New Foreign Additions

BF's mom and younger sister are here for a visit and the mom brought some foreign friends - Royal Red Amaryllis, Aloe Vera from Gran Canaria and 2 varieties of cactus.

My seedlings are doing pretty well.

True leaves of tomato seedlings have took its form and the roots have rather long and already intertwined with one another. I'm going to have problem separating them out soon.

Not all powder puff aster seeds germinated - maybe they need a little more time. 

Cute arugula seedlings.

Fennels and carrots too have its true leaves.

My seed potatoes grew!

 Finally hung the purslane using my homemade pot hanging rope.

.

Bought 2 packs of vermicompost to try out since home composting is not possible at the moment.

Weekend Task

Saturday morning saw me visiting my usual nurseries at Tropicana to get more soil. Dropped by at the first nursery, Kohortica to say hi to the friendly staff. They are well-stocked with roses and beautiful red lilies this time that it is such a shame I have just a balcony! Katsura has the best gardening soil by Gafri and it is so cheap - a pack of 28 litre for MYR10. I got myself 3 packs of them and 2 Baba Planters with the wrought iron window planter box.

Finally planted 3 of the chitted potatoes - 2 in a plastic woven sack I found at work and 1 in the gardening soil bag. 

An update on the seedlings - Arugula has sprouted. The rest are growing but I kind of worry about the kohlrabi - they haven't sprout so I put new seeds into the pots again today.

Go Read and Learn More!

The last seed order arrived! This time I received 2 extra packets for free - Dwarf long bean and Arugula (v. Dentellata). This batch will have to wait as I lack of space, just the aster seeds are germinated for ornamental purpose. Only the hydrangea and Portulaca/Purslane are blooming at my balcony! Those darn Plumerias are doing nothing but attract white flies!

The seedlings are growing pretty well especially the tomato seedlings - I can see a couple of them growing true leaves already. 

Anyway, I would like to share a fantastic discovery. Little did I know, I've been growing a super green at my balcony - Purslane! I used to think it was called Portulaca but I was corrected today - this round-tipped leaf plant that I've known since young is actually Purslane and it is a type of herb. Well, actually BF's dad did tell me it as edible but I didn't really believe him (OMG LOL). I just knew the flowers were colourful and cute. 

What this David of a plant has is everything you can dream of: low in calorie, has a lot of omega-3, wide spectrum of vitamins (A, B complex, C,) and dietary minerals plus antioxidants. Wiki will explain you more about the goodness of this under-rated plant. You can pretty much eat everything (except the roots), raw or cooked.  

So, what I have to do now is to stop feeding it with Miracle-Gro Plant Food. Well thanks to Miracle-Gro, it's quite fat right now to be honest but I aim for organic gardening. I learned that you gotta do it organically for 5 years before you can call it organic so heck. 5 years. I will be hanging it as it's sprawling all over the floor. Coco likes to pee near it. :/

Second Batch Arrived!

Seeds from Kebun Bahagia Bersama arrived yesterday - well it arrived on Saturday but the postman left it in the mailbox. Anyway, I got Celtuce as a freebie. The packaging was much less impressive than My Lestary Seeds so I printed the info labels like what My Lestary Seeds does myself and relabeled them for easier reference.

Sowed just kohlrabi in homemade newspaper pots from this batch as space is limited, lavender is in the toilet roll pots. Will be sowing them in succession. 

Read online that saving seeds in plastic bags may sweat the seeds and ruin them, I made an envelope to store my tomato seeds instead.

 Oh look! Carrot and fennel seedlings!

The tomato seedlings are going great.

A huge of muhsrooms on my Bali Hai Gold Plumeria. My mixing soil is contaminated with mushroom spores I noticed. Mushroom grows randomly from one pot to another. :/ 

What A Difference a Couple of Days Make

The tomato seeds all germinated I'm happy to report that it is a 100% success rate! It is so encouraging that everything goes so well! The roots are getting bigger and they are starting to weave into the paper towel. I've moved them outdoor and the paper towel dried so quickly I probably should move them back to the kitchen.

The fennels sowed! I can see about two shoots.

Lavender will take much longer to be sowed so... let's be patient. I've waited 6 months for my Malaysian Red Plumeria to be rooted so a month or two for lavender is ok.

Speaking of plumerias, my plumerias are rather slow - no flowering or whatsoever - just controlling whiteflies issue. *shrugs*

Made another order from My Lestary Seeds!

Successful Start

I harvested some seeds from two mini plum tomatoes which I bought from the store on last week  and left them for fermentation. I let the seeds fermented longer (recommended was 3 days I did it for almost one week).  Seed drying took 3 days and I had 8 seeds germinated on a wet paper towel and guess what? 75% of them started to grow root. 

Germinated seeds today. So happy to see those tiny root.

Seeds being dried out on baking paper.

The two garlics have sprouted.

 The brown 'root' turned out to be the sprout. Interesting that it grew upright from the bottom.

