(Photography) Nepenthes albomarginata var. ‘rubra’

Lid has opened. =)

(Photography) Nepenthes albomarginata var. ‘rubra’

Some simple pictures of the Nepenthes albomarginata var. ‘rubra’ I have now, one of which is forming this adorable baby pitcher.

(Propagation) Venus flytrap

I recently bought a typical venus flytrap again after my old one died a long time ago. I’ve learnt from various experts (and have successfully propagated the flytrap once [which was the only time I tried propagating; so I suppose it’s a 100% success rate for me]) , and would like to share how to do it. It’s very simple.

You will have to perform leaf pullings on your VFT, by gripping each leaf as close to the stalk as possible and then pulling outwards and downwards. It is best to get as much of the white portion of the main stalk as possible, as that portion will increase the chances of a successful propagation. It is a lot easier if you’re able to dig up the whole parent plant and pull the leaves.

After that, cut off the traps from the stalks. This ensures that no energy is lost and all the energy of the bare stalks can be channelled to producing new roots and plantlets.

Fill a transparent plastic container with a thick layer of peat moss, and wet it enough so that the peat becomes a little bit boggish. Press the VFT stalks with the bottom portion (the one where it was connected to the parent plant’s main stem) into the peat. Cover the container partly, and leave it in a bright area.

New plantlets should start growing in about a month or two, I believe.

(Article) Enlivening Soil using Organic Fertilizers

With thanks to PetuniaLee from GCS who posted this link on the forum.

Adapted from a post from Woodleaf Farm.

Fertile soil is a mixture of well-balanced minerals, high organic matter, good aeration and bountiful soil life.  The biology or life in the soil is at its healthiest when the nutrients are plentiful and balanced, and there is sufficient oxygen.  The top few inches of soil is the most vital, holding about 70% of the life and 70% of the organic matter.  Below 6 inches the roots are feeding on mostly soluble nutrients since the micro-organisms are not able to thrive without sufficient oxygen.

Full article here.

(Planting media) Volcanic sand

Ever since Green Culture Singapore member sixhunter introduced me to this particular type of gravel-like planting media, I haven’t touched anything like perlite, vermiculite, or even the higher quality Indonesian burnt earth (IBE) at all. The volcanic sand from World Farm looks like coarse gravel, and is slightly dusty.

Before using the volcanic sand, it is preferable if you do one level of sifting, to separate the finer gravels from the much coarser ones. You may use it unwashed on ornamental or edible plants without any problems. However, I soak and wash the fine gravels over two days if I want to use them on my carnivorous plants, because CPs are a lot more finnicky in terms of their growing conditions and demands.

I have found it best to line the bottom of the pot with a layer of coarse gravel to improve drainage, and then mix up the subsequent layers with whatever organic planting media along with the fine gravels. This ensures that your media retains moisture but dries out easily so waterlogging doesn’t become a problem.

So far, my edible plants love this particular mix of volcanic sand from World Farm along with Tref potting soil/mix from Far East Flora. My mints are thriving on the moist but not too wet mix; and my carnivorous plants are much easier to handle because I’m able to control the amount of water that remains in the media with a mix of volcanic gravel and Horti moss (peat moss).

They contain no minerals so for edibles or ornamental plants, you’d need to add in fifty percent of organic media; for CPs, the lack of minerals is just fine.

(Photography) Wild passionfruit etc.

A weaving of branches from the ghosts of trees.

Close-up shot of wild passionfruit flower.

Looking like a tempting cake or Christmas tree decoration piece.

Dried mimosa seedpods and seeds.

(Recycling) Plastic bottles

I’ve always been one for conservation when I could, and recycling non-biodegradable things is one of the ways in which I try to do on a frequent basis.

I’m not entirely sure which particular website I got the idea from; however, it was a link that was posted by a Green Culture Singapore member about a year back. I was hooked to the idea of converting unused pop bottles into pots of sorts, and also creating a water reservoir for them.

The method is simple: just cut off the top of the bottle about two inches away from the mouth, invert the top portion and place it into the bottom. It should look somewhat like this.

