Monthly Archives: July 2008

Back in 938LIVE and GCS Members on myPaper

Posted on July 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

This morning, I was back at 938LIVE’s studio located at the Radio Building on Caldecott Hill after one and a half years. Similar to the previous trip, I was on the airwaves in the same radio show entitled “The Living Room” talking about plants and gardening where I also answered the sometimes challenging gardening questions from the calls made by the public into the studio.

But what’s different this time was that the show is now hosted by Stanley Leong who is also Senior Producer-Presenter of the station. The segment that I am involved in today’s and the next two Thursdays is a “Mini Green Series” that spans only for a half hour due to my work commitments. My last time at 938 LIVE was almost an hour long. Today, I chatted about growing herbs and edible plants and the topics for the next and last sessions would encompass carnivorous plants and edible sprouts respectively.

I also took the opportunity to take a picture with the host of the show before I left the studio today. Compared to the previous visit, I found myself no longer nervous, probably due to the several previous ‘live’ radio shows that I have been involved in.

Shortly after the radio show, I was notified by the reporter who did an interview on several members from the Green Culture Singapore (GCS) discussion forum recently that the feature article has been published on today’s edition of My Paper.

The members who were featured today are all edible plants growers. Many thanks to Soo May, the SPH journalist, and GCS members, namely, Herb Lover, jolantru, Karen79 and skyfiery for agreeing to be interviewed although only Herb Lover and Jolantru were featured eventually.

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Posted in Gardening People in Singapore, Media Appearances, Newspaper features

Growing Tongue of Fire Beans

Posted on July 16, 2008 | 4 Comments

I tried growing some Tongue of Fire bean seeds that were bought from Swallowtail Garden Seeds some time back. A search on the Net yielded some information that this cultivar I grew is a type of Borlotti bean, whose young pods and dried seeds from mature bean pods can be harvested, cooked and eaten.

Tongue of Fire is a bush-type bean and it forms a compact, tidy bush in the garden. I reckon it can be grown very well in a large pot with soil that is kept moist all the time in the highrise apartment. Direct sunshine must be available for about 6 hours or more for healthy growth.

It is a plant that is quite easy to grow and mine cropped quite heavily and I simply love the decorative pinkish red streaks that run all over the light green bean pods. Unfortunately, I have never been able to leave the beans on the plants long enough to see them growing up plump before harvesting as I have faced a very bad snail and slug problem at that time when I grew this bean. These pests would always climb up and chew a hole or two or even eat up part of the tender bean pod.

The young pods that I harvested were stir-fried and consumed like a typical snap bean and they tasted great. But the pods must be harvested quite young, just before the red streaks becoming too visible, as once that happens, I find the pods a little fibrous to eat.

If left on the plant to mature further, the pods can become quite long to about 15 cm lengthwise and the sides would also plump up accordingly. What is more striking by then is that the pods will have acquired an almost whitish background while the streaks would have redden so much that a very beautiful art form by Mother Nature is born.

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Posted in Vegetables

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Green Culture Singapore Feature Articles (Jun 08)

Posted on July 15, 2008 | Leave a comment

As usual, there are two gardening feature articles that have been uploaded onto the Green Culture Singapore website for the month of June 2008.

The first article was contributed by a young and talented member from the forum, Lim Xuan Hong, which focussed on the cultivation of the cockle-shell orchid.

Growing the Cockle-shell Orchid

The epiphytic cockle-shell orchid’s unique floral morphology is the main reason why collectors have found this plant to be attractive. Depending on your imagination, parts of the flower can look like the shell of a cockle or the tentacles of an octopus. Read this feature article written by Xuan Hong where shares with the reader the tips on how one can grow this orchid successfully.

The other is written by myself which detailed on the factors that determine the frequency of watering your container-grown plants. This second article was written in response to the many questions that I have been asked about how frequently one should water his plants.

