Take our sometimes-neglected spice garden for example - it was once brimming with mint, lemongrass, rosemary, curry/laksa leaves, pandan, dill, aloe vera and sweet/ Thai basil (when the landscaper first planted everything for us in June). But 5 months on, the spices aren't exactly as happy as before - the first to go was the dill. We suspected they didn't have enough sunlight. Next came a pretty vicious pest attack on our healthy basil - and a few shrubs became somewhat shrivelled. Then 50% of my lemongrass died a sudden death a few weeks ago for unexplainable reasons. We recently tried to salvage our overgrown mint by exterminating the over-extended ones and transplanting - luckily our efforts seem to be paying off and the new mint community is up again (the mint is a very resilient plant)!
After returning from my Taiwan WOOOFing stint in October, I developed a little more confidence to grow my own veggies and decided to put more effort into gardening. So in late October, armed with nuggets of raw-but-nonetheless-applicable knowledge on how to seed and transplant seedlings, I decided to try planting some of my own organic veggies. That they can eventually be used in my kitchen motivated me a little too :)
The landscaper didn't seem very confident that they will survive the snails and pests, but I thought, no harm trying right? If I never get started, I'd never know. And if I don't get started soon (with some remnant organic farming stint enthusiasm still alive) I probably never will in the months to come. And so I did - by planting some lady fingers (the choice of lady fingers was due to my witnessing some very pretty lady finger flowers in Hualien)
To my pleasant surprise, I was lucky to have all my lady finger seeds germinate - 10 out of 10; and they are relatively healthy even after 4 weeks. This is what they looked like at 1-week and 2-weeks old!
And at slightly more than 1-month old, they have grown even taller and a lot leafier. Though I didn't do very much except some occasional gardening/ removal of cat poo - seeing them gradually mature made me quite proud and happy. One of them at the side (not photographed) is particularly stout though compared to the rest - I suspect the vile cat poo that I uncover at the veggie plot from time to time had something to do with it. Because of what they do to my veggie plot, I have unfortunately developed some hostility towards the neighbourhood's strays who like to frequent my garden.
On the other hand, bak choys are really difficult to grow and keep alive. I seeded almost 20 seeds the same time I planted my lady fingers, and I only have this ONE bak choy standing strong after one month or so. More than half didn't even germinate (perhaps they became bird titbit) while half of the ones that did germinate didn't seem to make it.
After the dismal results, I decided to seed more in a more protected environment (used egg trays) but still only 5 out of 12 germinated. I transplanted them into the garden on Monday but as at this morning I only spotted one good seedling left. One was left headless (its leaves munched off) while the other three seedlings were nowhere to be seen.... Darn pests!
I also tried my hand at planting flowers - and seeded four sunflower seeds for a start at a sandier spot in the garden. According to the landscaper/ gardener, sunflowers can grow even in sandier soils so no point wasting valuable space in my veggie plot :) This is the tallest one so far at about maybe 10+ cm, one-month old.
After the not-too-successful experience with bak-choy growing, I decided to go for kangkong. And kangkong is apparently very easy to grow. After just 3 days, baby kangkong seedlings appeared - unlike the extremely tiny bak choy seedlings that took about a week to appear and remain pretty small even after 2 weeks or so! Hopefully my kangkong will continue to do well, and I can blog about my first vegetable harvest in the next one or two posts!
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