Planting Sugar Cane in Container

When I visited my friend's organic farm about a month ago, I was sent home with some Okra, passion fruit and two stalks of sugar canes(of different varieties). I purposely asked for it since I want to try to plant sugar cane in container. So he made sure that the stalks has suckers sprouted from its knuckles/joints.

There are some suggested ways of how to plant sugar cane: 

1)You can cut the stalks in between the joint/ knuckles and plant each knuckles horizontally. 2)You can also plant the stalk by sticking it right into the soil/ container (vertically) 3)and you may also soak the stalk in the water for a week or two to root first.

As for me, I like to make things simple. So I just stick them into a big container which I used to plant eggplants. And I follow the progress every week. Apparently, I see some signs of growth as the suckers grow taller and after a month or so I can see small roots poking out from the bottom of each sucker. Well, it seems that the time for re-potting will come soon... Happy Gardening Y'all !

Planting Cucumber

Cucumber is one of the vegetable plants that fascinated me much in the process of planting. My first cuke plant is Cucumber Marketer. It started to bloom about twenty male flowers for about a week or so before the female flowers came out.

At first it sets in only one female flower a day and after about a week, two or three.

First day of blooming - Female Flower

Both Male and Female flowers' prime is only a day. It means a day to produce pollen for the male flowers and a day up for a pollination for the female flowers. If we miss it, it will be too late as it withers and falls.

I had hand-pollinated at least 18 female cukes and at first it seemes that they're starting to swell up but then after a while I noticed that they stopped growing, especially after getting soaked from a downpour or suffered from a sun-scorching day. I then started to move them to a shade during the scorching noon and afternoon in order to protect the pollinated female flowers and the leaves from getting sunburnt.

One day as I was going to pollinate a female flower,  I found this one survived, but only this one which was growing... fast. In days it got this big.

So what happened with the others...?

The growth stalled and they're getting yellow―immaturely.

 And sadly I had to remove them...

 I harvested the cuke after it got about 13 cm long and about 6 cm wide.

It's stout and  fleshy with few seeds but the size and form was not like the one shown in the seeds catalog which is longer and not as stumpy as this was. The taste was a bit bland and not as sweet and crunchy as the local breed. I wonder if it's a little too ripe as I had already seen a little crack on the lower skin.

After several days after the harvest, I got some new blooms and had them pollinated but again only one got succeeded. I wonder why I can't have several cukes succeededly pollinated at the same time? Does the plant automatically abort other baby cukes because it has not enough energy for all of them since I plant it  in  a 4 gallons container? (shoulders shrugged and eyes rolled)

Watermelon Radish Stirfry

I found some watermelon radish at the supermarket and I couldn't wait to try it at home. It's the first time I saw it here, I think it's locally grown now. The inside is beautifully pink with sweet taste and crisp texture. It's also quite juicy. No wonder they called it watermelon! 

I am trying to propagate it using the top cut by leaving about 1 cm of the meat and leaves. (Will update how it goes)

Recipe :
1 whole big-size watermelon radish, skinned and julienned
2 cloves of garlic, minced
250 gram chicken breast, diced
a handful of cilantro, coarsely minced
Vegetable oil for stirfrying 
3-4 cups of water
salt

How to:

1) Sauté garlic til fragrant. stir in chicken breast, stir. 
2) Add radish, finely stir until fragrant.
3) Add water. 
4) Cooked until it's tender.
5) Throw in cilantro and salt. Serve.

Propagating Cilantro from the roots

Since I started gardening a month ago, I learned a lot from other fellow gardeners and my own experience; mostly from my ignorance. It's like the shout-out "Welcome to the real world!" There's some successes and also failures in both germinating and propagating seeds. I have even started to experience and handled my mango plant which is infested with anthracnose and mealy bugs. There's excitement, hope and frustration at one or the other time, but most of all it has been a positive experience for me. I am glad to have failed, thus I can learn from my mistakes.

Last week, I bought some fresh cilantro from a wet market on my way home from sending-off my niece to her school. Upon arriving home, I chopped the leaves off and kept them in a box in the fridge, and I took the roots and put them in a cup of tap water overnight in an effort to extend it before I had time to plant it in the soil. The next day they started to grow new leaves, and after 3 days the new leaves had grown to approximately 2 cm, but then I noticed that the roots were getting flaccid and the water got a little forthy. I was very intriqued of what had caused it. Was it the rainwater I added to the tap water after 2 days? Well, just like what I did to save my tomato plants, I decided to go ahead and transfered them into the soil and placed the container at the rooftop along with my other plants. I thought, in this way it will save the roots... and they would start to grow... but I learned another lesson...

The next day, I noticed that it's not growing as I had expected, but the leaves were starting to wither and turned flabby. At first I thought it was probably the Sun being too scorching during daytime, so I decided to move it inside in the evening. Later that night, out of curiosity, I dug out the roots and sure enough the roots began to rot and turned to mush.

5th Grade Science : Roots are very important as it is the mouth of the plant and it also anchor the plant in place. Thus, the existing symptoms showed that there's something wrong with the roots that made it slowly dying off. I wasn't sure of what had caused it. I thought it was the chlorinated and fluoridated tap water, which is usually avoided by most organic gardeners. But then I found that Cilantro roots can rot if it is over-watered.  So it must be because  I transitioned it in the water for several days, which had apparently caused the roots to rot.

Whatever it is, I am not going to let it happen anymore. Yesterday, I bought some fresh cilantro, so I could propagate the roots again. And this time I replanted them in the pots right away! They started to grow!