Understanding the Drinking Needs
of Your Container-grown Plant

In a highrise environment, the most practical way to grow plants is inside containers of soil. Gardeners who are not aware of the drinking needs of their container-grown plants kill them either by not providing sufficient water or by giving too much of it. In order to avoid killing more plants due to the lack of knowledge of one’s plant’s water requirement, all gardening beginners are encouraged to read this article written by Wilson which is aimed to provide a better understanding of the various factors that affect the frequency of watering of plants grown in containers.

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Posted in Flowering plants, GCS Feature Articles

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My Little Ping Terrarium

Posted on July 12, 2008 | Leave a comment

I have recently obtained a couple of Pinguicula primuliflora from one of my members from the Green Culture Singapore discussion forum. It is the species with the intriguing habit of being able to have babies growing out from the tips of its older leaves. When laden with lots of plantlets on its leaves, the plant looks somewhat like a Mother of Thousands (Kalanchoe sp.).

Because I am growing these plants under artificial lights where the ambient environment can get quite dry, I constructed a little terrarium for them. I went to IKEA at Alexandra where I bought a hemispherical glass bowl as well as a black flat-bottom round dish for this little project.

As you may have already expected it, the concept of this terrarium is very simple. The black flat-bottom round dish serves as the growing container while the hemispherical glass bowl is turned over and used to cover the plants.

I grow my Pings in just pure sphagnum moss although there is a plethora of different types of media that one can concoct and grow plants in. Because Pinguicula primuliflora is a species that like it really wet, I actually add enough water to make the sphagnum moss soaking wet but without flooding the container.

With the high humidity conditions that exist in the air space inside the terrarium, one can already see the dew being secreted on the leaves of the Pings. When I grew these plants without a terrarium cover, I could hardly see any dew drops on the leaves as the moisture in the air is too low, which gets even lower after the lights are switched on.

What you need to make this terrarium that I have thought of to grow my Pings. The pair of forceps was used to take the plants out of their original pots and to position them in place later on.

Wet sphagnum moss was then heaped into the bottom dish which served as the growing container. After that, plants are positioned on top of the moss. We are almost done.

To complete the terrarium, all you need to do is to cover the plants using the clear, hemispherical glass bowl which acts somewhat like a greenhouse dome.

Note that this terrarium is not suitable for growing any type of plant. As we all know, a sealed terrarium like this one will trap heat inside it and if it is placed in direct sunshine, plants grown inside the terrarium will get cooked! For my Pings, because they are grown under the much milder and less intense fluorescent light tubes, heat is not quickly built up inside. I occasionally lift off the top cover to ‘air’ the terrarium, which allows heat to dissipate as well as to let in fresh air.

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Posted in Flowering plants, Tropical ornamentals

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Splitting up my Ping…

Posted on July 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

Butterwort are insectivorous plants belonging to the genus Pinguicula. They were used to be not available for sale in local nurseries in Singapore. For those of us who wanted to grow this plant, we had to order them from overseas mail-order nurseries. Many of these plants, when they reach Singapore, are barely alive due to the dark, crowded and enclosed conditions they had to endure during the shipping process.

Recently, two butterwort hybrids became available locally. The plants are produced by YG Nursery in Cameron Highlands in Peninsula Malaysia as indicated by the trademark printed on their pots. The ones that appear in the market here are very big, compared to those I got from overseas last time, as they are about 10 cm or more in diameter! Some even came with flowers too. They have become a novelty plant to the locals here and sold like hotcakes.

