Spider Plant - Chlorophytum comosum

It feels like ages I wrote anything. Gardening seemed to be a distant passion now. Somehow, I do manage to water and reset my plants but even that seemed to be with my mood swing.
I guess I would blame it on the rain. My wife often laughs when I prepare myself to garden - for one she would know that I would be chased back to the living again - being me grumpy all over again, half soaked wet.

Yeah.. Gardening is a passion that doesn't wears out easily, except when it rains.

Its just feel being washed out. Now I remember - why I'm having that sore throat now.

Didn't fully recover from the cold I had from last week - gardening time.

Rain - sure spoils my mood but this time I decided to wrestle against it.

And look what happen now - stuck with a cold & a headache that won't just go away.

OK. You must be wondering what I'm ranting all about now. Let's get back to gardening.

I had found two pots of spider plant being thrown out along the roadside. It was in a bad shape, one of the pots was broken. I guess the owner decided to discard it. After inspecting, I too was not too sure what & how to revive it.

The root ball was totally absorbed the whole pot - there was no soil to consider. The babies looked over matured but still hanging and surviving from the mother plant.

I had it for another 2 months and then decided that I'm going to reset it.

Wow - it was really a lot of work. I really felt I was opening up the husk from a coconut shell. The root mass was unbelievable. It didn't let go easily and took a lot of force just to reset all of them.

Replanting them was a risk too. Not all the babies survived but the ones that did - thrived well and now flowers often.

I had also manage to give away so many of these baby plants to friends (now, I wonder whether the plant had survived)

Anyway, some thoughts and experiences concerning this plant:

1) Watering

This plant is forgiving if you forget to water it in a day or two. You will find that this plant will slightly discolour and may lost its usual strong colour when lacking water. They will bounce back once watered.

2) Too much watering may cause the leaves to fall off from the base.

3) They do well as shaded plants. I had seen the abuse they go through when gardeners place them on open direct sunlight. They do seemed to look adjusted but its more of a survival thing rather than thriving. You will find tell-tale signs of burned & withered leaves.

Eventually they will mature faster and look over-spend.

4) This one doesn't do well with chlorinated tap water. If you can - use filtered watered or the best rain water.

5) If the plant starts to dry & mature - its going to be a messy in pruning and keeping the right ones. The best option is to replant it. It is never going to look like its former glory. I have not seen a spider plant dying out after it being matured. Chances are it would have died more likely of neglect rather than being fully matured or aged.

Pictures:

1) The first 2 - when I first found them - rescued

2) 3rd pic - slowly recovering within a month

3) Others - the plants been reset & replanted from the original pot.

Finally giving out new stolons and spikes bringing a second generation.

Orchid Blooms (Aranda Orchid)

It been ages (or never seemed) that my orchids bloomed. This is actually rescued - someone had thrown it away and I had collected it by the roadside. The condition of the plant was bad (dried up leaves, dead roots) and it required a lot of pruning of which even I was not sure of. Somehow, I was amazed when a flower spike shoot up. And these lasted almost a month for me to enjoy. The Bleeding Hearts eventually had taken over the other orchids which I tied along the fence. And this one constantly blooms with bouquets of flowers

Purple Shamrock Mix - Oxalis Triangularis

There is something in my garden that I never seemed to get used to it. Often the regular surprise that comes in seasons of blooms. But never this one - nope, I'm certain that I'm not going to get bored with these.

I've been delayed some few weeks in taking these pictures. Earlier there were lots of blooms. The tiny pink bells in the midst of the purple background seemed to mesmerise my eyes - painting them as one tone factor.

But this result didn't come just suddenly.
It was months of dissatisfaction
and the non-ability to put that garden finger
and figure out how it actually should be.

Earlier I had flame-violets in this space. There did well but they started crawling down by the fence. Being leggy and so dis-proportioned that the whole mess was beyond words.

Then I tried begonias - well, it too didn't go well as they needed resetting time to time. And finally these Oxalis came and they slowly took dominion over this space. But the slow growing pace was not only the set-back. They tend to be very sensitive over the watering issues. (Make one mistake - and they punish you with a rotting bulb)

So I came up with an idea - plant other plants which able to co-exist with each other. I find some begonias & trailing plants do not have deep roots which compliments well together in the colour tones. Resetting all of them was a challenge. Some of the bulbs didn't emerge (either dormant or dead) and neither did some of the begonia manage to survive the initial shock of propagation.

