New Addition and Other Existing Members

I succumbed to my desire and bought a water lily from a nursery closer to my neighbourhood, Garden Mart at Tropicana. 

The staff helped me choose a small one with 2 flower buds (me without knowing the colour) and he put a couple of water fertilizer tablets for me. It was unfortunate that it was the only nursery that was still opened yesterday as I went there pretty late after work. I could see so many plumerias! I would definitely make another trip to get more fiddle leaf fig and plumeria. The ones they have are too huge. Madagascar dragon tree was an option but a 3 footer costs almost RM100, I have to say no.

What a lovely suprise, the water lily greeted me with a gorgeous bloom this morning. :) It is lovely soft fuchsia. My phone couldn't capture the true colour.

What's great about this water lily is it's miniature in size. Look at how small the bloom is! I'm planning to find a deep clear glass fruit bowl for it so I have it as the centrepiece for the dining table. I'll be using black-coloured stones instead of heavy soil like clay as not to cloud the water. A couple of fish in there would be so awesome! Can you imagine that?!

Anyway, we do have other plants that I have not introduced yet, well they are actually BF's:

Mini cacti garden that BF's taking to his office. We bought them from Cameron Highlands. One succulent died :\ The stripey darker green succulent is my favorite.

BF's pitcher plant, also from Cameron Highlands. The pitchers dried out. The staff removed the liquid from the pitchers upon purchase and we didn't think of refilling them (BF thought it will excrete the liquid itself, he could be right? We don't know). We aren't sure if that caused them to dry out, I tried to find answers at petpitcher forum but I was too lazy to pore through it, I couldn't find any pinned beginner's guide. A google a couple days showed we should fill the pitchers. Ahaha. 

My balsams are sprouting. All the seeds sprouted. Good boost for me. It's red, if I can remember correctly.

My aster propagation using root hormone. Not putting much expectation but they are looking ok right now.

 How my plumeria currently looks like. I feel kind of sad, I'm so tempted to go out and buy another one!

Plumeria Update

I woke up to a wrinkly plumeria this morning, I'm not doing it right. Whilst the flowers are still blooming albeit with a shorter life span, the stems of the plumeria feels softer and you can see it's starting to shrivel up. 

Seeing that as a bad sign, I quickly did what I learned from Jacob's Plumeria YouTube:

 

My cutting is pretty big, nearly 2 feet so I plonked it into my big vase. I'm not so confident about salvaging this cutting as I have had bad experience and I'm quite impatient. 

Meanwhile I called a nursery that's nearer to my place and asked if they have stock, which they don't unfortunately, instead I asked for some advice from the owner. He did say plumerias are hardy and put in under the shade (well, mine's indoor) and let it be. Plumerias grow pretty slowly anyway. Hah, I'm so impatient.

I'm also looking into getting more, perhaps a yellow one and another deep red. I would like to put some plumerias at the balcony. 

DIY: Pesticide

I learned about homemade pesticide when I googled about pesticide soap. I posted my acclimatized hydrangea's issue on a gardening forum and one suggested to use pesticide soap. When I googled it, one YouTube video should how to make pesticide yourself; cayenne + garlic + onion boiled in water. So far, I've sprayed on it and since the pesticide is non-evasive and 'organic', I also sprayed on my fiddleleaf fig as few of the leaves are spotty.
How cool is that there's such a thing! I will definitely share that with my dad. Here's an article of homemade pesticides that you may consider if your plants needs SOS. 

Another poster suggested that it could the start of powdery mildew infestation. He suggested some chemical stuff but I'm keen to try on the homemade ones: milk:water 1:4 ratio and another is 1 gallon water + baking soda+1 drop liquid soap. 

On another note, I plucked a pod of red balsam when I was at one of the nurseries (I'm naughty, I know) and I forgot it in the car. It popped so I chucked them into a pot yesterday, oh sweet they are sprouting.

