Gardeners United!

I borrowed that title from Novice Gardener who has such nice posts on how us gardeners should unite. I have a nice story to tell you.

NParks gave every Primary 3 boy at my school a little bag containing a little pot, a ziplock bag of soil and a packet of seeds. I got roselle seeds.Oh, in case you are worried, I am sure if there were girls in my school, NParks would have given them the bag too; but I go to an all-boys school. We were supposed to grow the plants and my science teacher said it was a competition as to who could grow the biggest and healthiest plants.

Anyway, Mummy and I popped the seeds into our seed planter. As you know, everything we grow shoots up magnificently (spelling word). But not these NParks seeds. Out of 6 seeds, only one germinated. Seriously! And that One Measly Roselle (OMR) shoot looked half-dead (like me when I was sick and mottly). Mummy and I looked a bit doubtfully at it, but I was desperate to win the competition so we transplanted it into NParks’ pot and soil. Mummy complained a lot about the soil which seemed rather cocopeaty and had many nasty white pebbles in it. She also complained about the pot size (too small), the holes at the bottom (too big) but I said we had to use what was given if not it would be cheating.

OK, here is the sad bit. The OMR keeled over and died!

I got rather panicky about it. Mummy said to take our kind neighbour’s roselle plants but I said that was cheating. And anyway who would believe I grew a 2-foot plant from seed in 2 weeks???  I got Mummy to send an SOS to Novice Gardener and Curious Gardener. Novice Gardener couldn’t find her roselle seeds. Curious Gardener offered roselle shoots but I said that would be cheating too (she did offer to look for the youngest shoots so it wouldn’t be so obvious that I hadn’t planted it). So Curious Gardener kindly swept up some fallen roselle seeds from her patio and soaked them in a very dilute solution of seaweed fert, so that they would germinate quickly. Guess what! They did!!! Che Che RZ couriered the seedlings to me and I popped them into the no-good pot and soil.

They are doing very, very well indeed. Look!

Thank you, Gardeners and Courier! I am sure I will be the only child in Singapore who has hothoused roselles!

PS I am watering them everyday with dilute seaweed and fish emulsion and worm tea. I am determined to win this competition.

Squirm, Worm

Some months ago my uncle from Australia sent me a worm farm (minus worms). It is called a Can O’Worms, and looks like this. If you have to learn idioms like me for my English exam (yuks), you will know that a can of worms means a lot of hidden trouble that suddenly pops out.

Since Grandpa was not willing to carry the worm farm plus worms, we had to buy worms from a man advertising on the internet. He charged Mummy $25 for each 100g of worms. She bought 500g worth of worms. If you have a math exam coming up, you will know that she paid a total of 5x$25 which is $125 for 500g. My math teacher gets very mad if we forget the $ sign on our final statements. Usually I don’t. I forget the whole final statement!

Anyway more than half of our worms ran away and Mummy has been grumbling at the waste of her money. Luckily the rest have been getting fat and having babies. We feed them very well, with worm fattener (here is the recipe in case you need it, go right to the bottom of the page) and all the chopped up bits from our morning juice. This is why they are so healthy and do not have high blood pressure, because they get bittergourd and celery every day!

You want to admire them, right? Here are some of them taken by moonlight:

And here they are, in close-up. Some are as thick as small snakes! Mummy says that feeding them is also more worth it than feeding The Big Sister and me. They grow nice and fat and they produce lovely worm tea for our plants. I also produce stuff for our plants but it is not polite to talk about it.

Pudding

Mummy has been on a pudding rampage. In one week, she made pumpkin pie (getting ready for Halloween although Daddy complained that we haven’t even finished mid-autumn festival yet), then 2 lots of orange delicious pudding for Aunty E’s mummy. Aunty E is the funny aunty who wanted to consult an astrologer to guess the weight of my wintermelon. Anyway Mummy is trying to achieve the orange delicious of Aunty E’s mummy’s memory. Something like that. But Aunty E’s mummy is very old so I don’t know if her memory is so good? Whatever Mummy has made is not the same as she remembers, so Mummy is on a Mission to recreate the Memory.

Then Mummy made chocolate fudge pudding (warm) for Godma because Godma sent me a braised duck in a nice rectangular dish that was perfect for making a pudding so Mummy made a pudding. She took the duck out first and washed the dish, of course!!!

Anyway, this is not a food blog. So I am telling you all of this to introduce the REAL STORY. (I also have to practice composition for my English exam, yuks.)

Today Mummy mixed beaten egg yolks and worm tea and crushed egg shells to make a pudding for our plants. It smelled horrible but Mummy says plants don’t mind. If I were a plant I’d ask for ice cream instead. My favourite flavours are attapchee and peanut but I finished both tonight, so here is a photo of my next favourite which is sweetcorn. At my birthday party, we had an ice cream truck full of attapchee, peanut and sweetcorn ice cream (200 serves) which was lots of fun.

Sad News

Otto is no more.

He is buried under the frangipani. Mummy tried to chop him into smaller bits before covering him with earth but I got very very angry so she stopped.

For a Change

Here is a photo of my goldfish, Otto. I know this is a gardening blog, but when Otto goes to the land where Good Goldfish go, Mummy says he will make good fertilizer when buried. The Big Sister will be very mad when she reads this.

 

A Visit to a Foreign Vegetable Patch

I went away again last weekend, to visit my friend who came to Singapore about 6 weeks ago to visit my school. It was so-o-o-o-o good to see her again! We played like mad dogs together! I even went to her school in Jakarta for a visit! They had 2 big kangkong beds. Here’s one. Everyone planted their own little bit of the bed. Then they put a stick with a signpost with their name on it.

See the black blobs? Guess what they are???

A Bittersweet Story

My bittergourd plant – the strongman – you can see it on my header and in this post – was yanked out accidentally by the lighting man who came to fix our garden lights. We tried to save it with  seaweed, but we could not. The lighting man also stamped on some pumpkin leaves but those have recovered. Not the bittergourd though:

And today, we had to chop it off:

But there’s always some good news! My other bittergourd plant is flowering! Unfortunately I got rather excited and knocked one flower off. The other flower fell off in the rain. But there are plenty of buds on the plant, so it should be ok.

Banana Coffee Shake

Look at the lovely colour! We gave our flowering and fruiting plants a nice drink of banana peels blended with coffee grounds (from Mummy’s kind kopi ladies) and egg shells. Novice Gardener told me to do that to boost potassium levels (potassium helps make fruit big). We offered some shake to the Paid Gardener but he said his plants only drank plain water.

The garden smelled like coffee for ages. I am not sure if we put enough banana peels in! Daddy said that our plants would keep awake all night after all that coffee!

PS That’s MY right hand and right foot in the photo – my parents say no faces allowed.