Catnip again

It's official! Catnips are a go at my small and humble corridor garden. I just bought the seeds (Horti) from NTUC Xtra @ Nex yesterday and they are sown into the soil this morning. You can probably imagine my excitement when I saw the trove of Horti seeds at the outlet. IT WAS TOTALLY AMAZING! I have not caught so many Horti seeds on display for such a long time since the invasion of the Chinese seeds which are considered more profitable, I suppose. Anyways, I saw the seed packet labelled "Catnip" and I knew that I had to buy it. So 'buy it' I did! I also bought a packet of Sweet Marjoram which I have yet to sow. I think I will wait for the Catnip to start germinating and establishing itself first before I open up the next packet for sowing., We'll see how it goes. After all, this is my nth time growing catnip to no success at all.

A long due update

I think my passion or should I say desire to garden is burning more strongly now than ever. In every respect to that, I have literally filled out my corridor with plants, or plant pots more specifically, and there seems to be no more space for new pots. Or maybe there is space, just that I need to tinker with the position of the existing pots. What I want to say is, I think I am over-doing the buying and growing of plants. Sadly, even though I am running out of space, I still want to cultivate more pots of plants for my own collection and the problem with this is definitely the availability of resources to do so. I just hope the existing pots of plants can grow as healthily as they can. For now, I will try to reduce the number of purchases until I make enough space for the next few sets of plants that I may be buying.

In brief, I have sowed a couple of really exciting plants. There are Echinacea which I bought from Yates; roselle, clitoria and cotton that I got from a forumer on GCS and ruellia simplex! I really hope the seeds can germinate soon and that my potting mixture is good enough before the transplant. I will be moving these plants into my community garden once I feel that they are strong enough for the move.

Other than seeds that were sown, I have been buying mature pots of plants over the past few weeks. These include Catheranthus roseus or Periwinkle, Graptophyllum pictum or Caricature plant, Artemisia scoparia or False dill, 2 pots of Coleus and Dill. I really hope to propagate more of my Periwinkle soon (btw, it is a pink bright eyes) but I need to wait for the seed pots to mature. Oh, I also bought lemon basil which I have already transplanted into their respective pots.

I still have more plants that I really wish to grow. The wishlist of plants continues to grow.

Lastly, I would like to add an update. In the last post, I have mentioned my Gomphrena globosa, or Globe Amaranth seedlings. Well, they are still alive and kicking, thankfully. I wish they can grow to maturity and give me a sea of beautiful red globes to feast my eyes out! My fingers are crossed!

Photos of my garden will be up soon, as soon as I get them taken! :D

I have globe amaranth seedlings, officially

Globe amaranth, or Gomphrena globosa, has always been a fascination for me. I have tried to grow it from seeds but to no avail. Feeling rather depressed, I took to growing the plant with cuttings. Fortunately, it worked! With the success of the cutting, roots were established and before I knew it, flowers have appeared profusely. This particular cutting that I am talking about is grown in my community garden plot. My other cutting grown outside my house did not have this privilege though. Its growth was seen to be more retarded and just recently, I decided to make another cutting, only this time, I have located this new cutting in a new pot of soil. I hope the new cutting can put out roots and just flourish. However, in the meantime, I have my seedlings to anticipate and look at, thanks to the flowering cutting in the community plot. More updates about the cutting and seedlings to come. I just hope the seedlings would harden out and grow as healthily as possible.

Chillies, why are you such bullies?

I can never grow chilly plants properly. The reason behind is a lost cause! I still am unable to comprehend why all my attempts at trying to grow a decent, healthy chilly plant is always met with zero success and plenty of obstacles? In the past, my chilly plants either "dried out" and die with the leaves badly burnt and shrivelled despite me giving them enough water, or as seen for one chilly plant, it just doesn't bear fruits in spite of the many blooming flowers. I have a different experience this time round though. For the few chilly plants I have, the leaves have virtually all fallen off! I have some new buds growing now but believe me, these buds are not doing so well at all and I have no idea why! I just hope something miraculous can happen to revive my existing two chilly babies and somehow, at the end of the day, I will be enjoying at least one chilly fruit on one of them. Will that be too much of a stretch?

Update: Gomphrena globosa gone

I mentioned in my earlier post that the G. globosa seeds that I have sown had germinated. Well, the downright unfortunate thing has happened: all my seedlings have perished in less than 3 days after their tiny red leaves barely emerged from the soil. This indeed brings tears to my eyes as I was hoping fervently that they would successfully develop into adults with their signature papery flowers blooming all along my corridor. I even had the wish to use these fantastic flowers in floral arrangement. I guess that is really my wishful thinking. I shouldn't have harboured so much hope and pinning them on such small delicate beauties. Nevertheless, I shall try again. Maybe this time I will look for the adult plant and propagate the species by cuttings instead this time around. I seriously have no idea.

Update for new project - 1 July 2011

I am back with an update. My new year project - officially called Mirabilis 2011 - has begun! To this date, I have successfully germinated my globe amaranth (Gomphrena globosa). I can already see a few small red seedlings smiling at me. How exciting! I can really hear my heart flutter at the sight of such a wonderful miracle of nature! Besides my G. globosa, more choy sum seedlings have emerged as well. The truth is, some of these choy sum seedlings were sown when the G. globosa seeds did not germinate at the start. Now that they have, I am much relieved. Nevertheless, they are still seedlings as we speak; more time will definitely be needed for them to establish themselves.

Other than sowing seeds, I am also starting on some herbs through cuttings. One such herb to mention would be Sage. I bought the fresh cuttings from Cold Storage today. It will be some kind of experiment to determine which soil mix would be beneficial or more superior for the rooting process for sage. Of course, the results would be biased towards my corridor environment (my mini garden is situated at the corridor, in case you are wondering). There are two sets of mix I am using: the first being tref compost mix with perlite; the second being tref compost mix with garden soil. I just hope, with my fingers crossed, the sage cuttings would even root in the first place. More updates coming up soon. Watch this space.

After a long hiatus from blogging altogether, I have decided to start blogging again, with this blog as the start. I am starting on a new year with plants that are still hardly seedlings yet! This may be a new project, of sorts, as I am trying out many new plant species this time round. They run the gamut from catnip, globe amaranth and even choy sum. In addition, I am attempting to re-populate my basil collection. At this writing, the plants are still very small with many more hurdles to cross. Whenever I see them growing in the pot, I would naturally start to worry but at the same time, I am imbued with hope that these young seedlings situated right in front of me would just unfurl another set of leaves and simply just reach for the sky! With time, I believe everything will be told. Indeed, time will tell if these delectable young things would become the stuff of legend.