7th Weekend Gardening: Transplanting, and thinning.

Transplanting, replanting and thinning seedlings week.

The single okra plant was already showing sign of withering, while the twin okra plants are still growing new leaves. I suspect I might have damaged the root of the single okra plant when I moved it to the new pot. I decided to keep the twin okra plants, and use the other pot to start up a new plant...baby blue jade corns!

Withering okra; time to replace...

Twin okra plant with new leaves

...with baby blue jade corn seed!

Since we were having problems with birds (and a mouse) digging through our planters for seeds, I used some of our small plastic drinking bottles as protective cover for the newly sowed corn seeds. I just cut off the bottom of the bottles and set it firmly around the planted seed. Once the seedling has sprouted, I can easily remove bottle. Oh yeah, the bottle is uncapped to promote proper ventilation.

The sunflowers were growing too close to each other.

Good germination rate, seedlings growing too close together

I did not want to just cut off the extra seedlings since it look so healthy. Moreover, it is one of Adele's favorite flowers. Therefore, I transplanted the extra sunflowers seedlings into a new pot. I hope that I did a better transplanting job this time.

Original 1st sunflower pot

2nd sunflower pot, seedling are transplanted to this pot.

We also spent some time to thin out some of the carrot seedlings that are growing in a crossroad shape. 

Instead of pulling the plant out, we just use a scissor to cut them off.

After thinning, still seems like a bit crowded.

As for the rest of the plants status, you can see from the photos below.

Cherry Tomato

Yard Long Bean

Bird's eye chili aka "Chili Padi"

As of week 7, this is how my vegetable garden looks like.

New heirloom vegetable seeds from Kebun Bahagia Bersama

The seeds I ordered from TukangKebun of “Kebun Bahagia Bersama” have arrived! Opening the jiffy padded envelope, I found the seeds were nicely packed into small resealable plastic bags with labels.

The seeds look wonderful and I can hardly wait to plant them! 

However, I am currently running out of gardening space and pots. I have to wait until I can harvest some of my plants before I can free up some pots to plant these new seeds. That will be at least 3 months away. 

Therefore, before I ordered these seeds, I was already looking around for some nice containers to keep the seeds. Since I will be using the same containers for future seed saving, I want to look for something sturdier than paper envelopes or plastic bags. I managed to find some nice small plastic bottles, with cork stoppers, that are perfect for the job.

Nice right?

So, what did I ordered this time? 

Come and have a closer look...

Banana Capsicum

Banana-shaped capsicum that is supposed to be sweet instead of spicy

Baby Blue Jade Corn

 Mini size corn plant, with kernels that turn blue during harvest time.

Paris Market Carrot

Round orange carrots that looks like large radishes. (Adele’s wish list)

Yellow Pear Cherry Tomato

Pear-shaped yellow cherry tomatoes plant.

Burgundy Okra

Burgundy colored okras.

Red Roma Tomato

Red Roma tomatoes that are good for making tomato paste.

All these seeds are of uncommon vegetables that I do not usually find at a marketplace in Malaysia. 

The seeds are heirloom seeds, instead of the GMO type. If I can get these to grow until harvest, I can actually try to save the seeds for future planting. Well, let me make it to harvest time before I even think about seed saving.

By the way, I ran out of plastic bottle when I reached the Red Roma tomato seed bag. Until I can get more bottles next weekend, I think it should be all right to keep the seeds in the plastic bag for this week.

I also found a "Roselle" seed bag, which I never ordered. I am guessing TukangKebun accidentally misplaced the seed bag into my envelope. Since it's by chance these seeds ended up in my hand, I decide to pay TukangKebun to it. 
(Update: TukangKebun informed me those are complimentary gift from her garden. Thanks TukangKebun! )

I wonder what is this plant. A flower or a vegetable?

6th Weekend Gardening: Finally...Sunflowers, Yard Long Bean, and Baby Carrots sprouted!

Happy 50th Malaysia Day! 

It's been a good past week back home in KL since the weather has finally cleared up. My small container garden is benefiting from the warm weather and it seems like all my seeds are finally sprouting!

New seeds sprouted...Sunflower!

Last weekend, I added a new plant to the garden; one of Adele's favourite plant...Sunflowers! I bought some Serbajadi brand seeds, and planted them all in a circular pot since I wasn't sure what the seed germination rate is. 3 days later, all the sunflower seeds have sprouted! J
Since the package label indicated these are the dwarf-type "Teddy Bear" sunflowers, I am planning on keeping 3 of these plants in the same pot.

