Here are just some photos that I would like to share. Sorry there is not much accompanying caption or text to go with the photos; I am doing this post at the very last minutes before I turn in so I have to be rather quick with the posting. Anyway, here they are:

Photos taken at Cameron Highlands:

Two photos of the two important plants I am growing now.

Left: Chinese Kale (Kailan)

Right: Roselle, or Hibiscus Sabdariffa

I have a wishlist of plants to grow. So here it is! I hope I can get my hands on the seeds, or plant, of the following species soon. Of course, I would also hope that I can cultivate them successful. Wish me luck!

And the plants that I would love to be growing are, more will be added, as follows:

1. Catnip

2. Passionfruit vine

3. Blue Butterfly Pea, also known as Clitoria ternatea.

My first real project of 2010 - Update 2

My second real attempt at growing cosmo seems to be failing, yet again. Utmost disappointing, I guess if the sole seedling dies on me again, it's Hobson's choice for me to try again. Unfortunately, my store of cosmo seedlings is running out. I will thus have to purchase the seeds again and really just hope for the best. It appears that my wish to successfully grow cosmo is not coming to pass soon. Time to prepare for the next attempt now! More updates coming soon. Watch this space, i.e my blog.

My small little paradise doesn't seem to be teeming with as much life as I hope yet despite all the new additions and developing seedlings. I certainly hope for a surprise or two. In the meantime, I keep a pair of crossed fingers that my additions of a new Gerbera and a Thai Basil which I bought today will adapt to the new environment. They are both bought at a promotion. I wish them all the best in their new lives here!

I have just repotted some of my plants, one of them being the coleus I bought recently from Far East Flora. Let's see how things go from here. My updates coming soon. Happy Gardening!

My first real project of 2010 - Update 1

This is my first update and I've got both good news and bad news to share. Let's start with the bad news first. Woe betide me, 1 day after I made the post on the project, the fledging cosmo died on me. It had been growing fine for weeks, well, until that fateful day. Most disheartening a thing to happen, it seems that I have to start from scratch all over again.

On the brighter side, my kale seedlings are showing their true leaves, albeit a little slowly I may add. Perhaps the amount of sunlight or nutrients is limiting its growth somehow; according to the information on the packet, it should take approximately 45 days to mature but judging from the looks, I suppose a longer time will be needed for me to see the flowers. Actually, to link this phenomenon back to Biology, this slow growth is known as the lag phase. In this phase of the development model, there will be minimal change in the length or mass of the subject in question and this can be measured accordingly. However, that does not really have anything to do with this post now, does it. I apologise for the digression. My point of stating the lag phase, really, is to correlate what result I have yielded at this moment with what I have learnt and also, to follow up with the log phase, a period associated with a spurt in growth. Normally accompanying the lag phase, the log phase is what I am anticipating now. Indeed, I am looking forward to a profusion of growth from the kale seedlings. With so much anticipation building up, I really hope the log phase will come soon.

More updates to come.

Seedling slightly revealing the first true leaf

A better close-up of the true leaf

I didn't really notice this before. After looking at the pictures carefully, I have come to realise that the first two leaves of the seedlings are cordate. What love!

My plants have always been plagued by mealies, scales too. Recently, I have started a new approach to this mealy bug situation - feeding the vermin to my fish. This new and radical (at least to me) method has been put in force for the past few days and the fish seem to be enjoying the food. I just hope the "food" that I am feeding is not poisonous!

My first real project of 2010

My only cosmo seedling

I have started this batch of new seeds to grow. It is really exciting, I find, that the seeds have germinated. As of now, I have about 5 types of new plants growing, namely: Crotalaria retusa, Hibiscus sabdariffa, kale, cosmo and chilli. The seedlings have been growing for a few weeks now and I certainly hope they will thrive in my small corridor garden.

These are kale seedlings which I just took a few days ago. The clarity of which does amaze me as I have not been able to obtain such said clarity before.

More kale seedlings in the same pot

I will be posting my updates and more pictures very soon. Wish me luck!

Contrary to what my blog name suggests [lycopersicon, meaning tomato], I do not have any tomato plant in my small garden at all. I suppose I should start a few tomato plants soon once things get going in this small piece of paradise for me; I still need my other plants to become established before I divert my attention to grow the amazing lycopersicon soon. I want a tomato plant so badly!

A pleasant surprise!

Boy was I surprised to find this small little shoot while I was on my way to work this morning. Inconspicuously hiding behind a bigger pandan plant, this zamioculcas zamiifolia young, or commonly called the zz plant, was an accident in the works as it was no intention of mine to grow it. It was, however, an unexpected growth from an abandoned part of the bigger plant I have in the pot thanks to my mother who did some trimming a couple of months ago. Nevertheless, it was nothing short of wonderful, and lovely too, as it brightened my day today! I have since taken it out of the pandan pot and transplanted it into a more comfortable pot where the new shoot can have the whole place to itself. Hopefully it will enjoy the change in environment. Well, it's fingers crossed yet again!

