Feathered Friends --- Outdoor Activity Edition

Beside providing premium mixed seed for my feathered friends, I also supplement them with fresh veggies and protein. Usually I give them corn and some greens like my homegrown kale, green beans and oregano, as well as broccoli, carrot, peas, and mung bean sprouts I buy from the market. 

Occasionally I give them minced apples, pears and grapes. But, they don't seem to really like them since fruit contains a lot of water which my birds, especially the budgies, consume very minimally or not at all.

I also let them play outside their cage every day, so they can play and eat together, hop around the metal perch.

I used to sunbathe them every morning for about 30 minutes to keep them healthy. And that means I bring them to the rooftop where my container garden is located. So during this time I sometimes take them out to play around the plants. Just enough to let them enjoy being in the nature and not always in  confinement.

But I had my lessons to be careful when I do this since my bird almost flew away. 

It's scary to even think about it...

Because even though they are tamed, but in the inside they are still wild birds who will run away back to the wild when given the chance.

So I have to make sure that I have the tips of their feather trimmed from time to time.

Though it looks cruel but better for their safety.

The only one I expose much to the garden is Elmo-the lovebird. Almost every day I will take him with me to the garden when I water the plants. I will let him perch on my shoulder during that time. But he will always climb up to play under the first layer of my straw hat as soon as I put the hats on. I like to double the hat, and he seems to be very delighted running round the bottom layer of the hat while I work. He's such a cutie!

When his flying feathers have regrown I decided not to trim them because I believe that he's tamed and bonded with me already. So I try to test him from time to time by bringing him with me to the garden, so he will get familiar with the house and the surrounding and make it his permanent home. Inside the house he never tries to escape but usually if I take him to play in my bedroom I will always close the window because I don't want him to be tempted, since there's a bird shop next door where he could listen to all the chatters of his kinds.

And then one day at the garden, he might be startled when I fix the position of my hats that he flew away and down to my neighbor's rooftop. 

When I jumped across the wall to pick him up he flew again to a quite long distance but he stopped because there's a wall against him. Thank God he didn't flew down the 3rd floor! I couldn't imagine how he will end up! Lesson learned!  

                             

Planting PEANUT -- Green Manure

I am still in the stage of experimenting with different kinds of plants. This time I am planting peanut. More for the green manure than the nuts.

I am actually trying to find different kinds of ways to improve my soil beside using my own liquid enzyme and compost.

It's one of the sustainable ways to improve our soil from time to time. 

Actually, I want to plant clover to fix the nitrogen in the soil but I should find something locally, otherwise, I have to import  the seed. 

Thus, peanut is one alternative for me at this moment. 

And yes, this is still an experiment for me. 

I started planting about 2 months ago and so far so good, they are growing prolifically in the containers.

The ones we planted at one of the bed at our Church's front yard for the Youths Gardening Project are also growing well. I hope we will have a good harvest in another 1 month, if the Lord's willing.

  

I plant some here together with 2 new Amaryllis plants.

And more in this bed where I used to plant eggplants, but now I use it for some different plants like peanuts, rose and sugar canes plus some oregano to deter pests.

PIZZA PARTAY...

Pizza Party is always a great way to spend time with family. But recently I've found that pizza making with some nieces is even more fun! Here's the proof of how fun it could  be to fold and throw the dough onto the marble table, giggling throughout the process and shaping it as we like. 

As for the dough, I still use the recipe from Fern. I like her recipe and haven't found a better one so far. I also made my own tomato paste from fresh tomatoes.

Updates from My Rooftop Container Garden -- August 2015

It will be two year of gardening for me in October. My garden keeps expanding. My rooftop garden has become a little haven for me. I usually spend hours there after sunset; watering, fertilizing, weeding, pruning, and sweeping the floor off dried leaves and dirt.

My mango trees are quite productive this year. To my surprise they produce quiet a lot of fruit though they're planted in containers.  I heard mango tree produces fruit thrice a year. This is my Harum Manis manggo tree, and it's fruiting for the third round this year. As for my Nam Dok Mai Mango Tree, it's also flowering for the third round now. I just had my last Nam Dok Mai manggo this morning. All 14 fruit from the second round crop are all satisfying! They're as sweet as honey!