Under and Over

Ha. My BF believes I fuss too much over the plants, I think so too.

Anyway, things are looking pretty good so far. I did not repot my acclimatized hydrangea, I will leave it as is for now as it's doing good on its own with new leaves growing beautifully. I repotted the Cameron hydrangea instead. The roots have grown out of the pot through the drain holes so I had to cut them off to remove it from the pot, now I have to prepare myself that some part of the plant will die. Here is how it looks like right now.

The amount of root I had to sacrifice. Sad.

I bought all my bio-degradable pots (except a ceramic pot for fiddleleaf fig) from Baba, but I sprayed paint as I wanted white. Little did I know they actually have white ones for sale! I also used their lazy soil, pre-mixed soil. However the mix is pretty inconsistent, I bought two packets and one had little small reddish stones while another a lot of huge reddish stone with balled-up brownish fibres. Sorry I still don't know about the soil terms.

Meanwhile the fiddle leaf fig loves its place next to our living room window, new leaves are growing at a rapid rate. My plumeria is doing ok too. The tip of the branch looks green and flowers are still blooming. This one is a huge test for me.
I'm still playing with the idea of getting either water lily or lotus. Oh just in case you don't know what is the difference between these two plants, here's a visual.

Nelumbo is lotus, nymphaea is water lily.

I bought a bunch of Aster today from my florist and yielded these:

I didn't waste much. The green ones are the buds with shorter stems. I also propagated the stems using root hormone, not really putting much hope as aster prefer cool western summers but yeah.

That planter was meant for the BF to plant some tomatoes but he hasn't started to doing anything yet I'll use for now.

Shock!

I'm so shocked to find out my plumeria is not fully propagated yet when I was repotting to a bigger pot. There's no root system at all! Oh my god, please don't let me kill this plant!
On a brighter side, I can see some green growing off the tip of one branch. I really hope it will thrive.

DIY Self-Watering

Going away from home for a while? Can't find anyone to water your plants? Well, well. This is one of my worries when I first got my plants.  

Initially I thought of investing in a self-watering pot from Ikea but gardening doesn't have to be an expensive hobby so I'm opting for DIYs. Another quick search on the internet will show you a myriad of ways to DIY self-water. 

The best (when I say best, I mean easiest) option I found is using recycled mineral bottles. All you have to do is just make some small holes on the cap, fill the bottle with water, close it back and stick it to the ground upside down and physics will do the rest of the work.

Another option is to use the narrow-necked bottle e.g. wine bottle, fill it with water and stick it upside down with the neck at least several inches underground. I guess this one is a bit tricky if you have a very good draining soil. The water will just seep through in no time!

Photo credit: The Garden Glove

I will definitely try the mineral water bottle option for the water baby hydrangeas. 

On a side note, after consulting with experienced gardeners online about my unhealthy-looking acclimatized hydrangea, I found out putting fertilizer is a bad idea and I decided to repot it to a bigger pot. I also made some homemade pesticide (dried chili + garlic + onion concoction I found on YouTube) and sprayed it thoroughly, including the underside of the leaves, to get rid of any creepy crawlies. Hope that will help.

Inaugural

Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.” - Kurt Vonnegut

I unconsciously gave myself a new thing to do for 2014; gardening. This blog will serve as a platform to chronicle and share my experience in this new hobby.
I grew up having watering my grandma's plants as my main chore. And it was always at 5pm, everyday. My childhood was filled with bougainvilleas, balsams and and kalanchoes. Balsams were a favourite because of their cute little seed pods. It's fun to pop the mature ones.

My father has a green thumb and has a great collection of plants and bonsai, but mother nature decided to play some game and gave me a brown thumb instead. Heh. 

I believe the first plant I bought was a small pot of herb from the local supermarket when I was working in Singapore but it died. I also invested in an orchid when I was still in Singapore and I left it there so I have no idea what happened to it. After that, I bought a vanilla orchid in KL and left it with my dad. It died.