It's like impossible to root those tagetes lucida cuttings which I took. I have been trying so many times and no one time had I gotten any promising result. Those cuttings just either wilt a few hours later or simply bide their time to eventually rot into nothingness. I am really finding it very hard to garden around these days when this is not the only setback that I have faced. Besides the tagetes lucida, my basil cuttings did not work out too. I have no idea anymore. I probably watered too much. It could also be the soil that may be the problem as it was perhaps unsuitable for the establishment of the said cuttings. Nevertheless, I shan't let this lack of success bog me down too much. I shall try again and hopefully, the next attempt at rooting the basil and tagetes lucida cuttings would be splendidly successful! Let's keep my fingers crossed for now.

Having met with some failures in propagating my herbs which I just got from SGF, I am now down in the slumps and dispirited over the helplessness of losing my cuttings. It sure is frustrating to see your cuttings slowly perishing and find that you can do nothing about it. I should have learnt more about growing cuttings but I am disadvantaged by the lack of resources: back in the past, I would have certainly used my nifty (or handy) plant hormone solution that I got from a supermarket. Now that I have used up the said hormone solution and with no avenue of getting a new bottle, I am at a loss; I can only settle with planting directly into the soil and hoping providence will treat the cuttings well. So far not so good with that though, I must say! I have unfortunately been set back for the past few days without any sign of improvement showing in the propagation of those herb cuttings. Absolutely dejected by this outcome thus far, I can only see this as an experience of learning. Like what my cousin taught me, and I quote, "Success is a lousy teacher". Only with this experience do I get to learn something. Hopefully, I will get to yield success in the near future. It's fingers crossed yet again. Wish me luck!

I am so excited to actually receive some tulip bulbs from a friend today. To the person who gave me those bulbs, thank you if you are reading this. I will be trying to get them to grow very soon. Hopefully they can. I will know more after I get the information I need from the net!

Finally got my Roselle! I have already taken a cutting for propagating the only plant I have now. Hopefully, I can successfully clone the plant and viably generate multiple copies of it. My fingers crossed!

I want to start growing a Roselle plant soon. I promise I will be good to it and try my best to propagate as many of the plant as possible!

I cut my Sage plant way too much and it seems to be on the verge of dying now! How I wish I had cut the plant for use instead of throwing everything away. It's really upsetting and unnerving, if not frustrating and irking, to have plants that you love infected with scales, mealie bugs, and the other debilitating pathogens. There were so many infected sites on the lovely plant that I had to cut it all the way from the top, leaving only a few centimetres of it from the soil. I should have checked the cuttings for viable parts before I threw the whole thing into the bin. I was just so consumed by rage, I couldn't really think straight about the situation. I wish I could have done it differently and probably use the cuttings to propagate. Ah well, alas, I can't undo what I have done and I firmly believe it is going to die soon with the remaining infected sites unattended. Thinking about this, my heart has sunk once again.

This is just something I find interesting about my coleus plant. I have a few variants of the coleus plant with foliages of different shades. One fine day, I noticed something peculiar about this one coleus plant, which I grew from a cutting I took from the parent plant I bought at Giant. It turned out that a leaf on this plant actually appears different from the rest of the leaves of this variant. Instead, it is the same as the other variant I have, both in colour and design. Anyways, I think it's easier to just show what I mean with pictures. Maybe it's not that peculiar!

This is the coleus with the peculiar leaf.

The other variant I am talking about. Observe the leaf colour and design of this plant.

The peculiar leaf standing out from the rest of the leaves that define this variant I have. This leaf looks just like the ones above.

Besides my coleus, I have an update on some of the other plants that are currently residing along my corridor. More pictures below.

Ocimum Basilicum

Wormwood after a full trimming, Thank goodness it's growing again.

My codariocalyx desmodium, as promised. This is the younger of the two "gyrans" I have.

Peppermint I just got.

Thai Basil, I believe.

That's all for now. Bye.

As always, I am passionate about gardening with my favourite plants to cultivate being herbs. However, that said, I feel that I have not been doing my gardening correctly. As a self-proclaimed amateur gardener, I believe there's definitely a lot to be learned. I just hope I can get my "corridor garden" the exuberance and splendour deserving of the wondrous plants I have.

These few days have been absolutely inspiring for me. After reading some blog entries and watching youtube entries for some edification, I reckon my desire for gardening has been renewed, not that it has ever really waned or anything. The truth is, I get depressed sometimes when I don't get the results I expected and this disappointed had translated to maybe a short hiatus from caring for my plants sometimes, sorry to say. There should be no reason to short-change my plants anymore, hopefully, from this point on. Even if I may fail in the future, I'm giving it a 25% chance of that with p=0.05 (no reason for this stats), I should just move ahead and just learn from this experience. Right now, it feels like a fresh start for me and I should stay positive about the outcome of the yield. Fingers crossed! Updates coming soon.

Watch this space.

The codariocalyx gyrans plant is truly amazing. I just discovered recently that the leaves, albeit only the smaller ones, can actually move on their own. This observation is congruent with the materials I have read and watched online and adds to the intrigue I have for the plant. Ergo, I would really hope to understand the plant even further, starting maybe from the reason and method of its twitching.