You can also place a wicking thread through the mouth of the bottle before topping it up with soil, LECA bits, or coarse vermiculite. The wick will draw the water up and ensure a fairly constant supply of moisture to your seedlings or plants.

The end product should look somewhat like this. Now you can get more ‘free’ pots and save the earth at the same time.

(Article) Mediterranean Companions

Adapted from The Herb Companion

The subtle-hued, many-textured gray and green herbs native to the Mediterranean are favorites in the herb garden. In their homeland, lavender, marjoram, oregano, rosemary, sage, santolina, savory and thyme cling to chalky cliffs and hillsides and stubbornly exist in barren, dry, sandy, rocky soils. But in our gardens in Maryland (Susan) and Arkansas (Tina Marie), we’ve proved that these Mediterranean immigrants do just fine on American soil with a few amendments. We re-created a Mediterranean region for these plants in our gardens.

Full article here

(I think that the methods described within can be extrapolated to Singapore’s climate as well).

(Article) Can a Drop of Water Cause Sunburn or Fire?

Adapted from Science Daily

To the gardening world it may have always been considered a fact, but science has never proved the widely held belief that watering your garden in the midday sun can lead to burnt plants. Now a study into sunlit water droplets, published in New Phytologist, provides an answer that not only reverberates across gardens and allotments, but may have implications for forest fires and human sunburn.

Full article here.

(Photography) Flower and plant shots

Morning glory found in the wild.

Cultivated Dahlia flower from World Farm.

Close-up of the Dahlia flower.

(Photography) Passionfruit flower

Taken with a camera phone.

(G.E.) (Pest control) Garbage enzyme and scale insects

Garbage enzyme has been a really useful household product for me. I’ve Googled and read some pages where people say there are no hard scientific papers which back up the uses of the G.E., and I agree on that.

However, I believe that personal experiences do contribute a little to whether the G.E. really works or not. And for me, it has shown that it works, especially on pests which breathe through their skin, such as scale insects or mealy bugs or red spider mites.

Today, I found out that both my variegated peppermint plants were infected with scales. By infected, I mean hundreds of insects on my plants. It was horrifying. Out came the G.E. and I sprayed liberally.

There’s an interesting (or perhaps not so) thing I’ve noticed with scales – when they’re alive and you try to pry them off, you will have to angle a pointed object at the right angle beneath the carapace of the insect, and then flick it off hard. To know if it’s alive or not, if it takes you more than a few tries to get it off, well, it is; and if, with one casual scrape, the carapaces come off, then they’re dead.

After the liberal spraying of the G.E., I used the pointed end of my plant tag to push against the carapaces. ALL (yes, all) of them came off with minimal help from me.

Whatever the lack of scientific evidences, I know that G.E. helps me in gardening at the very least. Or, at least, with killing scale insects.

(Germination) Using heat

For those of us who live in high-rise apartments and don’t get enough sun, germinating seeds might pose a problem. After learning of a fellow gardener’s success in using heat to germinate her seeds more quickly, with a higher germination rate, I became inspired and set out to do the same. You can use anything from a heating pad, to your CPU, to your fridge’s radiator. But my favorite method is to use tea light candles and an aromatherapy burner.

For this, you will need an aromatherapy burner, tea light candles, small metal cans (preferably with lids), vermiculite, and small pieces of paper.

Fill the tin with some vermiculite. This is to buffer the intensity of the heat so that the seeds are warmed up but not cooked.  The pieces of paper are to hold the seeds so that you don’t need to dig for them amongst the vermiculite.

Fold the piece/s of paper and then bury them in the vermiculite. Place the lid in such a way that there is a small gap for the heat to be released. Light the candle and place the tin on top. (This picture is an old one; please don’t follow it and cap the lid so tight – you’ll cook the seeds instead and they won’t germinate at all).

(Pruning) Mints

I offer this quote from a user named “sagedavis” from the Helpful Gardener Gardening Forum: “It did, somehow, make my potted mint grow way faster than I expected it to, and the roots basically strangled it out before I realized what was causing the death of the the mint, and obviously, before I decided it was time to transplant it.”
Do a CTRL + F and search for “mint”.