Fast forward, I tried to plant green onions, parsley and bought a reasonable-sized pot of rosemary from my favorite florist. Green onions and parsley sprouted but they died quickly. So did the rosemary.
I decided to try again and bought plants from Cameron Highlands when my BF and I made a trip there; succulent, hydrangea, mexican sunflower and miniature rose. 

Rather a bad idea, as they don't suit KL's hot weather. They died within 3 weeks. Yes even the succulent; I overwatered. Hydrangea could have survived but I killed it by overdoing with the pesticide. The hydrangea was sprouting so many babies. My heart was broken. I still have the plant in the pot and water it frequently. Who knows, one fine day, it will thrive again.

Meanwhile, I started to snoop around the internet and found there are a cluster of avid gardeners sharing tips and info online, that's how I found out about acclimatized hydrangeas, air-filtering plants and stuff like that. After learning my mistakes (I must resist overwatering. I believe I will have the tendency of overfeeding kids when I have my own. I overfeed my BF too) and since we are moving to a bigger apartment, I made a list of plants I would want. I got all the plants I wanted on my first trip to the stretch of plant nurseries at Sungai Buloh. What a great start.

Clockwise: Fiddle Leaf Fig tree, deep red plumeria aka frangipani, hydrangea from Cameron and acclimatized hydrangea.

Here are the reasons why I chose these plants:
1. Fiddle leaf fig - Hardy and I love the way it looks. I had the experience of taking care of two of them (over 10 feet each) when I was managing a Coach Leatherware store. They didn't need much fuss; water once a week or so and that's it. They didn't even have natural sunlight and they still grow. We had to trim them few times year because they were blocking the CCTV cameras. I chose a 3-footer thinking I wouldn't need a bigger tree since our apartment isn't that big but I'm wrong, the bigger the better. Haha. A 5-footer or a 6 would be ideal. Let's grow baby!
2. Plumeria - They are everywhere around my current neighbourhood; in the yards and along the public roads. They are also very prominent at my hometown, Lumut. You can see them along the waterfront and they are huge. I chose a deep red ones because the white ones (Singapore White) are kinda a no-no, they are associated with ghosts. You can always find them around Malay graveyards. The scent of the flower reminded my Malay friends of graveyards. I know it doesn't make sense but I blame my upbringing. I will be getting more varieties like yellow and pinks after settling down in the new apartment and who knows by then, my head will be out of my butt and accept Singapore White as it deserved to be.
3. Hydrangea from Cameron - It's light violet in colour, not really my color. I tend to fancy deeper-coloured flowers. It's not recommended by the gardeners as they are not acclimatized yet, chances of them not blooming is present. But the healthy shoots and the leaves are so green they scream in pink of health. This particular plant reminds me so much of my old hydrangea.
4. Acclimatized hydrangea - Blue color, also not my color. Not as robust and healthy as the Cameron one but I chose this because it has been acclimatized and the parent looks ok. The stems and leaves are thinner in comparison and the green colour is paler with whitish spots. A quick Google says it lacks nutrient. I've repotted and put some fertilizer we bought from Cameron Highlands. Let's hope this helps.

I recently bought some cut white spray carnation and I used some of the new shoots as foliage; two of them are growing some roots! I have had this experience before and I don't remember the details but they didn't survive due to the hot climate. Perhaps I should wait for them to grow longer and I shall try to pot them.

After learning about certain plants doubling as air-purifier, I'm very encouraged to get more. Those listed plants by NASA don't really tickle my fancy, perhaps just the orchids and potted lemon tree that passed my test. I'm currently searching for alternatives; water lilies or lotus are pleasing to the eyes but I'm unsure how it will work indoor and it's pretty big. You may suggest to plant herbs, but I realise I hardly use western herbs for my cooking and I don't cook as often as I would like to. I suppose I can try succulents again, I just need to resist myself from watering them!
So there. A great start to my new hobby and let's hope the plants grow!