the strongest kaffir lime seedling to a pot. Yes I knew I said I would do it after holiday but I couldn't help myself

5. sowed more basil seeds as the last failed. I'm doing the sandwich style - I figured I failed the last time because the roots were exposed and they turned black before the shoots did so it had to be the problem.

6. Fertilized most of the plants with Starbucks coffee ground and vermicompost.

There you go. I feel so much better as I haven't been doing much gardening lately. Truth be told, I wouldn't stop doing more, if only I wasn't out of soil. I could have transplanted the basil into a bigger pot and maung pani plumeria which has been making the cut mineral water bottle as a residence since day 1 to a lovely pot that I bought long time ago. A trip to the nursery is in order to stock up my soil. And stocking up Yates' Fish Emulsion which my hydrangea loved so much. It seemed the blooms were bigger when I used that compared to Miracle-Gro. The shade also shifted from pink to lilac.

One of the earliest blooms which was almost true pink. I noticed as it has now a slight blue tinge to it.

I want my pink back!

Enough of hydrangea whining. An update on my ginger. It's growing!

This is fun!

Fickle Weather and A Quick Garden Update

The day started with overcast dark heavy clouds and it was pretty cold to be honest - the BF had to cover himself with a throw whilst sitting on the balcony reading his book. 

Within an hour, the clouds blown over to another area unveiling a happy sun. Oh it was so hot we had to evacuate the balcony. LOL. I suppose my plumeria troop would be happier.

The Spanish aloe vera BF's mom brought from Germany. It was dying after it was potted but I withheld watering for almost one month it grew a new leaf.

My cute purslane. It seems the left side is diseased whilst the right side is growing fantastically!

 BF's monkey pitcher's growing taller that it hooked itself onto the rope for stability.

My water-loving hydrangea withered a bit despite lower-than-usual-temperature. Gotta amp up my self-watering system on Monday!

My arugula seedlings turned yellow. Have I done something wrong? Shot an email to the seed seller for advice.

Went to the local florist after breakfast and bought this cute cactus for BF. He has a bowl of cacti at work. A few died so it's time to replace them.

And some roses and 'mums to brighten up the apartment. :)

A broken rose and a few stray 'mums at the balcony. Never waste!

Meanwhile, my kaffir lime seeds are growing pretty well despite at different rate, in fact one of them has a set of true leaves already. To encourage growth, I removed the husk of some of the seedlings and re-positioning them. I can say the success rate to this germination is 70% which is very high. :) I should potting them soon after I come back from a short new year holiday. I will be keeping two and giving away the rest to a tree society unless any of you local gardeners want it I can give them to you. Let me know at the comments section!

This is the mother plant.

The Second Great Pruning

Had a second great Plumeria pruning. Many of them were infested by the annoying whiteflies, mealybugs and scale insects. 

It turned out be a pleasant surprise - the pruning unveiled an inflo for Bali Hai Gold. 

The second avocado pit shows a greater growth speed compared to the first one.

The tomato seedlings show weird growth rate. Should I remove the smaller ones?

The Amaryllis has finished its bloom so I cut the stems off and repotted it. That's a brand new leaf. 

Sad to report that the older garlic and one of the potato seedlings died. Yes, by overwatering. -_-

Seedlings Update

The solo lavender seedling now has a buddy :). Threw in more seeds in few days before.

 Tomato seedlings.

Arugula, fennel and carrot seedlings.

The self-watering system for the hydrangea. It seems to be somewhat working as I haven't watered it for the last 2 days and it still looks ok. I will add another one or two more to be on the safe side.

Hello avocado!

 The basil seedlings dried out suddenly. -_-

Took out the kaffir lime seeds and voila! They grew! Will choose the strongest one and then will give the rest of the seedlings to FTS.

A Little Dress Up for the Gemüsegarten

A short trip to the bookstore at my workplace turned out to be awesome - I found some colourful popsicle sticks that I can use to mark my plants. MYR5.90 for about 40 sticks, not too bad! The purple one is gorgeous and I need to buy a white/silver marker to write on it. Will stock up the sticks for other purposes!

BF's having some dinner with colleagues and I'm skipping gym today to rest up my legs thus I had some time to myself after work. Too bad it's too dark to take photos. I hope I would be able to tomorrow.

I washed the pebbles that I had on the desert rose pot, cleared up some of the pebbles from then-lemon-tree-now-powder-puff-aster pot and washed them to fill the desert rose pot, re-marked all my seedlings and vegetables with those playful popsicle sticks, rotated the hydrangea plant. The hydrangea actually has a self-watering system which I bought from the DIY store near the workplace. It's a pack of two, the other one I used it for Kauka Wilder and I'm planning to switch the Kauka Wilder one to the hydrangea to see if it works.

A single lavender seedling. 

Hello my potatoes! Growing away like they are on steroid!

 Slow and steady tomato seedlings.

Little Update

I was away for the week for work so I didn't do much except germinating some basil genovese seeds before I left (only 3 of them germinated).

After coming back, I prepped the kaffir lime seeds from the kaffir limes I got from my dad's tree and germinated them. Outer layer of the seeds were peeled off and I soaked them in wet paper towel for germination.

Speaking of my dad, his plot currently is full of pumpkin seedlings that grew out from my brother's compost it's hilarious. My dad grows mostly fruit trees and ornamental plants- mango, malabar plum (sweet-smelling fruit that's very susceptible to worms!), kaffir lime, apple mint, desert rose (whole lot of them!) and orchids. I recently gave him a lemon tree which flourished under Lumut's sun. I also introduced My Lestary Seeds to my brother so there's a huge possibility they might start growing vegetables. I hope they do. :)

 My lemon tree finally died so I cleared it to plant my avocado seedling.

Update on my self-watering system using wine bottle with my hydrangea- well, it didn't work, my hydrangea was so dehydrated. However an hour of watering, it bounced back. I am definitely going to invest in an Ikea self-watering pot as I will be away for a week after Christmas and I don't want to put the hydrangea in stress again.

Other than that, my potatoes are growing away but my kohlrabi seeds aren't. Heh. Might be placing a new order from My Lestary Seeds since I have higher success rate with her seeds although I will point out that only one lavender seed germinated.

Since I will be going away again soon, I will be putting off germinating some of the lettuce seeds.