New Pond Renewed

It's been more than a year since I've set up my pond. I must say that the first batch of cubed mud that I had bought and used from a local nursery was very disappointing. I am now forced to re-pot all my water plants. It's way more back-breaking than I remember. And this time, I want to provide a good base for my plants, so I am actually mixing my own humic soil/clayey soil/sand mixture, with a base layer of blood and bone meal, and  packets of slow release packets wrapped in small pockets of newspaper. Took me 3 hours yesterday to re-pot 2 large-ish plants and clean out my lily pot. Today, another 4 hours to top up more soil, prune my lotus, top up more soil, dredge out the front of my pond, top up more soil.....

I must say, in spite of the hard work, it's great working in the pond. I'm hip deep in water, splashing around, mud splatters on my hands and clothes, fishes nibbling on my ankles and toes (just like those spa fishes), back aching like mad... but I'm happy.

New pond. New Year.

Happy New Year everybody!

My Old Rooftop - A Nightly Magical Wonderland

I love my old rooftop, especially at night. Cool and windy on most nights, it played host to our BBQs, drinks nights, the occasional family dinners... Mid-Autumn Mooncake Festival was great, because us adults and kids alike would sit around, lighting endless lanterns and placing them all over the place, creating a really wonderful fairyland effect. But even without the lanterns, the garden was magical. Christmas of course was even better...

And with these memories, I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

My Old Rooftop - The Forgotten Difficulties

However, despite all my reminiscing in my previous post, there are clear limitations to a rooftop garden, especially if it's right on top of a building. 

Firstly, it is mostly container gardening. This is fine if the pots are small and manageable, and the plants do not suffer too much from being pot constrained. After 5 years of rooftop gardening and transplanting, there is only that big a pot you can buy, and more importantly, that much strength you have to pull root-bound not-so-mini-trees from pots that are larger than the circumference of your arms put together. 

Secondly, with full day sun on most parts of the roof plus the accompanying wind (leading to hot and dry conditions) and in an extreme opposite, the full force of a tropical monsoon storm (leading to very wet conditions) the requirement for fertilizing and ironically, water is higher than most gardens. And if you provide good fertilizing and water, the plants grow that much faster with all that sun. And the repotting frequency increases that much more. Towards the end of that 5 years, I was repotting different sections of my roof every alternate weekend. By the time I finished repotting all the plants, It was time to repot again from the first section...

Lastly, if one is unable to repot, due to the limitation of size of container, or even the part of the rooftop where it was designed for direct planting, you can see the palms suffering from inadequate soil in the photo below. I even had a potted Coral Tree that each time I repot, would flower beautifully and grow new branches and leaves, but ultimately ended up looking rather sad and stunted, after it grew beyond a size that I could manage in pots. I know, I know, there are plants that do not grow that big etc etc, but unfortunately, I like tropical lush more than the spindly Aussie semi-desert look, or the Zen architectural more-stones-than-plants minimalist look. Ok, I'm biased, I admit it. I do appreciate them styles, really I do. I can even say they are beautiful in their own special way, but my garden should be lush. Lush, lush, lush...

My Old Rooftop - I miss it

I know I've a larger house, a "real" garden, and a much larger pond now (and I really love it here)... but I was sorting through old photos, and looking at my previous penthouse rooftop garden, realized how much I miss it.

Ok, it was unbearably hot from 10am through to 6pm, but it was wonderfully cool and fresh in the mornings (my place used to be near the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve), and cool and windy in the evenings after sunset. Sometimes, if we have a party and stay up there till the wee hours of the morning, it was chilly even.

The view was lovely, and uncluttered, and somehow, even though the space really wasn't that large, the fact that the view stretched out with no immediate walls or buildings at eye level made it seem that much larger, that much more spacious:

I love the sink that I'd designed for the outdoor space, and maybe one day, for a new project in my garden, I'd build another like it.  For now, memory and photos will have to do:

Note the sink itself. It's nothing more than a glazed pot!

Here on the right of this photo, is my old "ready-made" pond. It was with this pond that I'd refined my DIY pond skills to the extent that I can design, build and maintain my current large outdoor pond. This includes experimenting in water pump, water flow and (very low maintenance) biological and mechanical filters. Anyways, just to give you an idea, even though this is an outdoor pond with direct sunlight, I only have to clean out the filter twice a year, and suck out stuff from the bottom of the pond once a year. Water was crystal clear throughout. It's a pity that somehow, in my photo-taking, I seem to have omitted taking a direct photo of the pond. Sigh. It was a nice little pond...