In pot-grown mints, there are two main kinds of roots: feeder roots, which draw nutrients upwards throughout the plant; and tap roots, to stablize the plant. In a pot, the roots are constrained, but they still continue to grow in the constrained area. Both types of roots grow, and over a period of more than a year, can fill up the whole pot so much that the root mass starts growing out from the drainage holes at the bottom of the pot. In the pot itself, there is no more space to expand. So the roots become so tight that they literally strangle themselves. Nutrients and water are likely unable to reach the feeder roots easily, and the plant might die from dehydration and also nutrient deficiency.

The way to prune the mints’ roots are as follows:

Step one
Grab hold of all the stalks of your plant into one bunch. Hold them as close to their base as possible. Pull the whole clump gently out of the pot. Technically, your root ball should look much tighter and messier than the one shown in my picture before you prune it. But I prune my mints every nine months or so to encourage more vigorous growth, and to do a soil change for them.

Step two
Take a pair of clean secateurs and cut between 30 to 40% of the lower root mass off (the part farthest from the stalks). I usually do a 50% cut, but for others who are not sure, I recommend a 30% prune.

Step three

Fill your pot with fresh soil mix

Step four

Place your pruned plant gently onto the fresh soil, and firm it down. Fill up any gaps between the root mass and the pot, water your plant, and place it in an area with bright shade (not full sun) for a few days until you see the leaves perk up again, which shows that it has gotten over the shock to its roots.

Personal experience: The mints (and also other plants) all seem to do better with semi-regular root prunings. However, you must make sure you know if a plant is exceptionally sensitive to root disturbances (like the lemon myrtle) then a minimal root pruning of 5% of the whole root ball is enough.

(G.E.) Garbage enzyme

I first chanced upon the mention of garbage enzyme in the Green Culture forum, in a thread mentioning home-made fertilizers. Intrigued, I went to Google up some sites which state that the enzyme is made from kitchen green wastes and/or garden green wastes.

I like to conserve things, and the idea of not wasting even scraps appealed very much to me. Thus, in mid 2009, I set about to making my first experimental trial of a small container of the enzyme. For my first batch, I used scraps like spoilt mulberry leaves, onion skins, orange and lemon peels, apple pulp, and such.

After that, I added about ten tablespoonfuls of raw sugar, and filled the container with water till it reached a space of 2cm away from the brink. This air space is needed, because during the first month of supposed decomposition, a lot of air is created. If the water had touched the brim, and if the container lid weren’t opened frequently to let air escape, then the lid might pop off or the container would explode.

The scraps should be left in the container for a minimum of three months, with the first month being slightly more tedious – you’d need to open the lid frequently to let air escape. After the first month, you can leave the container alone.

I matured my first batch for five months. After I opened it up, it smelled pungent like apple cider vinegar.

Once the enzyme is matured, filter off all the waste from the liquid, and use the liquid as a diluted foliar spray for plants.

Personal experience: I have had it work in a dilution of 1ml GE to about 50ml of water. As a fertilizer, I have not seen much effect on the plants, whether as a foliar spray or direct watering into the soil. However, with some experiments on my part, I have noticed that it works well in killing pests which breathe through their skin, such as on red spider mites, and on scales and mealy bugs.

Uses of garbage enzyme: Anything from cleaning sofas to adding to shampoos to killing pests etc.

Asëa Aranion

I have decided that this will be my main gardening blog now, with more informative articles on how I grow my plants in a high-rise setting, all my trials and crazy experiments and all. I’ve decided to neaten up posts as well, so that information are more condensed and easier to access.

A reason for naming this blog Asëa Aranion: it means Athelas in Sindarin, the language of the Grey Elves in The Lord of the Rings, a world which I love dearly. Athelas refers to a healing herb which was used by many, having a pungent yet refreshing scent when crushed and cast into warm water. It’s rumored to bring strength to weary souls.

And after all, that is what gardening and growing is partly about – seeing green life thrive beneath one’s touch and one’s words and one’s care.

Yet, with life, comes death, whether through overuse of a certain plant, or any other factors.

It’s a fine balance we walk. However, I digress.

So I’ll simply say…mae govannen, mellyn nîn.

Welcome in.