Monthly Archives: May 2008

I was “gardening” all day long.

Posted on May 31, 2008 | 1 Comment

Today was an exhausting day for me but one that was very fulfilling. I was “gardening” all day long or more exactly, involved in various gardening-related activities which started at about 10 am in the morning which lasted only in the evening.

The first event was community planting at HortPark which commenced at about 10 am. I was so tired out by work in the past week that I overslept quite a bit and had to take a cab to rush down to Hyderabad Road. The skies were overcast and that meant quite a comfortable day ahead without the glaring sun that was well-suited for outdoor gardening.

My friends, namely, Albert, Chong Ren, Eng Ong, Phillipe and Xuan Hong, were also there to support the community planting event organised by the Community in Bloom (CIB) at their display plot at HortPark. Shirley from CIB invited us from Green Culture Singapore to introduce us to gardening enthusiasts from the various community gardening groups. It was nice to be able to meet up and interact with fellow community gardeners!

Take a look at the pictures below that are saturated with lots of smiling faces that I took during the community planting event:

It is a good initiative by the CIB to organise community planting sessions at the CIB plot at HortPark. In my opinion, this serves as a good opportunity for community gardeners from various groups to come together to know each other. After the casual planting activity was over, we were treated to some refreshments and I felt quite pampered as the CIB has ordered some Delifrance coffee and tea as well as some pastries. How nice right?

We then adjourned to the Fruit Room located below the Visitor Center at HortPark for a talk by Dr Varughese Phillip from the Agri-Veterinary Authority (AVA) on the fertilisation of plants. He covered some basic knowledge on plant nutrients, the types of organic and inorganic fertilisers that can be used to feed our plants and ways to spot nutrient deficiencies in our plants. These are something that would be useful for beginners. I was happy to meet up a friend, Ms Rosalind Tan, our famous Madame Butterfly from Alexandra Hospital, whom I have known from doing gardening, at the talk.

The activities at HortPark ended roughly at about 1 pm and I was back in my lab in NUS to do some labwork. I guess I was a little slow with the work on hand but I knew I cannot rush through the cell culture work that I have planned to do. I had to be meticulous and focussed with what I was doing and that took me a full two hours. It was around 3 pm when I was done and I had take another trip via a taxi to fly me down to Bishan Community Library to attend a talk that was organised by GCS, CIB and the National Library Board (NLB) at 3.30 pm.

The speaker of the talk was Mr Gan Cheong Weei, a fellow member from the GCS discussion forum. As mentioned before, he is a butterfly enthusiast as well as a avid Nature photographer and in this talk, Mr Gan shared with members of the public on how to use the popular “point and shoot” digital cameras to take good plant pictures. It was very well-received, I must say as the room was filled. The talk was concise and definitely not too technical. The tips given throughout his talk were very useful as well.

It was about past 4 pm when the talk ended. I was then pleasantly surprised by an invitation to visit Madame Butterfly’s home. It was a long-awaited visit that I had been eagerly looking forward to go on. The notion of the visit erased the fatigue and pain from a throbbing headache that were probably a result of a rather hectic day.

Rosalind’s house was easy to spot from a distance because when we were near it in the car, I could see her signature broad-leaved fig tree (Ficus auriculata) that fronted her porch. Her broad-leaved fig tree, now several decades old, was a sight to behold where it majestically stands as the main focal point of her garden.

Rosalind also brought me on a tour of her garden where I expectedly saw many butterfly plants that were grown to serve as a source of food for her caterpillars. I also got to see her caterpillar nursery where she nurtures caterpillars until they pupae. These were then brought back to Alexandra Hospital’s grounds to be released into the butterfly garden there.

What our Madame Butterfly has done – bringing her work back home – is evidence of how serious and passionate she is in her work at Alexandra Hospital. Most people leave their work at the office after work. She doesn’t. She is indeed a gem of Alexandra Hospital, our local natural heritage and Singapore.

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Posted in Events, Flowering plants, Gardening People in Singapore, My Thoughts..., Tropical ornamentals

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My Milkweed got eaten up!

