Paws to You!!!: My Latest Garden Project

The past few weeks's seen perfect weather for gardening and I finally got to working on the two Thai basil shrubs at the far corner of the terrace.

Work's made it impossible for me to cook lately. So the basil hasn't been harvested, been left to their own devices and eventually brought forth tiny blooms and seeds. When they get this woody, the leaves are no longer as fragrant and I had them removed one afternoon.

Here's what the shrubs looked like, rather pretty in fact with rusty tips of dried out seeds.

The first thing to do was harvest the seeds. For these would ensure continueing supply of new basil plants. Once properly dried, these would keep well in a dark cool place.

Next, the leaves are harvested...for why waste. Only the tips and herby new growths with soft trunks are good, unfortunately. Once the stem has become woody, the rest of the leaves are less flavorful and probably not good enough to use for pesto, though you might still save them to use as a salad.

Basil leaves in my salad spinner

These are the main trunks of the two plants. See how thick and woody they've become. The shears are for size comparison.

The other thing which did rather well on the terrace is the orchid. What I did was stick the charcoal laden pot of orchid into a larger deeper pot of soil. The orchid seems to like it and in a matter of months, had sent an arborious network of aerial roots from stems into the soil. For the third time, its produced these small maroon flowers, whereas the rest of my orchids never flowered past round one.

I also rearranged the coping stones around Tortoise's enclosure. Check out my previous blog and you'd see that it now resembles an old ruin, which I feel has a lot more character than the previous rectangular ensemble.

Today, I made a trip to the Nursery at Thomson Road. The weather was searing and it was just the thing to do on a Saturday afternoon. Its my reward for the week's work!!

There's a garden sale and I found the perfect pot of Rosemary, which I simply had to bring home.

I first saw how rosemary was used in a simple roast pork dish when I visited some friends (Peter and Dennis) in Perth. It was winter in Australia and I was thrilled when Dennis popped into the backyard and reappeared in the kitchen with fresh sprigs of Rosemary to stuff into the roast.

Here's what I found on the net about growing Rosemary...

Its apparently the easiest herb to grow in the garden!!
Native to the Mediterranean, it is apparently best suited to humid coastal conditions with very low rainfall amounts and lots of sandy soil. It is quite tolerant of most soil conditions as long as they are not water-logged.
These conditions can be recreated in humid Singapore by giving it 6 to 8 hours of full sunshine each day, withholding watering to once or twice a week and allowing the soil to drain/dry thoroughly before watering again.
The plant also prefers a slightly limey soil (as opposed to acidic soil with lots of humus and rotting vegetation) That means I will have to crush some Calcium Carbonate tablets and sprinkle the powder onto the soil!
Here’s the best part…. Rosemary can apparently grow into a 6 foot shrub, and pruning encourages branching and new growth with non-woody stems.

I decided that my Rosemary plant should share the pot with my Travellers Palm in the far corner of the terrace.

Here's how the plant looks after being transplanted.