Roots!

Finally! I can howl with joy that I have successfully propagated my FIRST nepenthes! Like many other carnivorous plants, the best way to deal with this group of plants when propagating them is to simply forget about them for a few months. This has worked very well with my venus flytraps, albany pitcher plants, and now my nep.

In November 2011, I found out that my ampullaria spotted x albomarginata had rotted at the base. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew that I didn’t want to lose a plant which I’d spent quite a sum of money on.

With little to lose, I propagated it.

Of the three cuttings, two I’d placed in pure water, and one in pure perlite moistened twice a week. No harm to experiment, I thought.

See that tiny black line near the bottom of the cup?

I have no idea what possessed me to check on the cutting grown in perlite yesterday…maybe it was the fact that I had lazily pushed some lavender cuttings into the same cup a few weeks ago and wanted to check on the lavenders. And then I saw…a thin black line pressed against the side of the transparent plastic cup I’d recycled and used.

My heart skipped a little and I was hopeful, but not daring to hope too much, that my cutting had rooted.

I washed two cups of Aquaclay pellets (tiny LECA bits produced in Germany) yesterday, and also bought a bag of peat moss because I was really hoping that the black lines I’d seen were roots.

When I oh-so-gently pulled the cutting out of the cup today, I was bouncing on my feet. Roots! I went =D =D =D to myself.

I’ve since potted the rooted cutting up in a mix of Aquaclay and peat moss, and plan to water it only every alternate day or only three times a week so that I can prevent the rot from happening again.

I’ve also gone to snip off more of my various neps, and they’re all happily sitting in pure perlite now waiting to grow their cute little black roots.

Left - the cutting which rooted in pure perlite; right - the cutting in pure water, which is still not doing anything

Rooted cutting planted in Aquaclay and peat moss

I don't really remember which cutting is from which nep now. Lol.

Read the whole article here.

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This is my gardening friend’s opinion (Clothed in Petals). He has a degree in horticulture.

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And now…we come to my opinion about this. I shall be dividing my thoughts into small little sections to make for a possibly easier read, since I tend to ramble a little bit.

Who am I?
I need to get this clear: I’m simply a gardener who has lived both on a landed property from my now-estranged grandparents, as well as what we call Housing Development Board (HDB) flats, somewhat akin to apartments and such.

I came into gardening about four years ago, because of a sudden surge of interest in seeing another friend grow the mulberry plant. And because I’ve always aspired to be a self-sustenance farmer, this passion has driven my interest in gardening in all sorts of strange directions – from growing vegetables and herbs in my room (yes, right beside my bed), to using countless space-saving methods such as recycled PET bottles and hydroponics,  to…well, I can’t remember what else.

I have exhausted all possibilities except for aquaponics, and that’s because my dad thinks his fish are more precious than my plants (and I disgree! Heh).

What I think of this competition or initiative
I have to agree with my friend who writes at Clothed in Petals: if the HDB’s housing policy and building structure isn’t in line with Mr. Lee Yi Shyan’s initiative to grow our own vegetables for consumption, then this competition and whatever can be thought up is ultimately impractical.

While I really applaud Mr. Lee’s proposal (and am even excited that a government official thinks that growing veggies is a good thing, because I REALLY LOVE growing my own veggies), I’m more deflated because it seems that all the factors which go into growing enough healthy vegetables for a family’s consumption have not really been thought through.

This is how my kang kong looked like in 2009, about two to three months after I grew them from seed in pure hydroponics

Sunlight
I think my parents’ HDB, which I will be living in until the end of next year, is one of those which is extremely conducive to edible plants gardener like myself.

My room gets about two hours of direct morning sun a day, while my balcony and corridor gets about six hours of direct afternoon sun a day, weather permitting. This is much more than most other HDBs which get barely a few hours of direct sunlight a day and bright shade thereafter.

I spent almost a year trying out all sorts of method growing vegetables, but it was sunlight which was the ultimate deciding factor for me to stop growing them. You see, even four to six hours of direct afternoon sun will not be enough to encourage healthy growth of your vegetables, dear readers. You will either get extremely slow growth so that each plant alone might need more than three months to reach maturity (and that is with constant care of it), or your plant is simply going to be etiolated and prone to pest attacks, because it’s not healthy enough to be able to have a good immune system.

I grew about four recycled PET bottles of kang kong and my harvest barely filled one small bowl. I finished all of them in one mouthful.

