Growing Culinary Herbs

Many had approached me on how to grow culinary herbs at home, which can be a tricky task as such plants can be quite fussy if the conditions are not right. However in my opinion, these herbs such as rosemary, thyme, tarragon or mint, are easy to grow. The trick lies in the choice of potting media and watering.

Healthy thyme 

Most of these herbs are grown in Mediterranean conditions, which basically means dry soil conditions. Potting media used should be water draining and well aerated, not forgetting to contain good amount of organic matter for nutrients. These plants do not like their roots to be immersed in water for long periods and if so, they will suffer from root rot and start to die down. Water them only when the potting media feels dry and resist the urge to water them too often. I had gardeners who feel “guilty” for not watering the plants!

They are preferred to be grown in 4-6 hours of  direct sunlight. Healthy herbs tend to have stronger fragrance and greener leaves. They can be easily propagated by stem cuttings. This will also mean that the fresh cut herbs available in supermarkets can be used for propagation! Many of my friends had successfully propagated from these sources and had excellent results!

Herbs are not only interesting plants to grow, but also useful in your kitchen. Anytime you feel you need to “spice up” your food, head over to your garden!

Potting up new seedlings

Some of the recent seeds I sowed last month have sprouted. They were sowed in a large pot and now ready to be transferred into their permanent pot. I chose a 6-inch pot and have many numerous drainage holes at the bottom. It is very important to have good water drainage which most plants will prefer.

Coco chips

But with bigger and more drainage holes can also mean the potting media will also leak out of the pot! Here’s a useful tip to prevent this from happening. I have placed a thin layer of coco chips or coconut husks to cover the holes. They are larger chunks and fibrous enough to prevent the potting media to leak out.

 

    A  layer of coco chips at the bottom                     Top up with potting media          

Next, I added the potting media to the pot. The potting media I used for this pot is one of the best mix around. It is mixed with good amount of compost as well as draining media such as charcoal chips. It is also not very lumpy and even smells good! For me, my choice of good garden is good drainage, not lumpy and darker in colour.

The seedlings are then removed from the soil and potted into the new media. Try to use your finger to “dig” a hole deep enough to cover the entire root ball or root system of the seedling. This will ensure that the seedling is stable and increase its chances of survival. After that, water the pot till water leaks out from the bottom of the pot. Only then, the entire pot is thoroughly watered. You may notice that the soil level will sink down by a centimetre and you can add more media if you want to.

Dwarf Pineapples…

Remember the dwarf pineapple i blogged about? Not long ago I visited my aunt’s place and saw the “mother” plant where the pups were passed to me a few months back. I was amazed and delighted to see the plant was flowering again. Not only the mother plant is flowering, even the two pups beside it flowered at the same time! Three flower spikes were arranged in an orderly straight line and bear some reddish colour!

 

 

From my understanding, this plant is grown along the corridor and exposed to only direct morning sun and bright light throughout the day with frequent wind.The leaves are longer and narrower than mine, which yet to flower under my direct afternoon sun and windy condition. My dwarf pineapple plant are greener and have broader leaves as compared to the mother plant.

It’s definitely a pleasant sight to see these unique flowers bloom along your corridor. As the dialect name “ong-lai”, which translate into chinese as 旺来, meaning arrival of prosperity, it’s definitely a good omen for many! Pineapple plants are generally easy to grow and suitable for most growing conditions. They can get fairly big even they are “dwarf” and be careful of their serrated leaves which got my hands painful stings when watering the plant. Ouch!

Pitcher Plants!

It’s been some time since I talked about pitcher plants. Being my main interest in gardening, pitcher plants never fail to attract attention of many people. The talks I conducted were very well received and many had lots of questions to ask about these exotic plants.

 

Pitcher plants are often mistaken as challenging plants to grow. In fact, they are much easier to grow than the usual garden plants! Carnivorous plants such as pitcher plants, do not need any fertilizing or pruning at all. They are mostly slow growers and hardy.

Pitcher plants (Nepenthes) are native to our tropical region, require high humidity and fair amount of sunlight to grow well. Some species can take full sun, but most of them will be happy to be in partial shade. However, they need to grow in nutrient free potting media such as sphagnum moss and perlite.