Bye, bye, old rooftop...

Memories - Jiaozi and A Capella

A recent post by PetuniaLee reminded me of the days when I was a poor varsity student overseas flatting with a (mainland) Chinese couple. My best memories with them was when they decided to hold their jiaozi parties. There were endless... really ENDLESS... number of jiaozi. Imagine buying a 5kg bag of plain flour just for the jiaozi skin!!! Everyone would be in the kitchen and each person would have certain jiaozi duties, like one would be preparing the meat/vegetable stuffing, another kneading the dough, another rolling out the skin, another wrapping and sealing the jiaozi pouches, and yet another responsible for boiling and dishing out the jiaozi. Every time jiaozi-making had to slowdown because there was a bottle-neck somewhere along the entire process, people would double up in their duties to smoothen the flow.

Thinking back, we had a whole jiaozi production line going!!!

We loved having these jiaozi parties, especially in winter. With all the activities in the kitchen, and the constant steam coming from the pot of boiling water, we didn't even need to turn on any heater to keep warm! Best part was of course having these piping hot jiaozi dunked in a bowl of vinegar/julienned ginger/chilli powder mixture, and squaffing it all down!! And accompanying it would be a cappella Chinese folk songs, sung by my flatmates (really good semi-operatic voices), their friends, and English songs sung by my friends. And we didn't even need alcohol to have a good party :-)

Ahhh, the simpler times..... the best of times.....

Sick in bed

Uurgghhh! Sick in bed. Got this strange stomach flu-ey thing that makes me feel distended and wanting to throw up. Haiz..... Had soaked some chopped up coconut husk/coir for my worms, but can't do anything about it right now. They have to stay soaked till I get better.....

The Project - Feeding

Waited a full week for the worms to settle down in their new bed before adding stuff to it. A little chopped up watermelon and honeydew rind, which by all accounts are loved by the wormies. Also the shells of 3 eggs that was used to make dinner.

Hope all is well with them, cause I can't see them in the bedding. I tried lifting a few shreds of the newspaper bedding, but I don't see them. I am resisting the urge to disturb the bed (which means disturbing the worms), just to satisfy my curiosity and anxiousness. Patience..... success comes to those who wait.....

Perionyx Excavatus (Malaysian Blue Worm)

The Perionyx Excavatus is what I think I have in my backyard, and is what I have harvested for my wormy condo. It is an epigeic earthworm species. This means that they are found in the upper topsoil layer, which is rich in organic matter. Unlike anecic (upper and lower soil layers) and endogeic (lower soil layer) worms, they do not have permanent burrows, and therefore are most suitable for vermicomposting. They feed primarily on decaying organic matter, and not on soil or mineral matter.


Actually the Perionyx Excavatus is quite beautifully coloured (but I still maintain in an icky wormy sort of way) with an iridescent bluish-purplish sheen. Especially with bright light shining at certain angles. I know that many (especially North American) sites list them as small worms, but at least the ones I've seen can go up to 3 inches. By most accounts, they are capable of fast growth, and very fast reproductive rates. Some sites claim that their reproductive rates are highest among epigeic earthworms suitable for worm farms. By all accounts, they thrive in warmer climates, and become far more temperamental in cooler ones.


Some statistics:

• Ideal temperature range : 21°C to 28°C
• Reproduction rate under ideal conditions: ~ 19-20 young per week
• Time to sexual maturity under ideal conditions: ~ 30-55 days   

The Project - Denuded Backyard

Hahaha, I just happened to look at the patch of soil in my backyard where I had "harvested" my worms for my wormy condo. I didn't realize what a good job I did on removing the earthworms in that patch, cause after the evening/night rain, I can see a good number of mini-humus piles besides worm holes in the soil throughout my backyard, but the patch of soil which I had denuded of earthworms have a smooth, unpock-marked surface. Lesson to learn: One should not be too efficient in removing earthworms out of a single patch of soil. Harvesting should occur more haphazardly over a larger piece of land. Now, I just have to wait for the earthworms to realize that there is unclaimed territory and that they should invade it and make it their own.

