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.