 

Nepenthes ampullaria is one of my favourite pitcher plant.  The red pitchers (Nepenthes ampullaria ‘Harlequin’) are speckled with purple and green and have a open lid, which resemble small water pots! Nepenthes ampullaria is one of the pitcher plants that can grow a carpet of pitchers on the ground, which is why it is the one of most popular pitcher plants gardeners wanted to grow. They also come in different colours, green with red “lips”, green with “black” lips,green speckled with red, pure red and many more!

I personally prefer red pitchers as they contrast very well with my other green plants. Nepenthes ‘Gardentech’ is one of them, which grow very red pitchers! This particular plant is a hybrid between two hardy species, Nepenthes ventricosa and Nepenthes ampullaria, and was named after the gardening event in Singapore, Gardentech. My plant is still a very young plant and its pitchers are elongated, whereas a fully grown adult plant can develop stout and rectangular looking red pitchers!

                                      

Unopened new Nepenthes ‘Gardentech’ Pitcher              Cute Nepenthes ampullaria

Pitcher plants make very good houseplants and can make your garden look more interesting. Also, these unique plants are also good education materials to show others that plants also eat animals!

My e-Book now available online! Any gardening questions?

I guess many had read an article about me in the Straits Times Life Section publish on 31st October 09. Thanks to all who had emailed or posted to congratulate me, without your support, I will never had opportunities to share my experience with all of you. Many had also emailed me for the eBooks that I have authored and I had uploaded one of the eBooks, “Starting your Gardening Hobby” on my website! This eBook is based on my experience, touch on basic gardening techniques and skills you need for your everyday gardening.

There are no “standard” gardening skills or procedures to follow, my eBook will serve as a basic reference for you to begin your gardening journey. From there, you can come out with your unique gardening skills which suit best for you and your garden. So email me back with your success stories!

Click on the image to download the eBook! 

I had decided to dedicate a weekly post on answering your gardening questions. Every week, I will select two questions from my readers and post my opinions and suggestions for everyone to read. Hopefully everyone here can benefit from these questions! Once we had a good database of questions and answers, I will author another eBook and compiled all the frequently asked questions to share with everyone! So if you have any gardening question, do feel free to email me at DreamNGrowit@gmail.com.

Harvest time!

Are you thinking about harvesting fruits or veggies? Not this time, I was harvesting the seeds from my carnivorous plants! My small humble pot of sundews (Drosera burmanni & Drosera intermedia) produced lots of seed pods the last few weeks. There would be easily hundreds of seeds I have collected!

Specks of dust or seeds?

Do you wonder how sundew seeds look like? The seeds are literally the size of dust specks! And yes, dust specks! They are black in colour and so tiny that a sneeze from you will send the seeds flying all over the place and cannot be recovered.

Each seed pod can contain 50-80 seeds!                        Two week old seedlings

Carnivorous plants are generally slow growing plants. Their seeds can take 4-6 weeks to germinate and so small that you think these  are green moss! Only after a week or so before they start growing dewy leaves. They will take around 6-9 months to grow big enough to flower.

Pruning Adeniums

In order to induce branching, many gardeners do pruning of their valued Adeniums. Pruning itself intimidates many gardeners as can be a tricky issue where many things can get a bit too complicated to handle. So make sure you get all the details right before you actually start pruning! As many will know, Adeniums flower at the growing rosette of new leaves. Therefore, having more branches would mean more growing tips which will produce more flowers!And also, pruning make the Adeniums look more compact the leafy.

When you start pruning, make sure you use a sterilized scissors or shears. This will ensure that a diseased branch you pruned will spread over to the other plants. Make sure it is sharp too, sharp blades make cleaner cuts that heal faster. Make a straight cut to minimise the exposed area of the branch and at an appropriate height, not too low or it will hurt the plant and not too high which make the plant look very weird.

Depending on the growing conditions, Adenium plant will produce one or more (if you are lucky you can get even four!) new growths. You will see new leaves started to emerged and soon enough, you have a good looking Adenium. Don’t just throw away the cut branches, as they can be rooted to become new plants! However these cut branches will not have the large caudex the seed grown Adeniums have.

Byblis

Byblis, also known as rainbow plants for their glittering leaves under the Sun. It is a small genus of plants, consisting of seven different species and all native to western Australia. They have tiny droplets of muscilage or “dew” similar to sundews (Drosera) but they are classified in different order. Byblis is placed in the order of Lamiales whereas Drosera is placed in the Caryophyllales.