Below is one of the two hybrids that I bought: Pinguicula x ‘Tina’  (Pinguicula agnata x Pinguicula zecheri) when I first got it:

I grew the plant under two T5 fluorescent light tubes that are turned on for about 12 hours daily, without air-conditioning. Apparently, this hybrid can tolerate the heat quite well. Not many pings can be grown under our hot and humid climate. After a few months after I first got it, offsets quickly appeared and below is a recent picture I took and one can easily see, the single plant I have earlier in the same pot had become a colony of plants:

I decided that I need to split that clump up as the colony looks very crowded. I took the plant out of the pot, removed the sphagnum moss and found the tiny root system that the colony had. One can easily trace out the evident root ball formed when the plant was first raised in a seedling flat:

Altogether, I found that my ping colony had seven growing points.  Each were carefully divided and I ensured that each offset was taken out with at least some roots attached.

The offsets were then transferred them into a disaposable food container using damp sphagnum moss as the growing medium for now:

I kept them covered to conserve humidity so that they are given some time to recover from the shock suffered from the traumatic dividing process.

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Posted in Flowering plants, Houseplants, Tropical ornamentals

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Community in Bloom Awards Report in Straits Times Life!

Posted on July 7, 2008 | 2 Comments

The results of the Community in Bloom Awards for 2008 have finally been announced. A couple of winners who are new faces in this year’s Awards have been highlighted in an interview that was published on Straits Times Life! last Saturday.

Mr Lim Wai Lone whose maisonette balcony garden was featured in the report is one of my members from the Green Culture Singapore discussion forum. Although, it was not stated in the report, quite a handful of the award winners in this year’s Community in Bloom Awards are members from the forum.

Mr Lim and his garden was featured on the cover page of Straits Times Life!.

As a gardener in Singapore, I feel happy that there is this regular nationwide gardening competition that “inculcates a greater passion for gardening and bonding in the community, as well as, to recognise their gardening efforts”. These are the aims of the Awards as mentioned in the Community in Bloom’s webpage. Individual home gardeners who live in a highrise apartment or a landed home are not forgotten although the Awards’ name may make one think that it caters only to community gardeners.

Two photos on the first page of the report showed how Wai Lone’s winning highrise garden look like.

Besides targetting at gardeners who do their planting in community and private gardens, the Awards is also open to groups from schools of all levels and organisations. For the former group, I think the Awards is especially important. Gardening is one activity that brings Mother Nature closer to the hearts and eyes of our younger generation. Many young ones these days are either too bogged down by their hectic schoolwork or are more attracted towards modern entertainment gadgets that they no longer take notice of the flora and fauna around us. Many Singaporeans these days may also find it difficult to see how food is produced in our highly urbanised environment. Gardening is a way that one can try his hands to grow their own edible plants.

The newspaper report also introduced to readers the winners from schools, public and private housing estates.

The Community in Bloom has crafted activities compiled in a resource called “Community In Bloom Schools” for students to engage them in gardening. Below is some information that is provided on Community in Bloom’s website:

The “Community In Bloom Schools” resources are especially designed to turn gardening activities and nature appreciation into mini projects and school gardens into outdoor classrooms. This is to develop science process skills, project management skills, teamwork and entrepreneurial skills for the students. Through these engaging gardening activities, students will grow a love for gardening and be more involved in the school garden.

Resource materials for both Primary and Secondary levels have been created, and contain a series of activities students can do to add value to their curricula. Teachers will also find them useful in encouraging self-directed learning among students.

The Community In Bloom Schools resources are available from the two service providers:

www.SingaporeLearning.com

www.LEAD.com.sg

For more information on the Community in Bloom programme, click on this link for more information.

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Posted in Gardening People in Singapore, Media Appearances

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New Community Garden at Serangoon Constituency

Posted on July 6, 2008 | Leave a comment

This morning, I was at the neighbourhood park at Tai Hwan Terrace to attend Hwan Gardens Neighbourhood Committee’s Family Carnival. One of the events that took place during the carnival was the opening of the community garden located in the park. It is good to see that more and more Singaporeans are taking up community gardening.

Mrs Lim Hwee Hua (Senior Minister of State (Finance & Transport) and Member of Parliament for Aljunied GRC) was the Guest-of-Honour for the event and accompanied by Mr Yeo Guat Kwang, a fellow MP for the same GRC, who was the special guest.