Posted on May 30, 2008 | 2 Comments

I have recently planted some milkweed plants (Asclepias curassavica) in my community garden after seeing how nice they were at HortPark. It is a marginal water plant which produces eye-catching scarlet umbels of flowers. It is a water-loving plant, which is why I have chosen to grow it in its current location as the soil there can get quite wet during the rainy season. Not many woody flowering shrubs will survive in seasonal waterlogged conditions!

Just this evening, I decided to go take a look at the community garden after work while there was still a wee bit of daylight. As I was strolling through the garden, I was horrified to find my milkweed being defoliated!

At first, I was feeling little angered as I thought it was due to some pranksters who went around to damage my plants. But it did not take too long for me to realise that the damage could be brought about by caterpillars as I recalled that the milkweed is a butterfly food plant. My mood quickly simmered down and I went about to find for the culprits.

Armed with the knowledge that caterpillars are the ones that ate up the foliage, I bent down and then tilted my head upwards to look for the creepy crawlies that may be hiding on the undersides of my milkweed leaves. I was surprised with the two things I saw.

First, it was the large number of caterpillars that were feasting on the plants’ foliage (there are about 15 of them, could have been more as I have lost count). Second, the caterpillars present on the plants were so beautiful. They had white, black and yellow bands on their bodies and there were six black appendages which were thin and floppy on the back of each caterpillar.

With the help from one of my GCS forum members, Mr Gan, whose username on the forum is Green Baron, he identified the beautiful, banded caterpillars as the larvae of the Plain Tiger butterfly (Danaus chrysippus), which is a close relative of the Monarch (Danaus plexippus) butterfly. Mr Gan is also a member of the Butterfly Interest Group of the Nature Society (Singapore). I will be handing over to him the entire lot of caterpillars, which I have caught and temporarily housed inside a disposable food container.

OK, wait! Doesn’t it sound kind of weird to hand over caterpillars to someone?

This practice of handing over caterpillars from one’s garden over to people like Mr Gan is something that some members from the GCS forum have been doing for quite a while. It is like passing over what is considered as pests by gardeners to butterfly enthusiasts who regard them as gems as they want to do their part to conserve our natural biodiversity and heritage.

Besides Mr Gan, Ms Rosalind Tan from Alexandra Hospital who was featured in the papers recently, is one other kind soul whom I know that re-homes unwanted caterpillars that would most probably be killed by most gardeners. These butterfly enthusiasts actually feed these caterpillars until they undergo metamorphsis and then release them back to Nature when they emerge from their pupae.

Take a look at the picture below of the Plain Tiger butterfly, courtesy of Mr Gan. Don’t you think it is a beautiful butterfly?

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Posted in Pests & Diseases, Tropical ornamentals

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Grow your own sponges!

Posted on May 28, 2008 | 1 Comment

The smooth luffa (Luffa cylindrica) is not widely available for sale in most Singapore markets. What we have here on sale in the local wet markets are the angled luffa (L. aegyptiaca) which is the much longer and slimmer version that has with eight ridges that run lengthwise along the length of the fruit. People in the West called it the “Chinese okra”.

Fruits of the smooth luffa hanging from the vines.

In contrast, the smooth luffa do not have ridges and at the young edible stage, the fruit is much shorter and fatter when compared with the angled luffa. Apparently, it yields more edible mass compared with the angled version. Nothing much is left after the angled luffa has its outer skin peeled off before cooking.

There is another interesting use for the smooth luffa: mature smooth luffa fruits can be made into very good sponges which are bigger than those derived from other varieties of luffa. This is the reason why luffas are sometimes called “sponge gourds”. Luffa fruits grow at quite a fast rate and they need to be picked at a very young stage. Any later will result in fruits that are not palatable because they become stringy and fibrous.

Fruits that have passed the edible stage can actually be picked and sun-dried to obtain the fibrous network which is essentially the ‘sponge’. When the fruits are dried properly, the skin that covers the exterior can be easily peeled off and seeds can be removed by shaking them out. The vegetable sponge that result can be seen in the picture below on the left while the immature, edible fruit is on the right.

Mature smooth luffa fruits can grow quite large, up to 60 cm in length. However, bear in mind that is way past the edible stage! But a fruit of that size would make a sizable piece of vegetable sponge but one has to wait for about one to two months for the fruit to reach that size.

