My DIY Home Garden in Malaysia - GBBD July 2012

1.

Here's my lineup for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - July 2012. First I have Hibiscus rosa-sinensis double flower variety. This vermillion red colour is very striking.

My DIY Home Garden in Malaysia - GBBD March 2012

1. Native Plant - Red Ixora

Today, for Bloggers Bloom Day - March 2012, here are some blooming flowers from my DIY home garden in Malaysia.

First in the line-up is my teenage (more than 10 years old) Ixora plant, butterflies big and small love this plant.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - GBBD Nov 2011

1. Pentas

Here's my lineup for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - November 2011.  Currently I am still trying to familiarise myself with Bloggers New Interface. Yours truly still prefer using the good old Google Dashboard but I know the following:

a) You can click any one of the 19 photos in this post to see the full slides layout view, or
b) To view my blog in Blogger Dynamic Views (Sidebar / Classic / Flipcard / Magazine / Mosaic / Snapshort / Timeslide), type the "view" beside my URL as follows:

http://www.mynicegarden.com/view/

Note: If you are using an old computer with earlier versions of operating systems that does not allow you to upgrade to Internet Explorer 9, you may experience problems opening pages and viewing Blogger blogs. You can download Google Chrome for FREE. The pages load quite fast and the screen is wider.

GBBD June 2011

1. My Nong Nooch Vine (Petraeovited wolfei)

- Creamy white blooms protruding out of the yellow bracts.

It was love at first sight when I first saw the Wolfei vine at the Secret Garden of 1-Utama. I waited almost 2 years before I found the sapling at a nursery in Sg Buloh. It is a native plant of Malaysia.

My 2009 post about this plant is here. 

“GBBD June 2011, a copyrighted post, was written for My Nice Garden blog by Autumn Belle @ http://www.mynicegarden.com/ on June 15th, 2011.

GBBD Oct 2010

Today is Garden Bloggers Bloom Day for October 2010, the time of the month where we get to show off what's blooming in our gardens. So, what are you waiting for? Let's head over to May Dreams Garden and join in the fun with Carol!

It has been raining almost everyday here for the past week or so. My Tunera ulmifolia yellow alder was completely drenched. Just look at those thin, delicate petals.

However, our weather has suddenly turned very hot today.

My pomegranate is ready to be harvested. This time I'll leave it on the tree because I want to see its bottom split open. Dad used to tell me that when a pomegranate fruit splits open it signifiies happiness and a smiling face.

My yellow hibiscus flower has a 'dirty look' because of rain splash.

I was overjoyed to see this tiny chili flower because I have been hoping to get some chilis from these plants which I had grown from some seeds I saved from the chilis I used in my cooking. But so far, no luck yet. Is there such a thing as male chili flowers?

Chili flowers always droop downwards, so I push up this beauty just to get a shot. I think the stamens in the centre look like purple diamonds. I wonder if jewellery designers get some of their inspiration from the chili flower?

Muraya paniculata flowers emit a very strong and nice perfume.

“GBBD Oct 2010”, a copyrighted post, was written for My Nice Garden blog by Autumn Belle @ http://www.mynicegarden.com/ on October 15th, 2010.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
.....Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), the only British Prime Minister with a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Sometimes I am amazed at what a weak vine can do. Just look at this Clitoria ternatea (butterfly pea) plant. Without support it can't even stand on its own but within a few months, it had managed to scale to the peak of my Lipstick Palm!

Hypolimnas bolina jacintha

Even butterflies like my butterfly pea plant.

I wonder if anyone knows the name of this butterfly?

The butterfly has been identified as Hypolimnas bolina jacintha aka Blue Moon Butterfly, Common Eggfly.

Caterpillar crawling, ouch! ouch! ouch! ..... This extremely hairy and prickly little fella can move very fast. It is taking a brisk walk going round and round my flower pot. It is also giving me some goose pimples. A few of them have finished up my lavender and blue Angelonia plants.

Angels? Definitely they are not!

 Hopefully, the cuttings I saved from the bare cut branches will sprout some shoots.