I remember going to the Lim Chu Kang area with yet another gardener to visit GreenBack compost’s manufacturing farm. As we were being shown around, I was drawn to this area where they were growing vegetables. One of the owners said that that particular area got about six hours of sun daily, and their vegetables were still not growing as healthily as they would like them to grow. So you can probably get a gauge of how much light vegetables really need, now.

Soil versus hydroponics
One has to remember that the root system of vegetables as a whole is rather extensive. They need a W I D E space for them to grow and expand so that the root mass can support the growth of whatever is above the soil.

If we take the size of a planter box found in Daiso (no, I’m not rich, so I have to source and improvise), one can only grow say…three kang kong plants to maturity, or two buttercrunch lettuces, or three local spinaches, all using soil. And your planter box probably will have to be filled all the way to the top so that the roots of the plants can get enough nutrients.

So, why not go into hydroponics? It saves space, right?

Oh yes, definitely. It saves space.

But then you’d have to contend with – yet again – the sunlight you get. Also, in hydroponics, you’re going to have to keep topping up with the solutions you get from hydroponics farm (I have never figured out what goes into “Solution A” and “Solution B”). If you don’t mind the trouble, perhaps – just perhaps - it is all right for you.

Don’t forget the sunlight though. If it’s not one, it’s the other.

(Image credit: LED Wholesalers) Each LED panel which seems to be of a standard size can barely light two plants comfortably

Using artificial lighting
Oh yes, this is definitely one method I’ve been thinking about for at least the past year. If you can’t get the weather to cooperate (or if your HDB isn’t built in a way conducive to getting a lot of sunlight), then why not go for something you can control?

Sure, you can. Let’s start with a light which most people use at home now (especially for aquarium owners) – the T5 light tubes.

I have no idea what category T5 tubes fall under, but you can use this energy calculator by Singapore Power to see how much you’re already using or paying in your household. However, to grow vegetables to the maturity you see in supermarkets, you will need to turn on your T5s at least between 14 to 16 hours. Can you imagine the heat generated from just one tube? To prevent burning your vegetables, you will need to add a fan for air circulation. Assuming that you use tiers or shelves to grow your veggies, that’s at least two T5s per tier, and one or two fans per tier, all turned on for at least 14 hours a day.

What about LEDs? It’s the new “in” thing, and it doesn’t give out so much heat! And it doesn’t consume a lot of electricity.

Oh yes. Sure. Unless you go for quality LEDs (panels or spotlights) like Kessil, each light which covers only about two feet worth of space and but can probably last you a long time (since it’s manufactured in the USA), you won’t be able to grow your veggies. Trust me – don’t even think about buying those $50/panel LEDs from eBay or whatever. I bought one, and the second I turned the switch on, the whole thing fried and I demanded a refund.

Local butterhead and buttercrunch lettuces - day 23. I can finish ALL of them in one mouthful

So, you’d probably need at least two LED panels or spotlights for each tier. If the total wattage is about 90W, you can leave the lights on for about six hours for healthy vegetables, it is said (from my research into various companies who provide LED light growing services). Still, the initial investment is going to go into the thousands just for a small shelf with a few tiers.

Time
Assuming one has VERY good sunlight (which most HDB dwellers wouldn’t have the luxury of having), vegetables take about one to two months to grow to maturity. But since this competition is talking about vegetable growing in HDBs, then with the light we have, the plants will probably take more than three months to even grow to a teenage state. They might not even be healthy enough to grow to that stage.

So, what now?
One can possibly go into aquaponics. It’s an area I haven’t tried before, but if you have a large aquarium and have enough space to further put a growing area above your tank and route your filtered water through the growing area, AND place at least two T5s at least 30cm above your plants, then it is possible. I wouldn’t really want to dream of the whole effort of set-up and cost of electricity and stuff, though.

Resources
Personally, I think that after trying for so long to grow my own vegetables at home using the resources I have, it is a waste of time to even think about growing veggies in an HDB. If one wants to grow them successfully, then additional resources will definitely be needed. As a person who is into nature conservation and resource minimization, the idea that I have to add stuff on and use more electricity (and thus burn more fuels indirectly) is very jarring to me, and it’s not one I really want to take up.

I know of others who would think little or nothing of using the resources as long as they get to grow their own vegetables, but I cannot go down that path. It makes no sense to me. The self-satisfaction which comes with growing something successfully does not outweigh the fact that more resources will be used, which can otherwise be used for needed stuff.

So, for me, I shall stick with the herbs I grow now, which I know have been and still are growing healthily with the resources I already have right now. When I move to my own place, if the sunlight isn’t good, I shall be cutting most herbs out of my growing repertoire and replacing them with plants which require far less sunlight and effort to maintain with the resources I will have then.