The luffa plant is a rewarding cucurbit to grow in the tropics. It is a perennial plant here and therefore, does not die down like its relatives such as the cucumber. What that means is that the luffa plant will grow and grow and produce fruits indefinitely until one decides to chop it down.

In order to keep the vine happy and continue to produce fruits that are fat and nice, it is vital to fertilise the plant well and give it enough direct sunshine. The luffa grows very vigorously and needs a very strong and big trellis for it to climb on. It can actually be grown on the ground like watermelons. Finally, the luffa plant is seldom bothered by pests and diseases.

But before you go rush to buy the seeds, ensure the variety you are buying is a day-neutral one.

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Posted in Vegetables

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Growing the Sand Ginger

Posted on May 26, 2008 | 2 Comments

Kaempferia galanga, locally better known by its Malay name, cekur, is a true ginger that is used both in medicine and cooking as a spice, especially in Thai cuisine. It is known less commonly here by the English name “lesser galangale”. The Chinese here call the rhizome “sand ginger” (sha jiang) and the entire plant “shan nai”. The plant with the rhizome attached may sometimes be found on sale at the Malay Market located at Geylang Serai.

In terms of appearance, the rhizomes are brown, roundish and much smaller when compared with most the other culinary ginger rhizomes. I got mine from a vegetable store in the Tekka market located in Little India. I had a hard time looking for it as the rhizomes are not commonly available in most other wet markets.

I bought the rhizomes to grow because I love the plant quite a lot. It is one of the gingers that can be grown successfully in containers. Depending on the stock that is available in the market, the rhizomes on sale may already be showing new growth. Otherwise, the rhizomes can be wrapped loosely inside some crumpled newspapers for sprouting to take place, which should take less than a fortnight. Once new growth is seen, the rhizomes can be planted right away, but do take care not too bury them too deeply. A well drained, open and moisture retentive soil mixture is preferred. Outdoors, plants should be grown under semishade while on the balcony, plants would benefit from being situated in an area with filtered sunshine for at least half a day.

Cekur is an almost stemless plant that that appear to ‘hug’ the ground. It produces a mound of leaves that rests on the soil surface. This ginger bears pretty but very fragile, white butterfly-lookalike flowers with two purple blushes. They do not last for more than day. Try not to get water splashes onto them, as that will shorten their lifespan significantly.

When grown in the outdoors, beware of snails and slugs and if required, sprinkle some anti-snail pellets around the plant. I noticed during wet weather, the problem caused by these mollucs can be quite serious where these creatures come out at night and have a good meal out of the cekur leaves. Watch out if you grown them near the garden pathways! Don’t step on them!

Cekur plants thrive when it is grown in a humid environment – so no windy areas for them, please. Be careful not to injure the leaves as the margins tend to ‘burn’ if they have been bumped onto – the blemish can be quite ugly visually on an otherwise perfect-looking plant. Feed the plants regularly and keep the soil moist at all times. When you have a happy, well-fed cekur plant, it is not difficult to know it – the plant’s response is to produce very big leaves. I have seen a single plant can sitting quite comfortably in a pot that is 15 cm in diameter.

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Posted in Herbs, Vegetables

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Purple King Snap Beans

Posted on May 25, 2008 | 2 Comments

I have always been interested in growing vegetables that are not common or look different from the usual ones that we buy from the market and eat on our dinner tables. This peculiar fetish of mine started since young and one of the unconventional edibles that I am fascinated with is the purple coloured snap bean. The usual snap beans we see and eat are green in colour.

With the help from C. C. Lee Marketing and Services who is the current sole distributor for Yates Seeds Australia early last year, I managed to get my hands on some ‘Purple King’ snap bean seeds. ‘Purple King’ is a climbing snap bean cultivar that produces purple coloured pods. The seeds were then given to one of my community gardeners, Mr Lim, who at that time sown and grew them successfully in one of the plots in my community garden.

Growing purple coloured snap beans was a new experience for me and my community gardeners. We noticed an interesting phenomenon that was not observed in conventional snap beans – the leaves of this purple podded snap bean had a tinge of purple on them! We were also happy to know that ‘Purple King’ was a very vigorous and rather disease resistant snap bean cultivar which quickly covered the entire trellis. The support that was made of out laundry bamboo poles and nylon strings became a ‘tent’ of leaves in just about a month!