At the moment, this is still classified as a UFO (unidentified flowering object) in my garden. I just love its frosty pale green leaves. Hopefully it will flower again in December so that I can pretend that it is snowing here.

This Hibiscus Rosa-sinensis double petaled variety is full of surprises. The unopened buds are yellowish in colour but the blooms are a pale pink.

My Sansevieria trifasciata has started to bloom. I consider this a foliage plant so it makes me very happy when it starts to flower. The flowers have fragrance and last for a few days.

It has many common names which include Mother-in-law's Tongue, Snake Plant and Sharp Tongue. It's Chinese name is hǔwěilán (虎尾兰), meaning tiger's tail orchid. In Malay, it is called, "Pokok Lidah Jin" meaning gennie's tongue.

Because the leaves look like sharp blades, we do not place it inside the home. My late dad had always advised me to keep it outside the house or put it near the gate to ward of evil. He said the leaves resemble a sword that the masters use for ghost-busting and driving away evil spirits and charms. You can say that I have this plant as a fengshui protection. My dad gave it to me.

Recently a neighbour asked me for some leaves which he would make medicinal herbal drinks or soups. Frankly speaking, I have never tried consuming it yet, neither have I ever heard that the leaves can be eaten, so I told him to be careful but he was adamant that it was the correct plant as the leaves have a yellow edge.

This is the result of my second attempt at growing the highlands wild sunflower from seeds given by a friend. My Miniature Sunflowers post link is here. I have followed the advice of my commenters and placed the pot under full sun from germination to blooming stage. I think the solar energy helped a lot even during this period of rainy weather and cloudy days. Here's my sunflower's new vital statistics:

Height = 2 ft (60cm)
Sunflower head diameter = 9 cm, centre = 3 cm
Stems = 0.5 cm thick.

This is an improvement from my first attempt. Now the flowers look more like sunflowers.

This is my Cat Whiskers plant with purple flowers. The white flower variety is easier to grow and more hardy. I am now trying to propagate some of these from stem cuttings.

To participate and/or view what other gardeners have for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - October 2010, please visit Carol at May Dreams Garden, the link is here. Thank you very much to Carol for hosting GBBD!

I am also participating in Fertilizer Friday. To enjoy the season of Thanksgiving, do visit Tootsie here.

For Blooming Friday, this week's theme is "Wild & Beautiful". Hopefully my flowers can fit in. To view more wild and beautiful blooms today, please visit Katarina at Roses & Stuff here. 

I would like to welcome my new follower, Leovi from Spain of Abstract Photos blog to My Nice Garden. Leovi, thank you very much for being my 202nd follower!

TQVM to Andrea for being my first commenter! Hope that your laptop will be up and running smoothly soon! Goodnight and sweet dreams!

May 2010 GBBD - And The Rain My Drink

Do they look like Lady's Slippers or Wishbones?

Recently all my Torenias disappeared from my garden, having died back. I think it will reappear again somewhere and sometime later. But I miss them a lot, so I went to the nursery and bought some of these pink ones.

The name Torenia fournieri was given by Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy after a contemporary Swedish clergyman, Olaf Toren and also in honour of the French botanist Pierre Fournier.

The heart-shaped petals look like love,love,love.....

This is my Blue Daze (Evolvulus glomeratus) which I purchased from a nursery managed by a very old man who could hardly walk. He show me where his 'special offer' plants were by pointing fingers while sitting down on a shady bench. They were some helpers around but surprisingly these workers only tended to the plants. They were quite oblivious to his orders and they also ignored customers' queries. So I pitied him and took what I wanted to his bench to ask and bargain prices with him. I felt really dizzy because he smelt strongly of counterpain ointment! Howerver, it was a good buy. The prices were cheap and plants healthy.

This is my Hippy Lily (Hippeastrum reticulatum) which is commonly grown in tropical lowlands. They are quite easy to grow and they flower the whole year through.

The petals are heart-shaped in many photos. Can you see the yellow 'peace' signs around the centre?