Teddy Bear Sunflowers

On the long bean and carrot boxes, I resow some new seeds in the same weekend as I was planting the sunflower seeds. After two weeks of inactivity, either the previous seeds were bad, or they had just rotted due to the constant rain showers. I had better luck this time around, as the first long bean seed (shown below) finally sprouted at the same time as the sunflowers. By the 6th day, I have 4 healthy seedlings growing in each corner of the long bean box.

First long bean seed sprouted on the 3rd day

Yard Long Bean seedlings growing in each corner of the square box

As for the carrots, it was a welcoming sight to finally see them sprouting after a few days of sowing the 2nd batch of seeds. I didn't follow the "Square Foot Gardening" rule of sowing this 2nd batch of baby carrot seeds, as I was just testing to see if my soil and weather condition was suitable to grow them. Well, the test was a success but the seedlings are now growing too close to each other. I will be thinning them in the coming weekend to ensure the roots can continue to develop with sufficient spacing between the plants. For now, I'm just happy to finally see these baby carrots growing in the box.

Baby carrots seedlings

The okra plants continue to grow new leaves, and is now the highlight of my small little container garden. Mom and Adele are especially delighted to see this "twin okras" pot doing so well.  

The twin okras are still growing new leaves

One last question in my mind that I would like to share before I end this blog entry, is in regard to my lettuce planter...."Are these lettuce sprouts or just weeds?"

Lettuce sprouts or wild weeds?

Happy Gardening!

5th Weekend Gardening: What?!? Mushrooms?!? Where these guys come from?

This weekend I have a few visitors who decide to join my okras neighborhood. 

These little guys start popping out of the ground Friday night after the evening rain shower. This morning, tiny white mushrooms were already blooming. I was getting a bit worried that these mushroom will hurt my young plant and did some research over the web.

Luckily, what I found was that 1) it's an indication that my soil is very rich with organic material, 2) the soil have good aeration, and 3) these fungi not only doesn't harm the plant but help to break down the soil organic material to be easily absorb by the plant root. Now that's the good news.
The bad news is...it's also an indication that the soil is too damp! Well, that is to be expected, as there haven't been much sunny days this whole week since its been raining continuously every single day. For now, I'll just work these little guy back into the soil but I guess I'll be seeing them again if the weather doesn't improve.

Some of my plants are already showing sign of stress from the over-watering (not by Adele since she haven't been watering the plants due to the rain).

One of the chilli plant leaves are starting to turn yellow, and the cherry tomato plant growth seems to be stunted.  

At least the rest of the plants seems to be surviving.

The okra leaves are getting bigger and I'm seeing new leaves sprouting for each plant. The other chillis are showing healthy green leaves.

In addition to the okra and chilli plants, the 2nd batch of cherry tomatoes seedlings are doing well. But it would probably take another week or so before I can decide if I should move it out of the planter.

No sign of life from the carrots and long beans pots; high chances the seeds might have already rotted away due to the dampness of the soil.

Maybe I should wait until the rainy season have passed before I sow any new seeds. Hmm... maybe not... :D

4th Weekend Gardening: Adding Yard Long Bean, Setting Up a Tipi Trellis and Boosting the Soil.

It's been raining quite heavily in the afternoon over the past week, and with only a few hours of morning sun each day, I was wondering how each of the plants are doing.

The chilli plants are thriving and looking healthy. Later, I moved this bunch into a new circular pot.

The okra has sprouted some new leaves, which is a good sign that it has adapted to it's new home.

Even with the heavy downpour, the soils in the circular pots and planters have been draining pretty well as there have not been any waterlogging issues. However, the square box with the cherry tomato, which I have worked the ground coffee into the soil, haven't been able to drain fast enough every time it rain. I suspect it's because I mixed too much of the ground coffee into the soil. My cherry tomato plant is still surviving but it haven't been growing much since it's been having "wet feet" most days. I fixed the problem by adding more of the original potting mix into the box and it seems to help improve the situation for now.

On a side note, Mom decided to add a couple of ripe cherry tomatoes to one of the planter over the week. Maybe it was because these were never refrigerated, they begin sprouting in 2 days time and in greater numbers compare to the previous plant.

Here are two of the tomatoes and if you look closely you can see there are numerous seedlings underneath the tomato skin.

Tearing back the skin, shows almost a 100% germination of all the seeds within that tomato. We planted back this bunch and they seems to be doing well in the new planter box. We will probably start thinning some of these in one or two weeks time. 