The flowers of this cultivar, we noticed, were either pinkish or purplish, depending on how one perceives them. Although they were small like all other snap bean flowers, the large numbers of flower sprays that appeared amongst the foliage made them quite visually appealling because they punctuated the uniform green canopy of leaves. As one can see from the picture above, many flowers are produced on a single spray and these usually resulted in pods being produced. Our verdict was that ‘Purple King’ is a very rewarding snap bean cultivar to grow under our local conditions as it is a very heavy cropper.

After the flowers fade, the snap bean pods started developing. They would all appear like little thin rat tails that stuck out of the green calyxes that were left after the petals fell off. As they grow, these young snap bean pods elongated as well as fattened up. In the case of ‘Purple King’, while this usual process was occurring, the pods had an additional thing that was happening alongside. The pods at the beginning were green and they gradually took on a purple cast as one can see from the pictures, one above and the other below this paragraph of text.

My community gardeners like our snap beans young and tender and we started to harvest them when they were about 10 cm long. By then, the pods had turned completely purple. The purple colour of the pods made them stand out against the greenish foliage which actually facilitated the harvesting process and we hardly miss out harvesting any snap bean pods from the vines of this cultivar!

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Posted in Vegetables

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Murraya paniculata hedge in full bloom

Posted on May 23, 2008 | 10 Comments

My nose detected a very strong sweet fragrance when I walked into my community garden after work two evenings back. The characteristic fragrance told me right away that it was from my hedge of Murraya paniculata plants.

This is the second time the plants are profusely blooming for me since I first planted them. The last time I remembered the hedge was in flower was early March this year. I was smiling for days then because the plants finally blossomed.

The hedge is grown right across the entrance of the community garden and whenever the plants are in flower, a ‘wall’ of fragrance is created. This wall will slam onto one when one walks into the garden. Actually, one does not even need to walk into the garden to smell it. The fragrance can easily be detected several meters away when one walks past the front of the community garden.

This fragrant shrub has common names like the orange jasmine, mock orange or mock lime because its white flowers resemble those found in the true orange/lime plant. This similarity is not coincidental and can be easily expected because both the Murraya paniculata and the true orange (and in fact, the true lime as well) all belong to the same botanical family, Rutaceae.

Only when the hedge is in flower, people would then start to take notice of the plant. Most of the time, visitors to the community garden would just walk in without paying much attention to the Murraya paniculata hedge. When not in flower, the hedge just appears like a plain, uniform and boring row of green foliage.

Due to the strong scent that is being emitted whenever the plants are in flower, visitors to the garden are often be ‘sent’ on journey to search for its source. After they find it, they would always be pleasantly surprised to know that the source of the fragrance is due to the profusion of white flowers that have been produced by the shrubs they have always taken for granted. What follow after the flowers fade are small, rather attractive, oval fruits that are at first green in colour which then turn orange and finally red when they are ripe.

The Murraya paniculata plants that are planted in my community garden have always been cut back severely to retain its form and shape to form the hedge by my Town Council. If left alone, it can actually grow up into a tree of more than 7m! One can only imagine the scent that will be emitted by a tree of this size is in flower!

Let’s take a look back in time when this hedge was first planted in the community garden from the picture below. That was two years ago and the plants looked like twigs because they were newly propagated plants bought from a local nursery! How pathetic! No one knew the lush hedge that they are enjoying today actually started out that way.

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Posted in Flowering plants, Herbs, Tropical ornamentals

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Purple Hyacinth Beans

Posted on May 21, 2008 | 6 Comments

The hyacinth bean is not a common legume in Singapore as I haven’t seen before its fresh pods being sold in our local wet markets. I got to know about this edible bean came from the books that I read written about vegetable gardening in the tropics.

As far as I can remember, I chanced upon the seeds of the purple podded version of the hyacinth bean at Known You Seeds many years ago when I was still a Primary School kid. The seeds of this legume are not readily available and the green podded ones are the type that is usually used for food. The purple podded ones are grown more for their ornamental value but they are still edible. At that time, I cannot grow this bean due tot he lack of space as I lived in a highrise apartment.