I have far more things to say, but I think these are enough for now. It would get far too complicated otherwise.

It’s nothing very big – just a simple piece with some basic steps to help really novice gardeners along the way (from both our years of killing many plants before we gained experience, I guess). What I’m so relieved about is that my picture wasn’t printed. I’m more a photographer than a subject.

Anyway, I’ve scanned the article in. My scanner isn’t of the best quality, so apologies for the skewed images and some rather tight cropping on my part.

It is really quite pretty.

Ignore my really pudgy fingers

I have absolutely no idea where these plants came from. I don't recall sowing the seeds even.

Some time ago, a friend gave me another szechuan pepper, which we both suspected might be the xanthoxylum piperitum. It had rather vicious thorns which were somewhat hook-like. They were easier to avoid than cacti’s pricks, but could still do some damage if one weren’t careful.

Unfortunately, that pepper died.

Since the szechuan pepper is actually a general name for several different cultivars of the xanthoxylum species of plants. In China alone, various places grow different xanthoxylums, all under the name of “szechuan pepper.” With that in mind and some research done, I decided to go ahead and get this one anyway.

The leaves are very tiny and and cutely-shaped. They emit a semi-strong fragrance when crushed, and I liken their fragrance to a combination of lime with a slight tinge of spice.

When I got home, I started lightly pruning the plant, since I’ve read that it’s a plant which lends itself to being bonsai-fied rather well, and because I really want to keep it neat and compact. I have absolutely no skill with bonsai-ing any plants, and simply did a general shape-pruning. Of course, I could have asked my dad for advice, what with him having made many wrightia religosias into bonsais since he was 18. But neh.

The plant now occupies a portion of my garden where it can get direct afternoon sun and even rainfall if the rain is heavy. I shall water it perhaps twice a week, since this plant seems not to like over-watering.

I saw some flower buds hiding behind some leaf sets. Maybe I can care for it until it actually blooms and buds. I have also used some of the pruned branches in an attempt at propagation. One method I read is to lay the branches horizontally onto soil; I used perlite in a closed container instead. The other typical method is to use cuttings, and I’ve also done that. We’ll see if any of them actually roots.

And a few of my dad's bonsais making an appearance. (He's trying to sell some of them. So if anyone is interested, please let me know. They're about 32 years old)

I tried (briefly) growing it from seeds, but when that proved too long, I gave up, only to have someone in the local gardening forum very kindly offer his variegated gardenia cuttings (rooted, no less!) to anyone who wanted them.

Googling has, as usual, come up with sites pertaining to growing gardenias (or plants in general) abroad, without any link to the tropical climate of Singapore. As such, I’ve had to seek the advice of local gardeners and extrapolate from there.

When I first got them, the roots had already amassed greatly. The gardener who had offered the cuttings had simply placed them in water and waited for the roots to grow. Wow, that sounded easy!

I then transferred them to a soil mix (garden soil + Aquaclay pellets) to let them grow in pots. There have been some casualties, but very few. The extra cuttings which I’d passed along to another gardener had also settled themselves quite nicely at her place.

I do believe that full sun (or as much sun as possible) is necessary, and probably a semi-regular watering regime. It still waits to be seen how good a hand I am at growing this plant, though. Maybe the results of my competence will show when I upsize the pot (months in the future, when the roots have really grown into a ball) and the plants flower for me.

For now, I’m greatly enjoying their variegated leaves, since I have this weakness for any sort of variegation on any plant, preferring it to the monotone colors of their non-variegated counterparts.

Two of the sample scrubs the trainer gave to me after the course

When I saw the People’s Association website advertising for this course which involved herbs, I didn’t think too much and simply signed up for it, no matter if it was a course which had to deal more with homemade spa products. After all, it’s HERBS! I wanted to know what I could use my herbs for, other than making tisanes and stuff.

The course proved to be interesting. However, it dealt more with Asian herbs and spices such as basils, tumeric, ginger, cinammon and the likes. That was perfectly fine with me, since I absolutely love spices as well. And, I learned how to make simple facial and body scrubs, as well as “spa drinks” (tisanes which spas usually serve to detox the body, I believe).

Out of respect for the trainer’s information and the fact that I paid for this course, I’m not going to list the ingredients here (Google is your friend, though). I just have to say that I’m having a lot of fun making usable products out of plants or their parts.

The scrub I mixed on my own when I came home