The third avocado pit has split and you can see the sprout already. The second one showed a slight split.

Potatoes chitted rather nicely. The sprouts should be in green with purple base. The potato at 5 o'clock wasn't meant be chitted but it sprouted in the kitchen and the shoots are pale - not really a good one but I will try it anyway.

Ready, Get Set, Go!

The seeds I ordered from My Lestary Seeds arrived today, how brilliantly quick is that! The seller threw in a packet of bok choy/Chinese Cabbage (v. Nai You) as a gift. I was going to do an excel sheet on the planting info but well, all the packets are already labeled with them! Happy!

The other order will arrive next week instead (bummer!). I can't wait to grow the kohlrabis!

 I sowed carrots & fennels first as I'm short of sowing pots. I didn't have any markers so I DIY-ed using cable ties. 

I then scrounged through the bathroom bins for toilet rolls and found enough rolls to sow some lavender seeds. As the rolls are on the smaller side, I cut less to make the base and lined them with folded toiletpaper instead. A quick look at the kitchen bin got me a slightly soiled (by ddeokbokki we had for dinner last night)  kitchen roll which should make me at least 3 more sowing pots. Will have to wait for it to dry out after I washed the ddeokbokki off. I will be doing some origami boxes out of newspapers too since toilet rolls can be scarce. 

An update on composting, I have to put it on hold as the BF is rather against it - he's worried that the compost bin will attract flies and also produce stench. Let's see how it goes.

I've also cleaned a bit up at the balcony and cleared some space for the potager, or perhaps I should call it Gemüsegarten since I should improve my German instead French. Heh.

Going Further

I'm very inspired to grow my own food by thehortchannel YT. I've just an order of seeds from Kebun Bahagia Bersama and My Lestary Seeds. They are rather cheap seeing that the seeds that I ordered are exotic. I had to buy from different seller because the first seller didn't have Florence fennel and the latter seller didn't respond to me in time. One of the sellers was also kind enough to adjust the shipping rate for me seeing that my order isn't that massive. Oh well, the agony of having just the balcony.

Yes, kohlrabi is in the list! Had my first kohlrabi when I was in Lieserbrucke and I absolutely love it!

My brother is composting for dad back at home. And since I'm going to embark on growing my own balcony potager (oh yes I learned a new word along the way) and I do cook rather frequent - at least twice for Coco, her diet includes carrot and potatoes. Yes why waste the skins!!! I will be doing my own compost too. I found the best DIY bucket on Facebook - 2 plastic containers! How about that!

I'm very excited to start this new project! 

Happiness is Seeing Them Grow and Healthy

Finally cut my first two hydrangea blooms and vased them. I didn't cut them immediately as I wanted to find out how long can the bloom last and let me tell you - it can last more than a month on the plant!

The third bloom and possibly the largest head - it was shocking pink when it's at its peak.

I've been hooked on hortchannels on YT especially this and it inspired me even more to work on my own kitchen garden.

The tomato seeds and poppy seeds that I tried germinating failed. I gave up on poppies but I'm trying another technique for the tomatoes - seed saving by fermenting tomato seeds from fresh ripe tomatoes that I bought from the local supermarket (I chose mini plum variety).

I'm also chitting some Aussie potatoes. A quick Google tells me it's a white variety - could be a Nadine or a Coliban (probably the latter, I have no idea!). I chose the potatoes that already have little shoots but some of them are black, I hope the potatoes were no treated.

My single garlic plant is doing pretty well and I'm looking forward to harvest it next June. I've also planted two more garlic cloves today. I should start to find out on how to cure them since I've already know how to plait them. 

I'm so impressed by elephant garlic but I don't think I have ever seen any here. One bulb can feed the whole village!

Edibles Update

The onions are really thriving I'm very happy that I'm finally able make food out from my balcony garden. I made kimchi with the onion leaves since the scallions are, well, misbehaving with me.

I'm also happy to report that the avocado grew more roots and a brown one seems to come out too. I'm waiting for its shoot! I'm germinating an extra pit too.

Trying my luck and different way to germinate tomato (left) and poppy seeds (right). 

 My knob of ginger died (Probably over-watering again) so I tried again with this one. Doing water propagation this time instead.

 My hydrangea's amazing - just here a bit droopy as the weather was hot and sunny today. 

Was curious on what's underneath those leaves - the hydrangea's growing a lot of new shoots.

My current plumeria cuttings - the bigger one (Penang Peach from FTS) has formed roots and I'm slowing down the growth as I don't really need two Penang Peaches. The middle one is Aussie Pink which hasn't grown any root yet but I definitely noticed strong calluses especially on the branch. The smaller is a hollow-stemmed NOID. It's plumped up at the base but still no root.

 A new cutting I acquired two weekends ago and I clingwrapped it - it's forming nice callus despite the pith having a little pink spot which I've wiped with alcohol swab and it turned green.

My Purslane is yellow!