Two years ago when I got the community garden started and driven by my eagerness to grow things in the outdoors for the first time, I rushed to buy a packet of hyacinth seeds to grow. It was only then I had ample space and sufficient sunlight to grow this sprawling vine because my knowledge of the hyacinth bean was that it can become a woody, vigorous perennial in the tropics and hence is able to grow up to more than 10 m!

The seeds, I found, were notoriously difficult to germinate. Not only those from Known You Seeds but also seeds from other sources. Maybe it was the age of the seeds when I got them. I have also noticed that seeds which were fatter and full tend to germinate more readily whereas those that appeared shrunken tend to fail. Like most legume seedlings, the plants looked weak and fragile when they first started. Below is a picture that was taken when the vines were about almost a month old.

For those who of us who have grown beans before, we all know that after a while, the growth rate speeds up and the vines would start to take over the trellis at a rapid pace. The foliage of this plant was not highly ornamental because from far, they look like those that could be found on any regular bean plant. Below is a picture that was taken two months later. In the picture, the hyacinth bean vines are hidden somewhere near to the back of the bamboo pole trellis that also has some bittergourd vines growing on it.

A month or two passed, the purple hyacinth bean plants I sown about four months ago started to flower. Similar to what had been described on the seed packet as well as what I have read, the flowers the vines produced were highly ornamental. They were perhaps one of the most beautiful legumes I have ever grown! The flowers grew on a branched flower spray that was coloured purple too. The flowers were of a lighter purple colour, violet to be more exact and several were open on a day.

The earlier flowers after they had been pollinated would start to set fruit and the young pods that were formed are coloured a brilliant purple. The young pods developed alongside with more flowers that gradually open along the spray, as shown in the picture above. When all the flowers finally fall off, the entire spray would be laden with purple hyacinth bean pods that looked so fat and full and of course, too attractive to be picked for the dinner table!

Like many typical Singaporeans, most of my community gardeners were adverse towards such ‘alien-looking’ vegetables and no one dared to take the challenge to take some bean pods home for the cooking pot. I told my mum to boil the shelled beans from the immature bean pods in soup and they tasted just fine – no beany flavour that have been described by some sources.

The young immature hyacinth bean pods can be eaten like snow peas when they are cooked. Immature hyacinth beans will have seeds that are still soft and green as shown in the picture above. The dried mature seeds of this legume can also be consumed but must be done with caution as these contain cyanogenic glucosides and the cooking water must be discarded after boiling the beans. You should only consume these mature seeds after boiling them twice or more times!

In contrast to the seeds found in the still immature, purple-coloured pods, mature hyacinth beans have seeds that are dark and the covering of the pods have all turned brown as shown in the picture above.

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Posted in Tropical ornamentals, Vegetables

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White Torch Ginger Blooming!

Posted on May 18, 2008 | 12 Comments

In my opinion, a tropical garden cannot be complete without a torch ginger (Etlingera elatior). It is mainly grown for its beautiful flowers that are both used as a cut-flower as well as  for flavouring purposes in the kitchen. The common name of this ginger is derived from the close appearance of its opened flowers to a flaming torch. How adept is the time of this post on this blog since the Olympic torch relay is now taking place in China!

The bud of the torch ginger flower has important uses in the Asian kitchen. In Singapore, it is best known for its use to flavour the salad dish called rojak. As such, it has earned itself the name “rojak flower”.

I bought a torch ginger plant from a local nursery and planted it in my ginger garden almost a year ago. Just a few weeks ago, it delighted me by producing a flower bud for the first time!!! To my surprise, the bracts covering the bud are an off-white colour and I thought, “Isn’t this the pink flowered torch ginger plant that I bought? If it is, then the bracts should be pinkish in colour and not white!”

It took the bud another two weeks to develop fully before it unfurl its bracts to reveal the colour inside and the verdict was out. What I got in my garden is the relatively uncommon (I won’t put it as rare) white torch ginger. Yay!