This zinnia is grown from seed sold in packets at the garden centres. This time, all the seeds in the packet germinated but I am left with only a single mature plant - The Lone Ranger. I hope it will self seed. A packet of seeds cost about RM 3-5. A seedling sold in poly plastic bags costs almost the same price. I have a better chance with seedlings than seeds. The performance of seeds are unpredicatble and fluctuate between 0 - 100 %.

Now, with such a wide range of fluctuations, how to trust the seeds from packets?

Bye, bye love.....

A few weeks ago, I was so hard up for new plants, I went to the nursery nearest to my home and ended up with a few purchases. The sad part was that 2 plants was sick and died but before dying they infected my peace lilies. All of them suddenly died when their head was 'decapitated' and rotted off by some white powdery stuff that looked like fungus. It had just started to bloom when they said Adieu, so I said "Sayonara, rest in peace!" and I was left to pick up the pieces.

When I purchased this cat whiskers from the nursery a few years ago, the flowers were pale purple. Now all the flowers are white. I wonder what magic did I do?

This citrus plant was purchased during this Chinese New Year. The overflowing golden fruits have dropped off. It is blooming for the second time now. Usually, I'll wait 2-3 rounds before I harvest the fruits for eating or cooking. I'm worried the growers had applied a lot of chemicals to the plant during the forced blooming season.

The one that wouldn't die.

When I purchase my new citrus plant, I wanted to dispose off this old plant that I had been growing for 3 years as it seemed old and dying. I also needed the flower pot. But it was stucked inside the pot. I pulled and I pulled but it wouldn't come out. Finally I succceeded. I chopped off its head. I even stepped and jumped on it a few times to to loosen the soil and roots. The root ball was very hard, so I left it at the 'sick bay' (a shady area at my side yard, under the bamboo tree) with no food and water for a few weeks to meet it's own death.

Euthanasia -Resuscitation - Resurrection?

Strangely it didn't die because one day I noticed healthy green shoots coming out and growing sideways. This plant is a fighter. So I took it back again to its rightful place in the garden.

Blastoise is getting into mischief again and I caught him in action, haha!

The rest of my blooming flowers. I'm sure you know all their names. Do you know which is which?

• A fruit - Pomegranate flowers
• Edible flower grown for its natural blue food colouring - Blue Butterfly Pea
• Our local common name is Paper Flowers - Bougainvellea
• Bachelor's button - Gomphrena
• We can suck sweet nectar from its flowers - Ixora

My post today is dedicated to my lovely friend, Dr. Andrea, from the Philippines of Andrea In This Lifetime blog, the first commenter of my Kapok Tree post. Maraming salamat po for being my friend!

Today is Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Now, do head over to May Dreams Gardens to see what's blooming round the world today.

This is my entry for Today's Flowers # 93, a meme which opens every Sunday, 2pm GMT. My grateful thanks to Today's Flowers team members; Luiz Santili Jr, Denise in Virginia, Laerte Pupo and Sandy Carlson. To participate and view other gorgeous flowers around the world, click here.

My Nice Garden is Blooming

Do you remember the pineapple influorescence bud that greeted me on New Year Day 2010? Well this is how my 15-day old babies look like now. These many many pretty purple flowers will later become fused together to form my pineapple fruit. The pineapple is a bromeliad plant. Hopefully, more babies are coming out to form a bigger fruit. From my experience, my pineapples could only reach the size of the palm of my hand.
My tip: I read that putting apple peels around the leaves will induce the pineapple to bloom. I tried this when my pineapple plant was around 2 years old and it worked. Coincidence or not, I don't know.

A former colleague told me that there was an old wive's tale saying that the cat whiskers flower makes cats want to make love when they are around this plant. I don't think so because I have never heard any cat calls or seen anything of that kind happening at My Nice Garden. I think she must have got it mixed up with the catnip plant!

Now, these kalanchoe flowers are actually bright red but it became less red and more orange after going through my camera lens screening. I am trying my very best not to murder it with over watering. Last year, I bought a much bigger plant that bloomed profusely for 3 months but my overwatering sent it into ICU. Sad to say, I had to pull out its life support and that was the end of my yellow kalanchoe. I am not giving up yet because I think things are getting better now that I have a better understanding of their special needs.

