Monthly Archives: April 2009

Home Concepts Magazine (Apr 09)

Posted on April 10, 2009 | Leave a comment

This month, I contributed an article entitled “Garden of Refreshment” for the Garden Treats column of the Home Concepts Singapore magazine. In it, I introduced four plants that are used to make healthy drinks which include passion fruit (Passiflora edulis), medicinal aloe (Aloe vera), dragonfruit (Hylocereus spp.) and roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa). 

All the abovementioned plants can be grown in Singapore, that is, if you have an outdoor garden. The passion fruit vinerequires a trellis to climb on, although some apartment gardeners with a bit more space have reported to be able to grow the vine in a large pot and seeing the plant fruit for them. The dragon fruit plant is a large sprawling cactus which needs to have a strong support to grow on. It requires full sun to grow well and hence it is kind of out of the growing list of a typical apartment dweller.

For apartment gardeners, try growing the medicinal aloe and roselle, which are two plants with a more manageable size. These two can be grown inside a large container but both plants require at least 6 hours of direct sunshine to grow well. Get a baby plant from a neighbour who grows the medicinal aloe to get started. The roselle can only be grown from seeds and scout around your nearby community garden to see if you see anyone growing this shrub.

To make refreshing drinks from these plants, try the following. Passionfruit juice can be made by blending passion fruit pulp using a blender at low speed. The same can also be done to dragon fruits. Do remember to filter the seeds away! 

For the medicinal aloe, you can cut the translucent gel found inside the leaves into small cubes and then boil them in water. Add sugar to taste. My mother puts in rock sugar to boil with the gel bits. The gel bits make an interesting chewy addition to the decoction.

Roselle drink is made from boiling the calyces from the fruits formed by the plant. Dried version of the calyces are available for sale from the local Chinese medicine hall. Do note that the drink needs to be sweetened using sugar as it can be quite sour to taste. Once sugar is added, the drink tastes somewhat like Ribena which is popular with young children.

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Root Awakening (4 Apr 09)

Posted on April 8, 2009 | 1 Comment

The first instalment of the Root Awakening column for April 09 was published last Saturday on 4 April 2009. Similar to previously published columns, answers were provided for three questions posed by readers of Straits Times Life! This week, we dealt with questions that pertained to common culinary herbs like mint and Thai basil, the Florist’s gloxinia and narcissus.

The first question asked about why the leaves of Thai basil and mint can turn brown quickly. From my experience, this happens when the plant is not well watered. Both plants grow in full sun and tend to lose water relatively quickly. They wilt in the heat and need to be given water regularly. Once water is witheld, the bottom most leaves will first turn yellow and become aborted. Subsequent water stress will cause leaves to continue to fall from bottom up.

The next question was about mealy bug infestation of the Florist’s gloxinia. Mealy bugs seem to be rather common pests on this gesneriad. One can try to spray the infested plant with a very dilute solution of summer oil. The furry leaves of this plant are sensitive to petroleum products and an overdose can cause leaves to melt away. Otherwise, non-petroleum-based pesticides like insecticidal soap or pyrethrum spray made according to the manufacturer’s instructions can be used to deal with these pests.

The last query was about the ability to grow narcissus here. Bulb plants like the narcissus are difficult to grow after flowering in Singapore. It is not practical to try simulating the winter rest they need although one can always try for the fun of it or for the first time experience. It is best to treat the narcissus as a display plant which should be discarded after flowers fade.

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Eng Ong’s first Mandarin Gardening Talk

Posted on April 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

A moderator on the Green Culture Singapore discussion forum, Mr Tan Eng Ong, is well known among members as our African violet growing expert. Last Saturday afternoon, he delivered his first Mandarin gardening talk that was entitled  “Introduction to the Cultivation of African Violets” at Jurong West Public Library, as part of a series under the ‘Community in Bloom’ (CIB) Programme, in collaboration with Green Culture Singapore (GCS) and the National Library Board (NLB).

Eng Ong shared his experience on growing these colourful flowering plants and their growing requirements such as temperature regulation, lighting, soil-mix, fertilizing, watering, propagation techniques and pest control in our local climate. The audience was also treated to numerous pictures of beautiful plants grown by him in their glorious blooms of different shades of blues, whites, pinks and reds, which explains why African violets are popular houseplants worldwide and appeal to many avid gardeners. Before the session ended, Eng Ong shared with the audience on basic techniques involved in the vegetative propagation of these plants for exchange with fellow enthusiasts and friends.

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Community in Bloom & Hort Excellence work in synergy to promote open-concept community gardening @ Aljunied GRC!

Posted on April 4, 2009 | Leave a comment

 Aljunied Town Council, together with National Parks Board (NParks), Green Culture Singapore (GCS) and Hwi Yoh Court Resident’s Committee (RC), organized a workshop to promote open-concept community gardening last Saturday.