This torch ginger plant also really know how to put a smile on my face. Besides this one inflorescence it has sent up from the ground, there are another three flower spikes that have emerged over the weekend and I am very happy when I saw that. I just hope no neighbours will go help themselves with a knife to cut these precious buds for their rojak!

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Posted in Flowering plants, Tropical ornamentals

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Orange Sealing Wax Palm

Posted on May 16, 2008 | Leave a comment

The red sealing wax palm is much loved by many, especially by the people from the West. The Singapore Botanic Gardens even used this palm in their emblem! Over here, this palm is so popular that can be seen all over Singapore and it has probably earned itself the ‘national palm’ status. It has become too ‘common’  that the people here do not want it anymore in their gardens.

Botanically known as Cyrtostachys renda with a synonym Cyrtostachys lekka, it is a palm that is native to this part of the world. It grows in the lowland coastal swamps because of this, this palm needs a lot of water. It can be grown in outdoor areas with semishade to full sun.

Very slow-growing, this palm will eventually reach a height of about 6 m. I would prefer shorter plants about half this height so that the vividly coloured red crownshafts can be easily appreciated. It is also a clustering palm as many side shoots will emerge from the base to form a colony, which gets bigger with age.

Recently, in one of the display plots in HortPark located near the back of Singapore’s newly opened gardening hub, I saw a couple of stands of sealing wax palms that feature orange coloured crownshafts, which is unlike the screaming red colour that is so commonly seen nowadays.

This colour is more subdued and less glaring on the eye! These plants with the orange coloured crownshafts have actually been around for quite some time and therefore cannot be considered as something that is very new. But it is a palm that is worth considering for growing in your garden if you want something different.

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Posted in Trees, Tropical ornamentals

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Our First Breadfruit

Posted on May 15, 2008 | 1 Comment

The breadfruit tree has become a candidate for landscaping locally. I first took notice of it when I visited one my lab colleagues’ condominium, The Savanna that is located in the Tampines area, last year. I have also seen some being planted in Lynnette’s relatively new Punngol housing estate.

The tree is large-growing, has spreading branches and can grow up to a height of 20 m! Quite quickly, a breadfruit tree can become a spectacular and majestic specimen where it is planted. Botanically known as Artocarpus altilis, the breadfruit tree belongs to the mulberry family, Moraceae.

Its large, deeply lobed leaves have their own character and are unique because they are quite unlike those found in most other fruit trees. The undersides of leaves are rather rough to feel due to the presence of fine hairs. The new leaves develop in a rather interesting way – each leaf has a sheath covering it until when it is mature where this covering is then shed off and the new leaf unfurls.

The breadfruit is one good example of a tree that can be used for landscaping as well as food uses. It is therefore not one of those “can-see-but-cannot-eat” plants which is the main reason why I bought a 3 m tall tree from a local nursery to plant in my community garden. Many of my residents, upon seeing the tree, told me it reminds them of the good, old days in the kampong where this tree can be commonly found.

I admit I have never taken real notice of my breadfruit tree after it has been planted and got established in its current growing spot. I thought it needs to get bigger before it starts to fruit. To my surprise, I saw a small breadfruit forming on my tree when I tilted my head up a little to look at it recently. This is the first time that the tree is fruiting in the community garden. I wonder has any visitor to my community garden noticed it?

For me, I am one of those who knows the breadfruit by name only but has never tasted it before. I saw them being sold in the Geylang Serai market where the almost spherical fruits are being cut up into smaller cubes and bagged up for sale. It seems to be a fruit that is more popular with the Malay community. We don’t see it available for sale at most other fruit shops in Singapore.

Breadfruit is never eaten raw. I was told that the simplest way to prepare them is to fry the thinly cut slices. The fruit has to be ripe so that it is fragrant and the interior of the fruit reveals a sweet, yellowish flesh. It should not be sappy when it is ripe. The breadfruit commonly sold for consumption are usually seedless. When cooked, the taste of the fruit is said to resemble that of freshly baked bread!

One other thing I noticed about this tree is that when any part of it is injured, the wound exudes a milky, sticky latex! It is quite hard to remove if it gets onto our hands. Interestingly, the set latex can be used to make chewing gum!

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Posted in Trees, Tropical ornamentals

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