Blooming Again

After something like 7 years, my cactus bloomed again. Unlike the last time where I only had a single bloom, this time I had 6. One flower came earlier by about a week. The rest of it bloomed later together, all five - picture above. Three set of flowers on two separate cactus bulb.

As far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be any correlation between the month that it bloomed. Seven years ago, it was around August. This time, it was in April. Blooming time though is the same - from night till late morning, lasting only one day.

I wonder when will it bloom again? Such beautiful flowers.

A White Cactus Flower

My family did not plant cacti for their flowers. As a matter of fact, we did not even know that they produce flowers until about a week ago when we had one. A big white gorgeous flower measuring about 3 inches across. It must have been our lucky day. As the morning progressed, the flower began withering. By the following day, it has completely wilted. This seems to suggest that the full bloom must have been at night (we missed that since we did not know), a few hours before the picture above was taken.

Gender Bending My Male Papaya Tree

I am now embarking on an experiment of my own in my backyard. I am trying to get a male papaya plant, which yields no fruit by the way, to produce female flowers so that it can bear fruits. I accidentally came across some blog posts saying that this 'gender conversion' is possible. However, the details are a bit sketchy.

Ginger And Turmeric - The Best That I Have Ever Grown

I am so happy. Since moving them into the shadow of my house in April this year, I now have the healthiest and loveliest ginger and turmeric plants - the best that I have ever grown. The leaves are lusciously green with abundant foliage attached to thick stalks and shoots. And as an added bonus for me, the plants on some pots are beginning to bloom too.

I have been planting ginger and turmeric for about 8 years now after been inspired by a local TV documentary that I saw back then. My success have been mixed previously. Direct sunlight and ginger is actually a bad combination (likewise with turmeric as it is a plant that belongs to the ginger family). But I did not know about this until recently. Previously, I have always assumed wrongly that I had problems with the soil whenever I get ailing looking plants. I tried adding additional fertilizer and this obviously did not help. It is only later that I realized, through my own observation and confirmation from Google searches, that ginger and turmeric must be kept away from direct sunlight.

My wife loves home grown ginger and turmeric. And I like growing them. They are some of the easiest thing that I have ever grown as they do not require much care. The only pests that I can see so far are grasshoppers and garden snails, but that is not something that is unmanageable. I used to plant them in the ground, but these days, I only plant them in pots so that I can move them around easily when the need arise. I only water them like once a day at around noon - lazy me. I also mulch the top soil in the pots with garden clippings to minimize weeding.

I will need to find a new place soon for my ginger and turmeric plants as the sunlight is slowly creeping nearer and nearer towards the house as we head towards the end of the year. The sun swings from the Northern to the Southern sky between the June and December solstice, and then back again from the Southern to the Northern sky between January and May. Some sunlight is already touching the outer and top leaves on some pots at noon.

Turmeric Flowers

Before I started planting them, I did not know that turmeric produces flowers.

I have been fortunate enough to have some flowering turmeric during the last couple of weeks. It is not often that I get a bloom. Sometimes, I do not get any even though the plant has matured and the root is due to be dug up. One has to be patient sometimes I suppose.

Dwindling Number Of Garden Snails

Back in February and March 2013, there were a few blog postings at Ipoh Happenings talking about some extreme levels of solar UV radiation that was bombarding Ipoh back then. The weather in Ipoh has definitely been quite extreme in recent months. I can feel in it my skin while doing my gardening. The day time temperature can be quite unbearable at times. And this can drag on for a number of days, sometimes without any rain to cool us off.

I do wonder though if this excessive UV radiation and extreme heat is taking a toll on the snails in my garden. There seems to be a significant drop in their numbers, although nothing much has changed in my environment. There is still enough shady places for them to hide. I first noticed this back in January 2013. At that time, I could not find any live snail but just some empty snail shells under some shrubs and overgrown weeds. I had a peek at my garden again yesterday, and all I could find was just a single snail, measuring about 2 inches in length. Still a lot of empty snail shells, although the colour of these shells do appear to be fading.

Spicing Up My Garden With Ginger

Mixed Yield

Over the years, my success with growing ginger have been mixed. At times the yield was good. At times, all I got were just skinny ginger roots. And at other times, there was nothing at all - the ginger that I planted just rotted away instead of sprouting.

I have had my suspicion with the pot placement. I grow them in pots instead of the ground, by the way. Pots placed under shadier area seems to produce healthier looking plants with bigger and better ginger roots. For pots placed under direct sunlight, young shoots will just turn yellow and eventually dry up. Or will have leaf stalks that are just about 12 inches in length (when it should be about 2 to 2½ feet) with skinny ginger roots.