The Garlic Vine Plant

Fancy the smell of garlic ?  Most people either love it or hate it !  This plant is called the Garlic Vine because when parts of this plant is crushed,  it emits the fresh smell of garlic. Leave the plant  alone, there is really no smell.  The showy flowers are a real draw,  they started off as a deeper purple, then gets more pastel, so there is a nice combination of different shades on the blooms at  one time, very pretty indeed.  Perhaps it is the smell  the plant  emit when damaged, because so far I have not seen this plant attacked by pests.  The heavy clusters of  flowers do not emit any scent at all, so no worry that the garden will smell of garlic when this plant blooms!

The leaves are of a deep green in contrast  and the stems are hardy.  This plant is a climber and produces tendrils to help it climb. It grows moderately slow. My original intention was to grow this plant  to cover  the fence, however  now it has to share  the fence with  the Rangoon Creeper  (refer blog entry June, 24th 2010).  Other names of this plant include - Mansoa alliacea, Pachyptera hymenaea, Pseudocalymma alliacea, Cydista aequinoctialis. 

These pictures were taken when the plant first bloomed.  Actually this plant is easy to propagate. I just took some cuttings about 4 nodes and stick it into some well drained soil.  One has to patient with this plant, as mentioned it grows slowly at its own pace.  However once it has adjusted to its environment, the growth will be faster. The plant so far is doing well in my garden where I planted it. My aunt from whom I get the cuttings from grows her plant in a pot.  

This plant needs to well watered and needs the sun to bloom well. Apparently this plant has some medicinal value as well...check these links  :- http://toptropicals.com/catalog/uid/Mansoa_alliacea.htm and http://www.itslife.in/2007/09/garlic-creeper

Hibiscus

Would I be accused of being non-patriotic if I do not have a Bunga Raya (Hibiscus) in my garden? After all the Bunga Raya (single petal Hibiscus rosa-sinensis ) is our national flower.  There are many species,  varieties  and hybrids  of Hibiscus. In my collection I have only a red and  a pink hibiscus,  both  are of the double petals rosa sinensis variety.  Take a look.

This red one is my earliest recollection of  what a  hibiscus is. There were about  three of four  bushes of this hibiscus planted along the driveway  to our old house, as were the Peacock  Shrubs. They were very old plants.  I took a cutting from  a neighbor  who has this  red hibiscus sometime  last December (2009). The cuttings take root easily.  I have three  cuttings  that  I planted on the same spot. I hope to grow a bush   They are  growing well but  slow, perhaps the location where I planted them is not so friendly, more exposed to the hot sun.  They started blooming  rather fast, which is surprising. 

Below is how my red hibiscus looks like after 10 months of growth. Soon I might prune them so they will grow bushy and compact, but it seems such a shame to disturb them now.

 The following  are pictures of my pink hibiscus.  The pink hibiscus grow faster, but are more susceptible to mealy bugs. I got to constantly watch out for these pests, pick them off the plant whenever I see clusters of them, as I dislike spraying chemicals.  I like the pink hibiscus very much and  have planted them in 3 various locations.
  

 The buds.

While the red hibiscus leaves are more pointy and narrow, the pink  ones  are more broad and less serration.  Hibiscus flowers are rather showy, being so big. The downside is they only bloom for a day. However the blooms are all year round. There are blooms almost daily once they are established.

Maybe I should collect more varieties of hibiscus to grow in my garden, after all they are so easy to care for and grow well in our climate.

Adenium (Dessert Rose)

Just to take a break from "Herbs", and back to flowering plants again.  My first encounter (and subsequent) with the Dessert Rose was not good,  now I think I have  make up for it (cross fingers that I have not spoken too soon) .  Until about six months back, I have shy away from this particular plant because of the earlier bad experiences.  Experiences are lessons in life, and hopefully this time I have learnt!   Interested in  a bit of  story telling?  Well.........my mother gave me my first Adenium. It was a beautiful mature plant that I kept admiring so much, until my mother said, "take it home". Those days we lived in Penang, a first floor flat that had a nice balcony facing the morning sun.  I was reluctant to do so,  those days  I was rather busy at work.  My mother could tell that I like the plant very much and kept encouraging me.  So I did, and two months or so  later I had a dead plant on my hands!  Imagine how devastated I was!! I know now it was from over watering.....fortunately  my mother never even scolded me,  but I was eaten up by guilt and remorse.  In fact she even offered me another of her beautiful plants ! Adenium plants were the rage  then (and still is)  and my mother  had a collection of them.   

When I moved to this house,  my sister presented me with a baby adenium. from the nursery...it never lasted a month. I had to go away for a month,  and when I came back  it  had died from neglect.  Currently I have two  adeniums  that survived out of the five that my brother brought over.  A  friend gave them to him, and they were grown from seedlings. I  returned two to my brother after I saw that they were growing well after about 3 months. But one died when I transplant them into a bigger pot, the rots rotted away.

Well the lessons I learn from cultivating adenium...

 

Lesson  1 :  Be careful where water is concerned.  Soil must be well drained,  or the roots rot easily in stagnant water.  Preferable to water in the morning, so that throughout the day, it drains. It is okay to skip watering for a  couple of days.  Just checked that the soil does not get too dry.   If it rains, forget about watering it.   It is vital  never to allow the potted plant to stand in collected water on the saucer -  the roots will rot!

Lesson  2 : Sunshine is good.....lots of sunshine for the plant will induce flowering. This plant loves the sun. 

Lesson  3 : Fertilizer....go  easy  on it.....remember this is a succulent plant. 

Lesson  4 : Trim it to make it branch, otherwise it keeps growing taller and taller......!

Lesson 5 : Check for caterpillar.......! I just picked two of my plants.  They can be rather destructive! 

I am still a bit tender footed where my adeniums are concerned....if they can last a year, then I would say I am successful.  Now they are just 6 months old, and  were given to me when they were hardly 4 inches tall! Well okay  take  a peep at my adenium.... lovely first bloom!  I sure hope they continue to progress well under my "neglect" loving care......!

The Lotus Bloom

 I would like to share my lotus bloom  in this blog. So far my lotus plant has only bloomed once, with three beautiful blooms continuously in the month.  The blooms  were absolutely gorgeous, see for yourself.   The following is the sequence of the lotus bloom (please ignore the dates on the pictures, the camera was incorrectly set).

 

 Let us start off with the bud.

Now only the pod is left ! .  Does this remind you of  the shower head? The lotus seeds are edible, the seeds are crunchy, but I prefer to save the seeds.

 

The flower and the pod...................! 

The lotus flower always faces the sun. For the lotus to bloom it needs fertilizers (special for waterlilies and lotus) and plenty of sunshine.  The lotus will start to close in the evening, and re-opens the next morning when the sun comes out. The bloom will continue to close and open for the next 4 - 5 days. Then the petals will start to drop, eventually leaving only the pod. 

I planted the lotus from seeds.  It took almost a year and more before it bloomed for me. Initially I had problems growing the lotus. The soil medium was not right, and the plant did not seemed to grow well.   So I changed to the medium to a more loamy soil.  The pot I used was also too small  so I bought a bigger pot. It looks like perhaps it is becoming overcrowded again and time for me to replant the  lotus.  This time round I will use the tuber instead of the seeds. They grow faster from the tuber.