Count Your Blessings!

With love and passion, everyone can have a nice garden...Elaine Yim

Count Your Blessings!
Count The Garden By The Flowers, Never By The Leaves That Fall.
Count Your Life With Smiles And Not The Tears That Roll.
..... Author unknown.

Knowing me, Knowing you..... Aha.....!

Notice Board

Malaysian Flora USDA Zone 11
Welcome to our exotic world of everlasting summers and tropical rainforests!

Thursday, August 30, 2012

How to grow common ginger from store bought rhizomes

1. Common Ginger sprouts

I am growing common ginger (Zingiber officinale) from store bought rhizomes. I use old ginger, meaning matured ginger that has been stored for some time, hence store bought rhizomes will be just fine. Freshly dug out rhizomes do not sprout as readily.


Saturday, August 25, 2012

How to grow galangal (Alpinia galanga) from store bought rhizomes

1. A hand of galangal rhizome


Galangal is used as a herb cum spice in Southeast Asian cuisine, particularly in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand. Galangal is an ingredient in chicken and fish curry dishes and also my favourite Hari Raya delicacy, the rendang. The Chinese call it "blue ginger" while in Malay, it is "galangal" or "lengkuas".

As it is readily available at any wet market in this region, we are never short of galangal. We also keep stock of galangal rhizomes in the refrigerator, ready to be used whenever the need arises.

Do you know that galangal can grow into a beautiful plant with showy foliage?
Even if you don't intent to harvest galangal for cooking, you can grow galangal plants just for their beautiful and cool-looking foliage. The whole plant is mildly aromatic. This is a cheap and low maintenance plant. Today I'll show you how to grow galangal from store-bought rhizomes.

This post is dedicated to Ash of Houris in the Garden blog. She's a new blogger, hence do visit her blog to give her your encouragement. Her enthusiasm and diligence in maintaining a little "garden by the window" has inspired me to blog on. Sometimes you can see and appreciate many things from a fresh perspective.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Garden Petunias - A Colourful Parade

1
I adore petunias for their lovely, lovely flowers. I have grown them and loved them a lot. Now I without their sweet presence because I have no more place to hang them! but, but, but ...

...  I still buy them whether intentionally or on impulse, especially during festive seasons to give an instant flash of colour to my front garden. I certainly will not hesitate to recommend them for my friends and readers who are busy decorating for Hari Raya Aidil Fitri (Eid ul-Fitr) this month.

The photos here are all taken at Floria 2011.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Egyptian Star Cluster - The Colourful, Pretty Pentas

1. Pentas lanceolata 'Light Purple'
I love pentas because I can select from a variety of different colours or have them all.
They brighten up my garden and the pretty little flowers attract butterflies and bees.


LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin