Gardening with Wilson

A group of Green Culture Singapore forum members, namely, Casey, Ting Ting and myself were featured on RazorTV. RazorTV is an online television service by Straits Times that broadcasts live from Singapore Press Holding’s (SPH) Multimedia Centre. This series of video clips focussed on the growing of edibles and is part of the publicity effort for the Singapore Garden Festival 2010. One of my team members from Hort Outreach, Jin Hong, was also in the video where she showed how one can prepare some dishes using seed sprouts.

Grow a real mini-farm! (FarmVille Singapore Pt 1)

If you’re hooked on Facebook’s FarmVille, why not bring turn that fantasy into a reality by planting your own vegetables and crops?

http://www.razor.tv/site/servlet/segment/main/94/46766.html

Tasty edible leaves (FarmVille Singapore Pt 2)

Eng Ting Ting has no need for a supermarket or market. Many of the ingredients she needs for her cooking grow right in her own backyard!

http://www.razor.tv/site/servlet/segment/main/94/46768.html

Mini kitchen farm (FarmVille Singapore Pt 3)

If you think growing vegies from home might be too ambitious, why not start off with fuss-free organic seed sprouts for salads.

http://www.razor.tv/site/servlet/segment/main/94/46770.html

Grow your own salad! (FarmVille Singapore Pt 4)

Learn how to create your own salads with easy-to-grow edible seed sprouts!

http://www.razor.tv/site/servlet/segment/main/94/46774.html

HDB mint garden (FarmVille Singapore Pt 5)

Casey Toh is hooked on growing her own edible plants, which she uses for herbal remedies and cooking. Find out why she especially loves growing varieties of mint leaves.

http://www.razor.tv/site/servlet/segment/main/94/46772.html

Recently, I came across a very informative website whilst searching for a range of gardening products related to work. I am impressed with this website called ‘Instructables’. Quoted from their website: “Instructables is a web-based documentation platform where passionate people share what they do and how they do it, and learn from and collaborate with others. The seeds of Instructables germinated at the MIT Media Lab as the future founders of Squid Labs built places to share their projects and help others.”

In Instructables, visitors ask questions and give praise for outstanding projects or offer suggestions for further improvements. This becomes somewhat like a discussion forum which allows a conversation between the project author and the rest of the community. There are even competitions organised to encourage more innovative ideas.

The DIY projects in Instructables are classified into various sections. What interest me most is the gardening DIY section under ‘Living’. There are step-by-step descriptions of gardening projects that fellow gardeners want to share. Like what was quoted in the Instructables website: “They are educational, inspirational, and often replicable.” A great number of projects in there involves the usage of recycled household materials.

Below are some projects that caught my eyes:

Natural Wood Raised Garden

Upside-Down Hanging Self-Watering Earth-Filled Box

Tip-Top Flower Pots: Maximize limited space to grow plants and flowers!

I shan’t reveal more. Do go pay a visit to the gardening section of Instructables website at http://www.instructables.com/living/gardening/

Do read more about Instructables’ Founder, Dr Eric J. Wilhelm, who is the founder and CEO of Instructables. He has a Ph.D. from MIT in Mechanical Engineering and he believes in making technology accessible through understanding, and strives to inspire others to learn as much as they can and share it with those around them.

 The visitor to HortPark’s Lifestyle Corner this December would have noticed spices are used to make alternative  ornaments for the Christmas festive season. Instead of buying ready-made ones from commercial stores, some of us may want to take this opportunity to get everyone at home or in the office to come together to make some unique decorative items. You can also make use of this opportunity to teach your friends and kids where these spices come from and how they are used in flavouring food!

Spicy Christmas trees for the dinner table – all you need to do is to use hot silicone glue and stick various spices of your choice onto polystyrene cones. Seen here are ‘trees’ made from dried rose buds, cloves, cassia sticks, dried bay leaves, nutmeg and chillis!

If you have any faded baubles left over from previous years that are not nice enough for this year’s trees, do not throw them away! Reduce waste and turn them into new ornaments by dressing them up with spices! Shown above is an example of a bauble given a new lease of life after it has put on a new coat made up of star anise!

Another type of hanging ornament for the Christmas tree can be made from just a combination of spices. Shown above is a simple bundle of cassia sticks adorned with star anise and bay leaves which is strung with a golden string so that it can be hung up.

When making Christmas ornaments from spices, it is important to let your creative juices flow. Mix and match various spices to get the desired effect. Cassia sticks are very fragrant. Star anises with their star shape are great for the Christmas season. Dried chillis help to add a burst of red colour. Include also some dried bay leaves for the light green colour. Cloves are good for sticking into polystyrene cones and balls.

Besides looking great and unique, ornaments made from spices exude a delightful fragrance when they are made and displayed immediately. This is especially welcomed if you are using an artificial Christmas tree. These ornaments will last and in the tropics, store them in a air-tight bag with some silicon gel included to help absorb excess humidity after they are taken down after Christmas.

Besides being involved in decoration work for the Wedding Fair at HortPark that was held last Saturday, one of my team members, Pearl Ho, also conducted a floral arrangement talk cum demo session entitled ‘Bridal Bouquet Demonstration’.  Pearl introduced to her audience the diversity of flowers, foliages and various arrangement styles that can be used on one’s special day. She also taught all who were present on the importance of colour scheme.

In the beginning of her talk, Pearl presented a couple of traditional hand flower bouquets that are popular wedding must-haves. She also introduced a range of innovative, ‘green-themed’ ones which are created using potted plants such as Pilea ‘Moon Valley’ (noted for its textured leaves), variegated and all-green Ficus pumila, variegated Dischidia species and Episcia ‘Malaysian Gem’. These plants definitely last longer and are easier to maintain traditional bouquets made from cut flowers!

If your wedding reception has long tables, consider using floral displays with plants incorporated in them for a more lasting and unique arrangement. Shown here is a naturalistic display using a species of club moss for its interesting-looking foliage, Selaginella kraussiana ‘Brownii’,  which forms low, small clumps of whorled mounded leaves. Plants are potted up in small thumb pots which can serve as unconventional take-away souveniors for your guests.

Another table display, suitable for traditional round tables encountered in most receptions, is made up of orchids. Spider orchid flowers (Arachnis cultivar), shown in the example above, are also more-lasting flowers compared to many other imported flower species. They also lend a more tropical feel to the atmosphere. Foliage from the aparagus fern is used as a filler, which is also a durable floral material.

Shown above is a hanging arrangement created using spider orchids. Long-lasting, finely divided leaves from a common houseplant, the Ming Aralia (Polysicias fruticosa), are used as a filler in this fine example.

In line with a garden wedding in HortPark, Pearl transformed upturned coconut coir pots into wedding bells for a hanging arrangement which can be used to decorate a chair. These pots are very afforable and are available for sale in most plant nurseries. They are the tropical version of peat pots that are usually used to start new plants and then planted together in a final growing spot, which it will gradually degrade.

Lastly, do not despair if you missed this talk and demonstration! Pearl will be conducting similar workshops for registered groups in HortPark in 2010!

Christmas is around the corner and some of us can get a headache over what to use to decorate a Christmas tree at home or in the office. Here are some decor ideas to share that have been put up in HortPark’s Lifestyle Corner for the month of December 2009.

For those of us who are environmentally-friendly and want to avoid buying an imported conifer Christmas tree, one can opt to use any large enough houseplant as a greener substitute. Below is our resident Ficus lyrata ‘Bambino’ which have been dressed for the festive occasion. The usual decorative items apply and we recycled last year’s assortment of colourful baubles for this tree to reinforce a green Christmas.

If you don’t have a plant that is large enough, go out and collect a bunch of fallen branches and twigs from the garden or park and use these to make your very unique and green Christmas arrangement? Proceed to dry them, then spray with gold and silver paint and finally display them in a tall glass container. My colleagues then went on to tie ribbons on the branches and also stuck dry leaves and some store-bought Christmas ornaments to complete the display. We kept in mind that all store-bought Christmas ornaments should be recycable for future use!

Below is another decor idea made using natural materials, which one of my friends shared with my team. If you grow luffas (Luffa cylindrica) in the garden, the sponges obtained from old fruits can also be used as a decorative item on your Christmas tree. All you need to do is to tie and stick a nice ribbon on it and put a string on the top so that you can hang it anywhere you desire!

If you still got some ornamental corn cobs lying around from Halloween, you can use these to adorn your Christmas wreaths! Those displayed in HortPark’s Lifestyle Corner were grown by my team and the cobs matured on the plant just in time for us to use them on the wreath. A warning to all – keep this wreath away from the reach of rodents! Our corn cobs were half eaten as we left them on our office table the night before!

When the festive season is around the corner, we never fail to see loads of nuts being put on sale in our local supermarkets. These oil seeds make very good and apt decor items for the home. Seen below are two styrofoam bells which my colleagues stuck various nuts onto them using hot silicone glue.

Below is another version you can make using almonds. My colleagues cut a star out from a piece of cork bark and then glued the almonds onto it. To add colour, we added red saga seeds onto each one of them. You can use other nuts available for sale in supermarkets to make a similar decor item which you can hang on the wall. These can be stored in a cool, dry place and they can be taken out and used for next year’s festive display.

If you noticed, all the decor items need a fair bit of effort to make them. Gather the entire family or office and join hands to create them. It is a good opportunity to come together whilst making these ornaments, we can all make it a point to catch up amidst the hectic work schedule in the past one year. Incorporate as much recycling ideas as you can into the creation of Christmas decor items to help reduce waste and save our environment during the festive season.

Here are more green ideas that my colleagues and I at HortPark would like to share with you… If you grow banana plants at home, why not harvest a few leaves to use as environmentally-friendly food receptacles instead of plastic ones? By doing this we can reduce the amount of waste generated whenever we have get-togethers or refreshments after company seminars or meetings. If there is a large crowd expected, one can consider buying stacks of banana leaves all cut to size from stalls in the wet market at Little India.

Kitchen scraps from plants such as vegetable clippings which are normally discarded can be used to make compost. Lately, vermi-composting is becoming a popular recycling method in Singapore. The product, Can-O-Worms (COW), is imported from Australia and marketed by Greenback Pte Ltd in Singapore. The COW kit is the black, stackable drum-like wormery which is small enough to fit into any household in Singapore (shown in the picture below).

The COW is a worm-driven recycling system designed for use inside the home. The scraps left over from preparing a meal are put into the COW where they are eaten by compost worms which live there. When done properly, the system is completely odourless and hygienic. As the scraps are eaten, they are converted to vermicast. Vermicast is an amazing product for stimulating healthy plant growth. The COW has a collector tank beneath where excess liquid is collected. This is vermicast solution and can be diluted 10 times and used as a very beneficial leaf spray. Vermicast solution will often cure fungal infestations and act as a deterrent to airborne pests and diseases.

Fruit skins can also be converted into environmentally-friendly detergent. The making of botanical detergents have also caught up in Singapore and one can make theirs using discarded fruit remains, brown sugar and water. The mixture is allowed to ferment and enzymes released during the process is said to be very efficient for cleaning chores at home. This can potentially reduce the use of synthetic detergents globally! Gardeners have also reported that such botanical enzymes are good to deter or eradicate small infestations of pests such as aphids on our garden plants!  Refer to this website for more information and following the steps on how you can make your own botanical enzyme detergent at home.

The month of November in Singapore coincides with the Clean and Green Singapore, which is an event that aims to inspire Singaporeans to care for and protect our living environment by adopting an environmentally-friendly lifestyle. In HortPark, my colleagues and I present a showcase at the Lifestyle Corner that shares some ideas and tips on how one do likewise at home.

To begin with something most of us are familiar with, what do a paper carton, a tin can and a plastic cup have in common? Well, they can all be used as plant pots! Common unwanted household items creatively transformed into useful gardening containers…

If you do a lot of take-aways in Singapore, don’t junk the plastic disposable food container! You can turn them into containers for germinating seeds, raising cuttings or even use them to make a self-watering container! All you need to do is to cut a hole in the lid that fits the plant pot you want to put in. Put in a cotton string that acts as a wick through the bottom of the pot and you are more or less done! Have a small reservoir of water at the base of the disposable food container that will supply your plant with water while you are away or busy with work. Water is drawn to the plant via capillary action!

This third idea is something I shared previously – the recycling of eggshells and eggtrays. Use eggshells as your planting pots and when you are ready to transplant your plant, all you need is to crush the eggshell and bury it into the planting hole! Plastic egg trays can be used as seed germinating trays too but paper ones are better! You can cut out each cell in a paper eggtray and plant the entire thing into the final growing location. Works something like the peat pot! Remember – eggshells add valuable calcium to the soil and you can grind eggshells into a fine powder and add that to your compost heap or soil which you grow your plants.

My team have put up a display with a theme on leaves at HortPark’s Lifestyle Corner from September to October 2009. In it, we showcased a variety of popular and interesting foliage houseplants that highrise dwellers can grow in their homes, which included various Ficus and Peperomia species and their cultivars.

There are also a couple of other smaller exhibits that can be found in this ongoing display in the Lifestyle Corner. One of which is how one can use leaves to make decorative items to adorn one’s home. If you happen to have a curtain or a mesh-like surface at home, you can put up a variety of leaves of varying sizes, shapes, colours and textures in a random fashion to add some interest to it. You can modify this concept by using flowers in place of leaves.

Some of the plant materials you may want to use do require a water source and you can provide this via fixing a small glass test tube filled with some water. Such test tubes are those used by florists and are available for sale in the floristry corner in the nurseries located at Joan Road, Singapore. You can fix the test tubes onto your structure by using fine copper wires. To add some novelty, you can even add some food colouring to the water but beware if you are using white flowers as these will change colour as they uptake the food colouring!

There is another idea that you can adopt. As most Singaporeans are aware, dried lotus and bamboo leaves that are sold in our markets are meant for wrapping food in Chinese cuisine but these can be used as alternative materials for creating art.

In an idea that I want to share here, I stuck such leaves on a rectangular piece of styrofoam board to create a leaf painting of sorts. Styrofoam is a very affordable material as well as very light and makes the hanging of your leaf painting much easier. It may be viewed as a little environmentally unfriendly, one can opt to use recycled corrugated board (used to make cardboard boxes) instead. To stick the leaves onto the board, it is recommended that you use hot silicon glue from a glue gun.

Another tip to take note of when making your own leaf painting is to showcase leaf surfaces that have an interesting texture. In the case of a lotus leaf, the underside is a lot more visually appealling as it has numerous leaf veins and bears the cut end of the leaf petiole where one can see the circular arrangement of air channels in the petiole. When making a painting using lotus leaves, I created some contrast by having some parts covered with the leaves that are showing the upperside while on other parts, the undersides.