This weekend I setup another square box for planting Yard Long Bean (Chinese Long Bean). Long bean is supposed to be one of the vegetable that is easiest to grow and have a shorter maturity window. So hopefully this will keep Adele busy over the weekday. J

For this long bean box, I used some of the thin bamboo poles and gardening wire to make a simple "tipi trellis". I'm kinda worried this trellis will not hold the weight of the plant at the later stage. Well, I'll probably need to reinforce it when we reach that point.

This past weekend, I also decided to add a few essential elements into the soil: potassium, calcium and magnesium. Since I'm using compost as part of my potting mix, I am just reinforcing these elements.

For potassium, Adele and Dad have been keeping the banana skins, which I chopped up and buried deep into soil at the side of the pots, and boxes.

For calcium, Mom been keeping all the eggshells from her daily cooking.

Crushing these into fine powders, I just sprinkled and worked these into the soil of the pots, boxes, and planters. The crushed shells should slowly breakdown over time in the soil and absorbed by the plant root. 

For magnesium, I dissolved a tablespoon of the epsom salts in a sprayer and foliar feed to all the plants. This is suppose to make it easier for the plant to absorb the magnesium through their leaves. By the way, I applied the mist spray after sundown to avoid burning the leaves. 

That's it for this weekend. Looking forward to next weekend (5th).

3rd Weekend Gardening: Okras have sprouted. Re-potted most seedlings.

Well, it's been the 3rd weekend since I decided to get serious on my new little hobby. The 1st weekend, I had just used some of the soil by the driveway (big mistake), and some of my mother's old planters to kickstart my vegetable container garden. Using 4 small planters, I planted some lettuce, tomato, cherry tomato and chilli seeds. After 1 week of watering and waiting, I was pleasantly surprised that the tomato, cherry tomato, and chillis seeds have sprouted.
This is how crowded the chilli planter looks, since I was just randomly sowing the seeds around the planter without any proper planning. Adele especially like these chilli plants since she was the one who been watering and weeding this planter. So, she had happily taken ownership of this planter once the seeds started to sprout.

I was quite happy for my cherry tomato plant, since I just threw a couple of supermarket cherry tomatoes, that have begun to dry up in the fridge, into the planter. It was just a test to see if any would even sprout given the condition of the seeds and poor soil used. Seeing I managed to get 1 plant out of 8 buried tomatoes, this cherry tomato plant is a survivor and one tough fighter. However, the weeds were starting to grow in the cherry tomato planter and will soon be a problem.

Since the small planters was showing such good results, I bought two additional bigger pots with some decent potting mix to plant some okra and carrots seeds on the 2nd weekend. By the 3rd weekend, the okra seeds have also have sprouted.

Too bad, the carrot and lettuce doesn't seems to show any of sign of life. On the bright side, the rest of the seedlings continue to grow new healthy green leaves which are encouraging to beginners like me and Adele. So, this past weekend (3rd) we went out to get additional containers, potting mix, vermiculites and compost  to re-pot the young seedlings to encourage healthy plant growth.

I also went to our local Starbuck to grab a free bag of ground coffee to give our plants a little "extra" boost. Ground coffee, which is rich in nitrogen, will do nicely as a soil amendment. 

This round, I was looking for a specific type of container as I wanted to try setting up the container version of the "Square Foot Gardening" that I've been reading about for the past few weeks. Driving around KL and Puchong gardening centers, it was kinda like a treasure hunt to find the 1ft x 1ft x 1ft containers that I wanted. Most center usually have the circular type pots in stock but I was lucky enough to find one that actually have the square container type. 

These containers were kind of pricey since they are the "self-watering" type.Oh well, I can use it to plant my water thirsty tomato plants, which is exactly what I did. This also solve my tomato's "weed problem" since I'm using potting mix (weed free) in the new pot, which have much better water drainage and rich in compost material.

I transplanted one of the okra seedlings to the second square pot. I will be thinking about staking the plant if it manage to show sign it survive the transplant in the following weekend.

Since Adele was asking me to give her chilli plants a new home, I re-potted two of the young plants into 2 medium size ceramic pots that was laying around (courtesy of my mom's previous gardening activity). One mistake we would discover much later in the week, was that putting small stones inside and at the bottom of the pots, was really not a good idea. The plants nearly "drown" from our watering, when the stones ended up blocking the pot drainage hole. I managed to free up the blockage in time and the plants recovered. But since there are still some of the stones in the pot, I would probably have to re-pot these plants again in the near future.

This is how my container vegetable garden looks like by the 3rd weekend. A small start for us, but Adele and I had fun setting the things up and watching the plant grows.