This is my paddy  chili plant. It was an aphid-infested -frail-little plant that I had repotted to a size-4 container a couple months ago. I'm so happy that it's rejuvenated and it's growing well now! 
Lesson learned: never underestimate a sick and frail plant. If you take a good care of it, it will somehow have a reason to live!

My pepper plant suffered a lot from Aphids last year. Basil, marigold and even garlic did not really help to deter them, but this year, oregano proved to be a good companion plant for it. I sometimes cut the leaves and spread them around the base of the pepper tree with hope that the smell will deter pests, and it indeed worked! 

I think the more I garden, the more I learn the rhythm and discipline in doing the work, the anticipation of the harvest, and the joy of obtaining the yields itself, as well as to surrender everything to the Creator. It's a bitter-sweet experience.
Not to mention the so many challenges gardeners and farmers face nowadays; for sometime now, many parts of Indonesia are facing drought from El Nino effect, hectares of crops are facing failure due to lack of water. Though in my city we still get some rain, but it doesn't mean we are free of challenges. About a week or two ago, we had rain and hail here in another neighborhood in this city. The hail was the size of marbles. Then on the other occasions we had windstorm which tumbled my plants down, and caused my juvenile mangoes to fall out of the tree. 

Here are flowers I propagated by cuttings.

Still the joy of gardening is tremendous!

I've been enjoying propagating plants by cuttings. It's so great that we can multiply plants without spending money for the seedlings at all!

My Passiflora Edulis have grown well, though I have minor problem with the plant on the left. The leaves of the plant have turned yellow for sometime, I have tried to apply some epsom salt but it didn't really work. Maybe I need to repot it to a bigger pot and add more organic matter so it will have a better drainage. 

Here is my Okra plant, since I'm still learning 
how to best enjoy okra with no slime, I decided to harvest the seed.

This is my pandanus plant. A church friend gave me a cutting of it which has grown into this crowded shrub in just a couple of months! I have even repotted a couple of cuttings and given one cutting to be adopted by another church friend! 

These are my peanut plants! I plant them more for the green manure than the peanuts! I want to fix the nitrogen in the soil. Coincidentally, I got these peanut seeds from a friend. Some of them were ready to sprout. So it didn't take long for them to sprout. They have even started to bloom the other day.

These are 2 varieties of sugarcane from my friend's organic garden. We'll see if they can grow well in containers.

Harvest Nam Dok Mai Mango

Nothing can compare to a fully-ripened, organic-grown fruit! 

I am very satisfied with my Nam Dok Mai Mango tree! This is it's first debut and it has born 14 fruits! I have harvested 4 of them so far. And they are all satisfactorily sweet and juicy!

In my previous post on my Nam Dok Mai Mango Tree I said that my tree suffers from leaf gall midge disease, which was contracted while it was still in the nursery. Midges are very small flies in 1-2 mm in length. They lay eggs into the tissue of young leaves, leaving a small reddish spot which becomes swollen and soft, where the gall formation begins within 7 days and attains a diameter of 3-4 mm. Adults usually emerge from the underside of the leaf, leaving the pupal skin protruding from the emergence hole. The galls on the mango leaves will result in reduced photosynthesis, leading to leaf drop and lowered fruit production. Younger trees may die while older trees fail to recover normal growth after repeated attack. There are no examples of eradication of the insect anywhere in the world.

I experimented with my only organic way of eradicating this pest. It's only by poking the wart-like galls and then using a sharp object, usually my shears, I pierce through the spot, leaving a small hole.

My main purpose is to kill the insect in the pupal stage in order to prevent it from growing mature and infesting the whole tree. And so far I am successful! Of course this wouldn't be easy for mango trees grown in ground, as it can reach heights of 6 m or more but for container-grown trees this way is sufficient.

I don't encase the fruit with plastic bag this time, and so far my mango fruit are growing healthy and not attacked by fruit flies.