Lemony's lemongrass relatives in the Batam View Herb Garden

I'm back! we went to this wonderful Batam View resort in Batam, an Indonesian island about 1 hr ferry ride away from Singapore. They have a nice little herb garden with lemon grass and all sorts of other useful plants in it!



I took lots of snaps, will be posting them here slowly in the next few days, but first things first...



The caption says:
"Lemon grass features in Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan and Indian cooking and is widely used in savoury dishes and meat, poultry, seafood and vegetable curries. It harmonizes well with coconut milk, especially with chicken or seafood, and there are countless Thai and Sri Lankan recipes exploiting this combination. The stems are also used in teas or used in pickles and in flavouring marinades."

And look just how big they can grow!! Maybe they should be called lemonbush, heehehe... . I wonder how they are harvested. Do you need to wait for a new sprig to grow and then pull it out? That would take my Lemony some time... heehee.



deejay pointed out to me that they use a lot of lemon grass in Thailand, especially for Tom Yam Goong. I love Thai food!!! Batam View has this nice cozy place called the Kelong Restaurant, and they serve the most wonderful dish with lemon grass ever!!! I forgot what it's called, but basically it's crispy, lightly-breaded fried king prawns with finely-cut lemongrass and basil leaves. Yummmmm....... I should've taken a photo of it; we came back there for dinner the following night just to have the same dish again. :D

Germinating foxtail palm is easy and fun!

Germinating foxtail palm

Foxtail palm is a very handsome palm. It is very easy to germinate and grow it yourself. You can grow it either on your garden or in a container. It is fun, try it! How to get the seed? You can buy seeds from a garden store. But in Singapore, the good way is to search the ground where the foxtail palms grow. You can spot foxtail palms almost anywhere. You are sure to find the seeds somewhere there. Fresh seeds Dried seeds 1. If the seed is fresh, dry it under sun for a few days. 2. Put the dry seed in water for 24 hours before germinating it. 3. Put the soaked seed in a pot with mixed burn and composed soil with more burn soil. 4. Leave the pot outdoor and under the sun. Water the pot everyday. 5. After 3 weeks, you can spot the shoot coming out from the soil. You can celebrate in successfully germinating it!!!

This article can also be read at: http://lifeandart.googlepages.com/garden.html

Growing Tomatoes

My tomato keeps growing taller but gives no sign of flowering so far. It's more than 6 months old now; I grew it from a seed. Does it normally take so long, or am I doing anything wrong? Could it be due to lack of sunlight? I've been giving it fertilizer pellets (for flowering) once every fortnight.



Also, what are these little white dots on the main stem? Are they normal or parasitic?

Rooting for lemongrass

So many thanks to King, who told me how to grow lemongrass!! Looky looky, my lemony lemongrass has decided to grow four little roots, all within a few days in water!



Here's what I did:
1. dig into my fridge to find the fattest and freshest lemongrass sprig
2. peel away hopelessly dry leaves from the sprig
3. put the sprig in a jar of water, with about 3 cm of the base under water
4. wait for a few days
5. voila! watch the roots emerge

I first noticed the tiny roots yesterday morning, and in the night they have grown 1 full cm each! Talk about instant gratification... hee hee.

Grow-a-house!

This is pretty amazing.. and so cute!! Despite everything they say it still doesn't look practical, but I want one anyway... haha.



Full article here.

Today's word: scarification

scar‧i‧fi‧ca‧tion  [skar-uh-fi-key-shuhn]
–noun
1. an act or instance of scarifying.
2. the result of scarifying; a scratch or scratches.

scar·i·fy (skr-f)
tr.v. scar·i·fied, scar·i·fy·ing, scar·i·fies
Botany. To slit or soften the outer coat of (seeds) in order to speed germination.

Definition from dictionary.com.

Fragile little ones

I'm growing some chinese celery in a pot. A bunch of seedlings have shown their faces and said their first "Hello world!" with great enthusiasm, but they still look oh-so-fragile! Every morning when I water them I have to be very careful not to break or uproot anything. Not that they have real roots yet, but you know what I mean. :)

I'm using a simple IKEA watering can, but is there a better way to water fragile seedlings? I've seen some garden hose accessories that can spray ultra-fine mist, but that's not applicable for me since it'll get the floor all wet.

Here a pic of the little ones in my germinating pot:



The sligthly more grown up guy on the top left is another chinese celery experiment I started a couple of weeks earlier. Is it natural for these guys to grow so slowly? I haven't seen any change in this one for quite a few days now... .

Little longan

I put a couple of longan seeds in a pot of black soil after eating the fruit a few months ago, and look how one of them grew!



All that with no special treatment at all. I only water it once a day and put a couple of tiny fertilizer pellets every fortnight or so. And here's a side view:



Little longan is about half a meter tall now. Sweet!

A tiny splash of pink

Xiaohua has rewarded me again! This time her tiny flower is much more pink than ever before. Is it normal for a single anthurium to grow different color flowers?



I first noticed a tiny bud on a cool morning about a week ago. Could it be that the cold weather triggered flowering? But I have another 3 plants re-potted from Xiaohua that didn't show any signs of flowering soon. Maybe they're too young.. ah, so much mystery for a novice like me!

Butterflies in my eyes

Does anyone know what this plant is called? The pretty red leaves remind me of butterflies, spreading their wings to soak in sunlight during the day, and retracting them during the night. Here's a night view:



Each stem has three heart-shaped leaves. The stems are fragile and kinda juicy, and they tend to bow down as they grow longer. That's why this plant looks much nicer on a hanging pot instead of on the ground.