Regardless, those which manage to survive - did thrive to the fullness. With much trial and error - I found another few more tips to add here.

1) Over-Watering.
The first sign of over-watering:

You will find some few leaves slight rotted and fallen from the base. (I thought it got attacked by snail or a pest munching over at the base) IF you continue to over-water - the remainder leaves too will rot at the base. By then, if you carefully dig up - the bulb had rotted away. In my case - the bulb had totally disappeared - disintergrated into the soil.

2) Lack of water.

Here you will find the leaves will be in a close posture. (like an umbrella being pulled down by the base) If you continue without watering them - they will go immediately into dormant stage
but watering immediately will revive them back.

3) In order to get the right balance - plant trailing plant which its roots doesn't go deep. That way - it will absorb most of the water (over-watered medium) And you will get a good colour mix that complement each other.

Now I'm wishing to have a few more different varieties of oxalis to give more shape, colour and composition. If you have any experience with this plant, do share your success story or your trials with this one.

August 2011 - Garden Update

This is my latest garden scene, there are a lot of which I had not updated.
Hope the picture gives a better picture than my words.



One of my joy and pride of garden plants are these Spanish moss. They seemed to have a life of their own and able to retain and regulate moisture - I guess its the secret of those matured tried moss that is deeply embedded inside the whole cascade effect. I understand that watering is the key factor on this issue. Too much water and they rot, to less water and they dry up.
The best solution is to water once a day and if you really have the time - water on every hour on a hot day - just after the all the residue water had evaporated. You will find the Spanish moss shimmer in silver rainbow.

The scary part often begin just before the rain where the wind is strong. The effect of the wave gives a haunting effect. So I do not recommend if you have a weak heart or that you are feeling that there are unseen residence in your dwelling place.

I used to have a water feature in this area but due to dengue menace - I had totally removed all my aquatic plants - what is left is this pathetic apple figures and some trailing ferns which had caught its roots in between the overlay of tiles. I was thinking of uprooting and replanting them in a small pot (which again - requires time and work) but thought that this is unique and therefore remained as such.

This is my bougainvillea collection -there are 2 pots here, recently it flowered but I really never took the trouble to capture them in camera (it rained often and that spoilt my mood in gardening) And by the time my mood finally arrived -they flowers had fallen.

So I guess - I had became a careless gardener - got satisfied with the variegated leaves than those flowers. The thing is - bougainvilleas blooms successfully when they are in the open, and so the chances here are slim (and worst are when the orchids are now creating a screen over them)

I'm still marvelled at these collection, they are still going strong with less care. Perhaps I will focus on my next project in getting more variegated coloured earthstars and bromeliad -they seemed to be more receptive and hardy (the only thing is their price factor and their rare occurrence in nursery and garden centres) Hope I will be able to get more of this when my finance is good.

This appears to be "ugly" compared to what you see in real life. I guess there is another work to be done here and I really have not thought what would go well here. Earlier I had placed the ground orchids here but they tend to get burned up often and I had placed just below this place and it is doing fine so far now.

This is my another surprise of surprises:

Garden plants where you don't need soil to flourish.

They just grow lavishly along the concrete surface, in between the pebbles and stones.

(and yeah - there goes my pebbles and stones - they are no longer a visual effect now)

My first vertical landscape garden didn't go well. I guess the problem was when I placed the soil medium sideways - the watering became bad. And so, the only thing that looked healthy was the bird nest fern, and so I thought of placing these milk can containers (sort of recycle garden idea)

and they seemed to do fine after these 2 weeks.

The other factor about floral is the bleeding hearts. It is never a regret to have them in the garden, they bloom constantly and add more florets with lasting blooms. Somehow they compensate the flowerless orchids which I still tolerate believing that they will bloom someday by sheer luck or sort. I still haven't got drastic enough to get rid of them.

You won't believe it when you this: That my garden plants had migrated to my neighbour's space and they are blooming furiously - these flame violets seemed to do so well on the ground compared to hanging pots. It all started when few of these had fallen from my previous hanging pots and they took their humble residence for quite awhile. Not they seemed to take more than a foothold. Its all up to my neighbour now whether they would like to keep them or rid of them.

I would consider their silence as their approval - or it would have been a "rid-tear-throw" effect.

But if this happens to me, where my neighbour's plants coming to my garden - I would consider those blooms as luck and that I'm graced with beauty and abundance.

Well, so far. My garden is not that boring after all.