More worms

Too much rain, and rescued more worms again this morning. They conveniently went into my fledgeling worm farm.....

The Project - Bedding and those who go to bed

I took one full copy of Today newspaper, tore it into strips like so:

Soaked them into a pail of water (which conveniently came from my dehumidifier, so it is chlorine-less), put them into a colander and dripped dry. Checked on it 5 minutes later, when all dripping ceased, but decided that it was still too wet, so proceeded to hand wring-dry the newspaper instead. Then discovered that wet, wrung dried newspaper is a lot lesser than originally thought, so shredded another copy of Today, and literally rinsed and repeat. So this is what I got:

Since the newspaper was hand-wrung, I had to separate the strips and "fluff" them up to make the bedding comfortable.

Now that it is all ready, who is going to lie on the bed? Hmmm.....

Having been a rescuer of worms, I decided to try getting my own worms out of my garden, instead of buying them from a supplier. Firstly, in the interests of cost, secondly, having seen the size of some of the worms I had rescued, I am convinced that somehow, my backyard seem to have a good solid colony of worms. Further research seems to indicate that I have Perionyx Excavatus (Malaysian Blues). They have a fascinating purplish-bluish sheen (in a icky-yucky sort of way) under a beam of light that fits the description, and are epigeic, as they seem to only like occupying the top 3 inches of my backyard soil. Anyway, I figure that if I got it wrong, and the worms don't work out, I can always go buy "real" worms later.

Anyway, here is what I dug out:

Since in theory, worm populations double every month under ideal conditions, I figured that I would not need to depopulate my backyard in an attempt to fill my worm farm. I got about 30-40 worms, and decided that that will do for starters.

The Project - Drilling

I had bought 6 of the stackable containers. With all the research I did on the internet, good ventilation was a requirement, not to mention having enough holes for the worms to pass through from one container to the next. So... I drilled, and drilled and drilled... 9x6 holes per container plus 2 superlarge holes at the ends... plus one hole for a tap... that adds up to 225 holes at one go. Wow. Lucky I did not calculate this at the start, cause its actually more daunting when I am writing this than when I only had The Project in my head.

Anyways, this is what is looks like:

The 2 round net-like things at the end is an improvisation. I could not find the white round, plastic ventilation discs that are frequently found at the back of shoe cabinets, so I got sink drainers instead, and siliconed then onto the container.

This is a closer look at it:

And here it everything nicely stacked up:

The Project - Hunting

Hunting for the ideal container for The Project proved a little tougher than I had anticipated. I had thought that a simple trip down to Ikea would provide lots of choice, but little did I know.....

My requirement for a cost effective, stackable container which is worm (escape artist) proof, proved challenging. My hunt went through a spectrum of shops as diverse as Ikea to mom-and-pop sundry shops to hypermarkets, and finally ended up in Toa Payoh Industrial Park, at the Toyogo outlet.

Finally:

Tada!

Birth of The Project

I have been toying with the idea of vermicomposting for a long time, but hadn't cooked up enough courage to deal with worms until recently. But after my experience as a (reluctant) worm rescuer, the idea of a vermi-compost bin grew and gnawed (now why did I use this word) within me. I had read and seen of home-made compost bins (too small) and commercial compost bins (too expensive). I toyed with getting semi-commercial ones. You know, the ones that are designed and modified at home, but sold with a profit margin. Somehow I could not get used to the idea of sticking my hands into the bottom of a rubbish bin full of compost, not knowing whether any worms are going to fall onto my hands. I tried to sell myself the idea, even consulting members of GCS who have bought that design, but could not get over the goosebumps. Days grew into weeks, weeks into months. And somehow, it all resulted in The Project.

Worms

With the huge amount of rain that we have been getting here in the central-north area, my earthworms are literally getting washed out of the ground and planters. In the mornings I see them hiding below my garden slippers and in leftover wet patches on the ground. Having seen their predecessors in dried format (coming back after work), I was moved to "rescue" them. With trowels in both hands, I try to gently pick them up and drop them back to soil safety. After much trial and error (and half-shrieks, hops, skips and goose-pimples on my side; not to mention lots of dodging, speed crawling, wriggling, writhing, and the occasional mash-up on the worms' side), I now am semi-comfortable with them. Semi. Really.