The workshop started with an opening address by Mdm Cynthia Phua, who is Member of Parliament for Aljunied GRC & Chairperson of Aljunied Town Council was the guest-of-honour for the event. She herself is a keen gardener who encouraged residents to start new gardens and announced that RCs groups in her constituency will each receive a composting kit to help in their gardening. 

Mdm Claire Ng, my Chairperson from my RC also gave an opening speech which also introduced my community garden and shared briefly our experience.


Mdm Claire Ng, (Hwi Yoh Court RC Chairman, first from left) and Mdm Cynthia Phua (sixth from left) posing for a picture with NParks and Aljunied Town Council staff and Mr David Murphy from GreenBack.
 

Two community gardeners, myself who is founder of award-winning open-concept Pride-in-Bloom community garden at Serangoon North and Ms Anne Koh, Chairman of Marine Crescent RC shared our positive yet realistic ‘fenceless’ gardening experience during the workshop. 

Fenceless gardens are never easy. Like what I shared during my talk, I told the audience that my fellow community gardeners are usually more than happy to share our harvest or allow a fellow resident take some of our plants. But what we hope residents or visitors would do is to come at the time when we are around so as to ask for permission and also provide help to harvest or dig out a plant. What we have experienced so far was inconsiderate harvesting of plants which resulted in plants that were injured or destroyed. My fellow gardeners get very disheartened as a result.


The workshop in progress.

Beside sharing our fenceless community garden experiences, Ms Lily Chen from the Community in Bloom (CIB) who is also a moderator from the GCS discussion forum then talked about the support that NParks can give to community gardeners and new start-ups. We also had Mr David Murphy from GreenBack who spoke about the benefits of vermi-composting. We generate a lot of waste in the garden and kitchen and these can actually be recycled by worms and beneficial bacteria to give nutrients which can be fed to plants to help with their growth.


Mdm Cynthia Phua harvested a winter melon with Wilson’s help from his kitchen garden at Serangoon North.
 

After the workshop, an enriching tour around my open concept ginger and kitchen gardens soon followed. Alot of participants were quite interested to see a favourite spiral ginger, Costus woodsonii, which I grew around the Yellow Bells tree (Tecoma stans) planted by Mrs Lim Hwee Hua. As a result of that, I cut quite a large number of stems that were given out to everyone to start a new plant. During the tour, Mdm Cynthia Phua also helped to harvest a winter melon from a vine growing in the community garden.


The air plant growing demonstration conducted with the help from Green Culture Singapore members.
 

Participants of the workshop also get to enjoy a demonstration on how to grow air plants by my colleague, Jin Hong, from the newly formed Hort Excellence division and my forum members from the GCS forum. Everyone had fun trying to make their own airplant holder using a metal steamboat ladle, which was an innovative idea to most.

My sincere thanks go to Richard, Yong Kuan, Teresa and Karen who came all the way to Serangoon North to lend their hand to ensure the demonstration and guided tour went on smoothly. I also want to thank my community gardeners, Mr and Mrs Seng as well as Mrs Yap who came to listen to the talks given during the workshop.


Mdm Cynthia Phua and Azmi from CIB looking at gardening resource materials and brochures available at the CIB exhibition booth.

Exhibition booths were also set up by the CIB and GreenBack Pte Ltd showcase that they do. CIB put forth a new set of brochures on community gardening as well as a list of new gardening books which plant enthusiasts can borrow from the community and public libraries to read. GreenBack Pte Ltd also brought along packets of compost and their vermi-composting kit which gardeners can buy.

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Serangoon Newsletter (Mar 09 issue)

Posted on April 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

 I contributed a concise article written about the Indian borage (Plectranthus amboinicus) that was published in the March 09 issue of the Serangoon Newsletter. This newsletter is distributed to all Serangoon Constituency residents.

Although I wrote a feature article on this plant before that was published on the Green Culture Singapore website, I continue find the confusion that the Singapore public has between this plant with the true mint (Mentha spp.) still prevalent. That is why I decided to submit this shortened version of the original Indian borage article for publication on the Serangoon Newsletter.

The Chinese here call the Indian borage as “Por Hor” which is, in fact, the same name that is used to call the true mint, which is probably a spear mint.  For those of us who know how spear mint smells like, we know its fragrance is very different from that of the Indian borage. Although both plants are members of the Lamiaceae family, in terms of appearance, the look of spear mint and Indian borage is very diverse. The spearmint plant grows like a prostrating creeper whereas the Indian borage attains more of an upright growth habit that bears some resemblence with the colourful coleus plant.

The Indian borage seems to be able to take shadier conditions quite well and is suitable for apartment gardeners using containers. Under shady conditions, the plant may etiolate a bit where the stem internodes lengthen but leaves will stay green and lush. When placed under full sunshine, the leaves of the Indian borage become bleached and tend to look sickly.

If you are keen to grow the Indian borage, look out for the variegated cultivar that has leaves that are edged white.

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