This is my blooming Asparagus Fern / Foxtail Fern (Asparagus densiflorus "Myersii"), still living and getting along fine here after a few years. Can you see the tiny white flowers?

This is the second generation offspring of my white vinca plant that had self-seeded. I planted the parent plant near some shocking pink, light pink and purple vincas. I had expected some colour mixing but the offspring had turned out to be pure white, just like the parents. Maybe I wasn't that good in biology and genetics after all, so I have mixed up my facts.
When I look at the face of the white vinca, I see yellow sexy, pouting lips, enticing me to kiss it. But beware! It is poisonous. Only a caterpillar can survive its kiss of death.

This dragonfly like to come here in the evenings to perch on my jasmine plant. I had just given some hard prunning on this jasmine because it was sick most of the time. I don't know why but pests, bugs and grasshoppers love this plant. I have tried organic sprays, chili and garlic sprays and fed it doses of 'vitamins' but all the methods doesn't help. Why didn't I throw the plant away? Its because I still think that I can do a better job and make it bloom again. I could photograph this dragonfly because it seems to be sleeping. Just look at its transparent wings which allowed all the light to pass through to the brown woody stem!

My Chlorophytum bichetii (Dwarf Spider Plant/Variegated Spider Plant) is blooming now. The flowers are very tiny.

Actually I quite like this purple balloon flower or chinese bellflowers (Platycodon grandiflorus).

My post today is dedicated to Rainfield of My Journey, the first commenter of my previous post on Trailing Abutilon. I like to hop over to his blog and follow him on his jungle trekking adventures and nature hikes. Reading his blog is as interesting as Sinbad sailing the Seven Seas.

This is my entry for the third Blooming Friday of 2010. My grateful thanks to Katarina at Roses and Stuff for hosting Blooming Friday. To see what others have posted or to participate, click here.
This is also my entry for Fertilizer Friday. My grateful thanks to Tootsie at Tootsie Time for hosting Fertilizer Friday. To see what others have posted or to participate, visit here.
Hey, I am also joining in the fun at the once a month Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - January 2010. My grateful thanks to Ms Carol of May Dreams Gardens for hosting it. To see what others have posted or to participate, please visit here.
This is also my entry for Today's Flowers #75. My grateful thanks to the TF folks: Santilli, Denise, Pupo and Valkyrien for hosting Today's Flowers. To participate or view other floral displays around the world, click here.

Cat Whiskers for Tea Anyone?

This plant is a native plant of South East Asia. It is found abundantly in Malaysia and Indonesia. As the name suggests, the flowers resemble that of a cat's whiskers and may be either white or bluish purple. Cat whiskers are also known as misai kuching in malay.

Scientific name: Orthosiphon aristatus
Synonym: Orthosiphon stamineus
Family: Lamiaceae

 Common name: Java tea, Misai Kuching
Chinese name: mao xu cao (猫须草) or hua shi cao (化石草)


Origin: South East Asia

Category: Weak-stemed herb

It is actually very easy to grow. Propagation is by stem cuttings. Sometimes, roots occur at the place where stems touch the soil. You can cut-off this portion and transplant it.

There is not much of a problem with pests. With full to partial sunlight and regular watering, it can grow very fast. Frequent prunning is necesary to shape the plant.


It doesn't take long for the young plant to start blooming. Flowering occurs throughout the whole year. In my case, at first all the dainty looking flowers were bluish-purple. The next batch of flowers from the same plant was all white. Now, for this current batch, well, there are mostly white with one or to bluish-purple ones.

Wilted flowers should be deadheaded to encourage more flowering later.

We can grow this plant as a ground cover. Alternatively, we can also grow it in a container.

This plant is also known for its medicinal values, particularly in healing kidney ailments like kidney stones. The leaves can be used fresh or dried and later made into a tea for drinking. Cat whiskers is used in the making of java tea.

Very easy to grow, therefore a useful plant to have at home.

Note: This post has been updated with the latest images on 24 Jun 2010.