Mr Yeo (left) and Mrs Lim (right) unveiling the plaque to officiate the opening of the community garden.

Similar to most other community garden opening ceremonies, one of the things that must be done is the planting of a tree by the Guest-of-Honour.

A closer look at the plaque.

The community garden – the plots are shaped like the petals of a daisy flower that encircled the central circular plot where the Guest-of-Honour’s tree was planted. The stem of the flower served as the path.

As most of my friends would have expected, as the ‘gardening advisor’ of Serangoon constituency, how can I not be present? At the carnival, I was there to give advice to residents who may face problems with their plants at home as well as to promote the gardening hobby.

I was given some booth space to set up a corner for this but I am always more comfortable to be near my friends from the Community in Bloom (CIB) of the National Parks Board (NParks). This is because we have been long time collaborators who share the same aim, that is to promote the gardening to the masses. During such events, it is always a nice time for me to catch up with the dedicated and professional staff at CIB, namely, Cheow Kheng and Shirley. Today, I got to meet Simon Longman too.

As I had been busy lately with work and work related to the upcoming Singapore Garden Festival (SGF), I only could find time to do my posters late last night (or early hours of today’s morning). On one of my posters, I stuck a couple of photographs taken at my community garden and a newspaper article onto a piece of plastic corrugated board. On another are several articles that I have penned for the Serangoon newsletter written on gardening. I also took the opportunity to advertise the Singapore Garden Festival as well.

On the table, I showcased three interesting plants, namely, the elephant yam, some airplants and a butterwort. Many people are fascinated by the butterwort as the harmless looking plant had never been expected to be carnivorous in nature. I also introduced the trio to Mrs Lim as well as Mr Yeo when they did their visiting to the booths of the participating agencies.

The poster display boards where my posters as well as those of the CIB were put up.

On the table, we laid out the information brochures of the CIB for visitors to take, as well as, the three interesting plants that I brought along.

Me (far right) with Cheow Kheng (second from right) introducing the CIB programme and my trio of interesting plants to Mrs Lim and Mr Yeo while Benedict and John looked on (They are chairmen of two Neighbourhood Committees in the Serangoon Constituency).

A photograph with Cheow Kheng and my Residents’ Committee chairperson, Claire.

My Residents’ Committee chairperson, Mdm Claire Ng, also got a chance to meet Cheow Kheng at the carnival. During their course of conversation, I heard the exchange of compliments and praises from the both of them for the work I have done. Many thanks to that really, as I am just following my passion and mission to promote the gardening hobby. I am also very grateful for the support and advice that they have given me.

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Posted in Events, Gardens I visited

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Getting to know Edible Bananas

Posted on July 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

My interest for edible bananas came about soon after I got interested in the growing of ornamental bananas. Learning about edible bananas is a little problematic here because many of the cultivars in existence are not known by their proper cultivar names. Gardeners here know them by their very localised colloquial names which are sometimes invalid.

I need to start somewhere. I searched through one of my favourite references, PROSEA and found that there is a section that was written on Musa L. (edible cultivars) in Volume 2 (Edible Fruits and Nuts). There is a concise list provided that mentions some of the important commercial cultivars that are grown in South-East Asia. Given together are their accepted cultivar names as well as their Malay names known in Indonesia and Malaysia whenever available.

Given the Malay names of these cultivar just made my learning journey a whole lot easier because most of the bananas I have here, people refer to them via their local Malay names! Edible banana cultivars are notoriously difficult to tell apart and most can only be done so only when they are flowering and fruiting. Many cultivars tend to look similar to one another when they are just a bunch of leaves.

‘Pisang Tanduk’ was the first edible banana cultivar in my community garden that I got to know more about because out of the few cultivars I have in my garden, I got to know about its Malay name first and PROSEA happens to carry a short listing on it. ‘Pisang Tanduk’ was a banana cultivar that was given to us by the mosque in our neighbourhood.

