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.

Harvesting Watermelon

When my watermelons were half-way growing, the trees were attacked by aphids. Soon, they were overcome by it and succumbed as you can see from below image. The leaves were dried up as the result and I had to salvage the fruits. I was hoping that they're mature enough to be picked.

When I was about to picked the watermelons, I stumbled upon this rotting fruit. The culprit must be the aphids since I saw some of them near the openings.

I was relieved to find 4 watermelons were still in good condition. They are not very big in size, only around half kg each.

 But I was very pleased to find that 3 of them were mature and sweet! I was a bit surprised that I had two varieties here, the yellow and orange flesh. I saved the seeds for future planting.

Updates From My Rooftop Container Garden, June 2015

I'm planning to be more focused on planting vegetables next seasons in the effort to harvest more for daily needs. I've been too focused on planting fruit trees like citrus, pineapple, soursop and grapes, and some ornamental plants, thus, have quite neglected vegetable plants. It's good to plant shrubs and ornamental plants in your garden as they give some aesthetic touch to it but you need to once in a while retreated back to your goals and do some evaluation. You need to trace how you have been doing and what needs to be done in order to achieve your goals. Like in my case, my main goal is to have a kitchen garden and a container orchard.

 So far, I have 2 varieties of mango trees, 1 longan, 3 lemons, 5 limes, 4 kumquats, 1 kaffir lime, 3 soursops, 2 papayas and about 18 new pineapple trees I planted from the crowns, ratoons and suckers of my 3 previous trees. As for herbs and medicinal plants, I have lemongrass, white and red ginger, galangal, sweet and red basil, oregano, parsley, pandan leaves, curry leaves trees, red and yellow betel, and I also plant onion and garlic seasonally. Except for that I have some roses, jasmine, false lavender, ice plant, cactus, moringa, and some other ornamental plants like aglaonema, coleous, mother in law tongue, aloe vera, palm trees and a few more. These ornamental plants have grown so much that I keep re-potting and all these have taken away my attention for a while. 

The bean plant I planted last season have gone through their prime.  From 4 plants, only 1 remained. It still bears fruit but very little since the weather has grown hotter in the summer and rainfall is low. I'll soon discard it and rotate it with another plant. 

Oregano

Kaempferia Galanga

For 2-3 planting seasons I haven't planted any tomato plants. This spring, I germinated Marizold and Tobolks tomatoes but they failed to grow, and a couple of new seedlings of Marizold Tomatoes that remained were eaten by either birds or insects. So, no tomatoes for this season. 

After harvesting some swiss chard leaves, the plant died. At the moment I have 6 Kale plants producing and 3 plants of swiss chard. I decided to try planting okras this season. 3 from 4 seedlings I re-potted have died, 1 that remains are blooming and fruiting. I have harvested a batch and it's now still growing new bulbs.

       

Watermelon is one of my favorite fruit. I eat a lot of them in Summer. Last year I planted sugar baby from the seeds I bought from America, but this season I planted yellow-flesh watermelon from the seeds I saved myself from the market-bought watermelon, and it grows well and bears fruits. Only, recently the leaves are heavily infested by aphids and many leaves dried up. I am a little worried since there are some watermelons growing and not fully ripe yet. Hope the new leaves will come out again to uphold these fruits.

What about you? What are you planting last and this season?

How To Plant Mango From Seed

Most people nowadays prefer grafted fruit trees as it saves them from a lot of troubles and heartache, and takes less time to start 

yielding fruit. That makes sense since some fruit seeds call for a special pre-planting process, such as stratification process on berries or grapes, and they can take as long as 3-15 years before it sets fruit.

However, if you are a-curious-type of person, you may want to experiment with planting fruit by seeds. You may also do it just for the sake of gaining knowledge or just for fun. 

So, go ahead and check out the steps below! This may be a good school experiment for children too.

Steps to plant mango from seed:

1. First of all choose a mature mango fruit of any kind. After you eat the flesh, Clean the seed from the flesh adhering to the seed, wash it with running water and dry it with a napkin. Let the seed sits near the windowsill or a warm area of the house to dry for around 
2 weeks.

2. After the seed is dry, crack open the seed carefully 

to make a big enough crevice or opening. 

3. Then, soak the seed along with the outer skin that 

you have cracked open or you may release the kernel 

from the outer skin and soak it overnight.

4. You may plant the seed that you've soaked overnight in a soil mix directly or you may release the kernel from the outer skin first before you plant the kernel.

5. And within a week or two, the seedling may come out.

6. After it has set several leaves or as high as 15-20 cm, you can transplant it to it's permanent home.