 

Byblis liniflora 

Once thought to be a proto-carnivorous plant which depends on insects to break down the captured prey before digestion, it is only proven to be truly carnivorous in the recent years that it produces enzymes to digest prey.

Gardeners grow them for their beautiful flowers. The five petaled flowers of Byblis liniflora are purple in colour which emerge from the leaf axes. Fertilized flowers then mature into small seed pods which split open and drop the seeds into nearby ground.

Flower of Byblis liniflora 

Byblis enjoy good amount of sunlight of around 4-6 hours and keeping the media moist at all times. They can grow up to a height of 15cm and produce numerous flowers all year round. Byblis are annual plants and therefore, it will die away after a period of time and new seedlings will take its place in the same pot!

The “Universal” Potting Mix

I find it very amusing whenever my audience tell me that the “secret of growing plants” lies in the potting mix! The use of appropriate potting mix is no doubt an important aspect in gardening, but there is no secret about it. Different proportions of various media are dependent on growing conditions too, that is why not all potting mix will be successful for every gardener.

Clockwise from top left: Peat moss, Vermiculite, Sphagnum moss and Perlite

One of my commonly used potting mix is the peat moss, vermiculite and perlite combination. The main advantage of using such mix is it enables you to control water retention and draining capabilities by altering amounts of certain media. If water retention is preferred, more peat moss can be added. Same goes to water draining, where I will put more perlite into the mix.

Another positive point is the mix generally contain zero minerals. There is no nutrients in the media which I will be able to gauge the amount of fertilizers being added. This zero nutrient characteristic will mean it is also suitable to grow carnivorous plants!

Equal mix of 3 ingredients 

This mix is also known as the “soiless mix”, where the “ingredients” are mostly artificially processed. This non-natural mix is also an “open” mix, which is very well aerated and well –liked by many plants.

Additional media can be added to the mix too. Long fibre Sphagnum moss can be added to the bottom of the pot to stop leaking of potting mix or added to the top to increase water retention and lower evaporation rate. The basic rule to follow is equal parts of perlite, peat moss and vermiculite, and additional media depending on growing conditions.

I would recommend the use of this mix with smaller plants like Gesneriads (African Violets, Sinningia), bromeliads and carnivorous plants (Pitcher plants, Sundews). It would not be wise to use this mix on larger plants like Chiku or vegetables, as they prefer natural soil with nutrients and this mix can cost quite a bit when used in large quantities!

My Garden!!

It’s been some time since I last talk about my garden… Well, there are new additions to my already crowded garden and many of them are flowering too! My latest addition is the Star Glory (Ipomoea quamoclit). This vining plant produce small red star-shaped flowers but mine has yet to bloom. I attached a very long string for it to climb and within a week, it had already hit the top of the ceiling! The leaves looked special and resemble palm leaves. From the information I gathered, this particular plant can climb to a height of 6 metres!

Ipomoea quamoclit

Remember my cherry plant (Malpighia glabra)? They are fruiting like no tomorrow and this time round the fruits turned burgundy red! They fruit in bunches of two and three and definitely a very beautiful sight to behold!  Some of my friends who visited even tasted these sour but full of vitamin C fruits!

Malpighia glabra 

My Desert Rose (Adenium obesum) is going for a second round of flowering and this time even more spectacular. The flowers are arranged in an encircled manner and flowers point to all directions! It has been a year or so without flowers but the wait is definitely worth it!

 Adenium obesum

My signature plant, the Flamingo Flower (Anthurium andraeanum) is still at its best condition, keeping the constant number of ten flowers for at least a year! There are new shoots and growing fast, even some have started to flower!

Orchids

I got some orchids flowering too! Two of my mini Dendrobiums are putting out flowers now and add to the already very colourful garden! Their coloured and patterned blooms brings more exciting colours and you can’t resist not looking at them.

Rosemary                                           Nepenthes veitchii

My rosemary plant is growing taller and bushier now. Every time I am watering plants, the fragrance of this plant can be even detected at a further distance! And brushing your hand against the leaves will leave a strong aroma that lingers around you for a long time!

 

Finally my carnivorous plants, strong winds have resulted in strong fluctuations in humidity makes the plants grow slower and losing quite a number of pitchers. But my Nepenthes veitchii is still growing strong putting out the biggest pitcher for me! Soon, the monsoon season will come and this beautiful sight may not last long. So I have been spending more time admiring my plants before it is too late!!