Auntie Lian

She is a tireless volunteer who takes care of the vegetable growing area. At over seventy years old she is such a charming lady who quietly and calmly goes about doing what is needed for the vege garden. She has such a sense of humour too. Her love for gardening came about cos' she had lived in a kampong growing vegetables in this part of Hougang for many years before shifting to a HDB flat. So living near the CG has given her a chance to rekindle that love for growing again.

Pomegranate Tree's a Fruiting

This was planted about one and a half year ago. Trimmed the leaves and branches a couple of times and I think my neighbour did add some fruiting fertilizer recently.

Mini Cucumber

My neighbour germinated the seeds and another volunteer helped her to plant them in the CG.

It has been fruiting quite a number of times and the cucumbers are the mini variety ... so cute looking.

Purple Brinjals

The elderly lady loves to eat brinjals and so she grows them white. But this time she grows the purple variety. She believes that eating brinjal is good for the joints. I suspect that for the elderly ladies, any fruiting vegetable that gives off the mucilaginous substance ..... when eaten ... they believe .... would help the joints. But I don't like eating them .... LOL

Roses in the CG

I had always thought that it was difficult to grow roses in Singapore. I had spent sometime in my childhood watching an uncle of mine trying to grow roses in his planter beds in a terrace house. Roses bought during those years were not cheap and I heard that he was willing to pay $50 for a pot of rose. I remember he bought many pots and than planted them into his planter beds and they all died a slow death.

Then I read about a GCS member being able to grow roses at her balcony and then another member was growing them in her office garden in pots. And gosh the roses shown during the sharing session on the forum when the members visited nurseries .... Wow!

I just got inspired and was willing to try my hands at growing them.

I read up a blog on growing roses from a rose expert. This was to get my potting mix as close to a well drained soil as possible. Then I got cuttings from a forum friend who grew roses .... and then .... wala .....

Here are the pics .....

Flowering Longan Tree

I have been wondering for the longest time how to get the tree to flower and fruit. There was a thread on GCS on getting fruit trees to flower and some of the suggestions were pretty hilarious.

About a month back I found the tree sort of messy and just trimmed off some branches and leaves. I just poured some garbage enzyme around the ground where the stem grows. With the rains recently, I happened to check on the tree again and realized that it has flowers. Oh ... such happiness and I realized that I don't need to wait for the tree to grow two stories high before I can get flowers and then fruits. On examining the leaves of the tree .... I think it looks like the Ping Pong Longan Tree ..... which means this tree is going to give the CG lots of fruits throughout the year .... Oh such happiness again!

Fruiting Melon Fence

The melon vines are growing and I've controlled the snail population by throwing snail pellets onto the soil. So now the leaves grow lush and the flowers are out.
I've got the baby melons you see below and the largest one was spotted by one of my CG volunteers. They have sharp eyes for fruiting vines :-)





Hopefully and very soon this will grow a little bigger and when it turns yellow .... it's time for harvest. This would be the first Xiang Gua in the CG.