New Year Wish and A "Bud-dy" Day!

Hi everyone, here's wishing,

A Happy New Year and a great 2011! Wishing all of you, good health, happiness, laughter, love and of course, prosperity! And may your garden blooms and shine throughout the year!  

Pretty Orchid Blooms

Look at the beautiful blooms of these orchids. I do not know the names! These beauties are not mine, they belong to my sister, who resides in Ipoh. She loves orchids and has been growing them for several years now.

Now, this little one belongs to me! I only have one orchid plant, because I have no luck with orchids. They don't seem to bloom for me. I have bought some plants over the years, and they bloom only once or some never at all and finally wilted away. This is the only one that survived. For the past few years, this plant has only bloom once a year!  But then this year, surprisingly, it has bloomed not once, but thrice. I have not bothered with any fertilisers at all for the past two years, as I have sort of given up on this plant! This little plant has remain little, it has not grown at all! Maybe this is a dwarf orchid plant?? No idea! Is there such thing as a dwarf orchid plant? My sister's orchids are all very tall!

I love the colour, it is a lovely shade of orange and looks very striking and pretty. I hang this little pot in between my two hanging pots of bushy ferns, and it makes a very beautiful contrast among the two greens.

What is the name of this orchid?  I've got no idea!

Happy Gardening !

Am I called Acerola???

Can anyone tell me please, what is the name of this fruit?  I saw this fruit tree at a roadside coffee shop in Ipoh. The cute, pretty fruit caught my eye! It looks like a miniature apple. The fruit is green when young, and change to red when ripen and then very dark maroon when mature.  According to an Indian uncle who sells food at this coffee shop, this fruit can be eaten but he does not know its name, nobody does!  

To prove that it  can be eaten and is not poisonous, he ate one. He says that nobody likes the fruit as it is sour, he is the only one consuming it. Sometimes, he wife uses this fruit for cooking replacing the asam jawa. My sisters and myself tried this fruit, and find that it is quite nice with a sour taste but definitely not as sour as my belimbing! We cut off some stems, courtesy from the kind uncle, and took them home to try our luck at propagating these.

I did a search on the web, and found that it is called Acerola or Barbados Cherry. Do any of you have this plant? Is it  Acerola Cherry? If it is, then the good news is, it is loaded with Vitamin C. 

On the way back from Ipoh, at the Sg Buloh resthouse, we saw about five of these plants growing by the side of the road with some fruits! They are however much smaller that the one above. I guess that some of you probably know and familiar about this fruit plant. If you do, please enlighten me! Thank you!

Happy Gardening !

French Beans, Ladies Fingers and Belimbing Fruit

My french beans are flowering and there's two tiny beans growing!

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Harvesting The Ladies Fingers ! I just love these plants, they are really easy to grow and are fast producing too!

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My ever favourite, belimbing tree! More fruits, my sis came to stay for a week and took back with her a bag of belimbing fruits, there's more on the tree!

Happy Gardening !

Beyond Gardening 2!

Echinodorus Cordifolius Ovalis

Wow, the name is a mouthful! I love this plant. It is very easy to grow, I did not use any fertiliser, I guess they get it from the natural organic fish fertiliser in the little mini pond! This plant can be found in most nurseries. 

One of my 'mini-pond' with some goldfish

"Echinodorus cordifolius "Ovalis" is a small, orbiculate "sword" plant whose low, wide growth makes it suitable for small aquariums. A nutritious bottom promotes growth, and if the leaves turn light this indicates a shortage of micro-nutrients. The plant forms stems which (unlike most other "sword" plants) bend down towards the bottom and form their own adventive plants. It is hardy and easy for both beginners and the more experienced". That is the description I got from the internet.

But to me this is not a small plant, it can grow as high as about 5 feet and I really like the flowers. The flowers are about the size of a 50cent coin, white in colour, papery thin and extremely dainty and lovely! But these flowers are short-lived, they can last about 2 days and will wilt and dry off. The flowers grow along the long stem that grows from the centre of the plant.  There can be many 'tiers' of flowers along this long stem.  Plantlets (new small daughter plants) will develop from the nodes of this 'tier', and can be propagated by cutting just below the plantlets. However when grown permanently submersed in the aquarium, most species will not flower. 

I have two of this plants outside my house and two small ones in the aquarium which I posted here, earlier on.

I got one small plantlet from my neighbour several years ago and it has been growing well and flourish and over the years I have given many small plantlets to my sisters and friends. If you have a pond in your garden, this would be the ideal plant.

Another one of the 'mini-pond' with some Guppies and Red Mollies.

Close-up picture of the leaves.

The tip of the long stem with flower buds

The beautiful, white and dainty flowers fully bloomed

Another photo of the lovely flower

More pictures!

More pictures!

The small plantlet. The flowers has wilted and new leaves are growing. To propagate, just cut below the plantlets.

Some cute Goldfish

Another picture of the 'mini-pond' with Guppies and Red Mollies.

Guppies and Red Mollies

A heavily pregnant Guppy!

This post is for Stephanie of Steph's Green Space, who has asked me before about this plant. (Stephanie, I was waiting for the flowers to grow and bloom to show you the beauty of the flowers!) and also to Autumn Belle of My Nice Garden. Autumn Belle, there were four pregnant guppies, one has already given birth, now waiting for the other three. The picture above shows one of the pregnant guppy. When you buy guppies, make sure you buy more females than males!)

Happy Gardening !

A Day of Blooms

Happy Gardening !