The description of ‘Pisang Tanduk’ as given in PROSEA is as follows:

Musa (AAB group, Plantain subgroup) ‘Horn’. Synonyms: ‘Pisang Tanduk’ (Indonesia), ‘Pisang Tanduk’ (Malaysia), ‘Tindok’ (the Philippines), ‘Kluai Nga Chang’ (Thailand). The cultivar with the largest fruits. Commercially it is important in Indonesia (Java). The banana requires some cooking to become palatable. Skin yellow; flesh light creamy-orange, firm, fine in texture, remains starchy; good keeping quality; bunches with 2 hands. This cultivar has no persistent male bud.

Armed with the cultivar description given in PROSEA, it becomes apparent why the fruits of ‘Pisang Tanduk’ are not eaten like other dessert bananas in the raw form. I have been told that the fruits of this cultivar is better eaten cooked and it is now obvious to me why this is so – ‘Pisang Tanduk’ is a plantain and the starchy fruits of plantains are usually cooked before it is good for consumption. The description fits the characteristics of the plant I have in my community garden because the ‘Pisang Tanduk’ I have consistently borne only two hands of fruits. How low yielding I thought!

I also got to learn that the English cultivar name of ‘Pisang Tanduk’ is known as ‘Horn’ and it belongs to the AAB group of triploid hybrid bananas. ‘AAB’ means that the cultivar is a triploid hybrid with 2 genome sets contributed by Musa acuminata and one by Musa balbisiana.

In a work published in 1955, Simmonds and Shepherd suggested that banana cultivars should be named  using their genome nomenclature consisting of their generic names, followed between brackets by a letter combination indicating their ploidy and the genome sets contributed by the 2 wild species, followed by the name of the cultivar group and/or the cultivar.

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Posted in Fruits, Tropical ornamentals

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Rounding up your Floating Water Plants!

Posted on July 1, 2008 | 1 Comment

The water hyacinth and water lettuce are perhaps the two most common floating water plants that can be found growing inside a pond. In Singapore, the duo are a common feature in almost every primary school that has a pond in its ecogarden. I can still vividly remember my primary school teacher mentioning these two plants as examples of a floating pond plant in one of my science lessons.

These two plants are known to be extremely fast-growing when the growing conditions are right and their growth can often get out of hand. In some parts of the world, they have become weeds (or pests) because they choke up the waterways there!

In Singapore, I have seen people who grow these two plants in their garden ponds fishing excess plants out that have overgrown and dumping them into the compost heap to rot away. Others who do not have a compost heap in their garden have instead laid the discarded plants on the ground to serve as a mulch.

These two fast-growing water plants, on the other hand, are essential in a pond ecosystem as a colony of them on the water surface will somewhat help to provide some shade and keep the water cool and the pond’s aquatic inhabitants happy under the glare and heat of the direct tropical sun. However, if left unchecked, these plants can multiply, spread and eventually covering up the entire water surface of the pond.

During a recent visit to a local primary school’s community and eco-garden, I saw a very innovative way that had been devised by the school to contain the spread of water hyacinths and water lettuces so as to prevent them from covering up the entire water surface of a pond. The school made circular boundaries using plastic meshes which were placed inside the shallow pond. Floating water plants are grown inside these circles as shown in the picture below.

By looking at the picture below, we can see how water hyacinths can be contained within one particular zone in the pond.

Upon deeper thinking, the circular boundaries made out of plastic meshes will only work in shallow ponds. The plastic meshes are dense and I presume they do sink if they are used in deeper ponds. However, one may want to consider using plastic hoola hoops in the latter situation. Plastic hoola hooks that I have come across are hollow in the center and these will float when placed on the water surface. These will hence be able to help round up any floating water plants that stray in a deep pond.

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Posted in Flowering plants, Tropical ornamentals

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