Hit & Miss

I have been pretty diligent lately, spending more time at the balcony taking care of the plants and watering a lot more since it has been really hot. 

Monkey pitcher is now sharing the pot with a rogue fern.

Alor Vera from Spain, succulent from Santorini are doing pretty well after much care and fertilizing. 

Bentong ginger isn't doing well - it doesn't need as much water that I thought it'd be. 

My pot of random succulents are looking better. A lot had died as you can see and I've started to fertilize them. See those fertilizers? They stink like chicken poo. 

More basil seedlings popped out on the mint pot. 

Transplanted the hydrangea to a bigger pot with Miracle-Gro soil that used to house the miniature gardenia. Oh the gardenia died after almost week of transplant. 

Desert rose flowering again!

Okra plants are still producing - this time shooting out from the leaves too. 

Okra container is sharing with a single shallot that grew shoot. Those seedlings in the egg box are basil seedlings for my colleague.

Sowed some Japanese kale seeds and they have sprouted the next day. It's sharing container with white turnip (free seeds from the usual site I bought my seeds).

Wild strawberries are growing pretty slow. I have made a mistake by planting them too deep covering the crown. 

The rest of baby Chinese kales that I grew the last time. 

Those aren't evening primrose, they are mints actually. 

My chives are so small! 

Supermarket lemon seedling!

For What it's Worth

So I believe that I've been storing my seeds wrongly - I kept them in the Ikea stainless steel cabinet which I placed at the balcony. I totally disregarded that it would be too hot. Anyway, it's no wonder that my seeds now won't germinate.

Sowed 4 dwarf french beans (v. Stanley) but have not germinated. Kaffir lime seedlings doing great. I still have about 6 Florence Fennel seedlings here.

Pruned my hydrangea after it went wild and some of the leaves were sun-burned. I also rotated it. The heat has been increasing lately, my blooms are wilting quicker than usual so I cut them and put them in a vase. Notice that my blooms now have both blue and pink.

Aster seedlings! Another seedling grew so now I have 7!

Avocado plants are doing fine. You can see both are different varieties.

Bali Hai Gold Plumeria loves me! Her scent is very subtle.

Basil, shallots and hydrangea that I'm planting from a cut bloom that rooted in the vase.

My purslane is infected by fluffy white insects but here's a cute bloom.

 Arugula seedlings transferred to our bedroom balcony which has better sun exposure. It seems that they are started to grow again.

 Sowed more seeds today - French beans, Raap rapini and Nai You Bok Choy (v. Baby White).

Happy New Year!

I wish you a great start to 2015 and another wonderful and fruitful year ahead. I came home to a rather ok bunch of plants - except my hydrangea, basil and the last 2 kaffir lime seedlings. They were very dried out. Hydrangea however perked up half an hour after I watered it. The seedlings I'm unsure, need a few more days to see.

My younger lavender seedlings. Not sure if it's a good thing that only 4 out of 25-ish seeds are germinated but oh well. I will take whatever I can get.

The soil for the seedlings were also very dried but they are ok. One of the kaffir lime seedling is growing faster than the first one that I potted.

The first kaffir lime seedling and the avocado seedling doing ok.

Basil revived after a good watering. Avocado seedling shot up! Shallots gave me some spring onions to cook today. 

A significant growth on the tomato seedlings. Should I remove the smaller ones?

 Ginger also shot up a lot!

Arugula was a bit dried up but still good. None of the Red Romaines germinated.

Off to the flowers - hydrangea happier after a good watering last night. This one is so blue.

Bali Hai Gold inflo is getting bigger. Can't wait to see you!

 Powder puff aster - used to be 5 but few of them were too small that they were drowned when I watered last night. I had about 20 seeds but only 2 (?) germinated. 

Later in the evening, I sowed more basil, kohlrabi and aster seeds.

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!