Helping Weina to garden.

Weina, a silent follower of this blog recently wrote an email seeking suggestions for her side and front garden. She just shifted to a house. The previous owner left behind a few ornamental plants in the ground and some healthy bamboo.

My field of expertise is civil engineering, gardening is something else I am very passionate about, beating golf by a whisker. ... it may not be easy to suggest without actually looking at the place. So my initial suggestion would be general in nature. I manage to come up with a few sketches for illustration.

Weina Garden: The layout

Weina Garden: The description

About Garden

To start with, there should be adequate lawn to walk, enjoy, bask and roll around. Lawn always become a lot greener whenever vegetables are grown. Possibly the excess fertiliser goes to the grass as well. Then you may want to decide where to grow your veggies and other plants, in some manageable layout. I would suggest the front garden, being a little bit small is reserved solely to flowering and ornamental plants. Side garden is definitely large enough for you to experiment with vegetable growing. I am suggesting some patterns or concept to put veggies in. A neat layout sometimes is able to conceal a little bit of failure with vegetables.

Pattern of Vegetable Bed.

• Rows - plants are grown in rows.
• Layered - Combining tall and short plants.
• Circular - An excellent element to break off the monotonous rows of vegetables. You may want to try out the Legend of Three Sisters!
• Sunken Garden - Scoop out a few inches of soil. The place will be a lot wetter than the rest. An excellent site for pandan, and other water loving plants. You can even grow rice!!

What plants need.

Plants are unique, that seeds from the same mother plant may not grow uniformly. They differ on size and health level.., just like us. They have tantrums too, reacting aggressively if their needs are not met. They need fair amount of sunlight, water and nutrients. If grown in the ground, the soil has to be fairly loose for roots to spread and anchor, and sip nutrients. Meeting their natural needs, they will become friendly and very generous with lovely flowers, and leaves.

SIDE GARDEN

Dear Weina, give it a thought and plan out.  If you really enjoy vegetable gardening, I would suggest, go for simple and flexible approach, and be pragmatic about it, unless you wish to engage a contractor and pay a handsome sum. Gardening is developmental and progressive in nature. Both the gardener and the garden get better as time goes. As parting remark, No Garden is Ever "Done"!

Who knows, some readers may want to add, to help Weina out, and Weina gets in to be less silent. Cheers.

bangchik and kakdah

Tanah Merah, Kelantan, Malaysia

Making bricks ornamental.

Photo 1 ~ bricks with pegaga

Photo 2 ~ bricks

pegaga in between

Photo 3 ~ the gap between bricks

Photo 4 ~ the gap between bricks

It is not about the issue of bricks not enough, therefore the wide gap in between. I have been discussing this with Kakdah, that as edging,  bricks serve its function so well. Heavy rains is a real test on bricks. Bricks retain soil from being washed out which we are very thankful. But being impervious they contain water as well, hence plants temporarily get drown.

We then leave gap in between, enough for  Pegaga

to creep through and peep over the edge.

 photo 5

photo 6

 photo 7

To us, bricks are ornamental.

~bangchik

Putrajaya, Malaysia

I walk to the front, this what I see.

I walk out the front door , this is what I normally see.... pleasing at times. It very much depends on my mood and the surroundings. It is fairly cool and very green with trees already maturing. The picture was taken around 9.00am, neighbours had gone to work, and I had my day off. Therefore the street was a little bit empty and quiet. The neighborhood is nice and friendly.

How's your neighborhood? 

~ bangchik

A real rural setting.

A nephew and his son.

Too many coconuts for the tree,

that putting a prop is deemed necessary.

Location: Kakdah's Mom house, Sitiawan, Perak.

[click photo for larger view]

This picture is rural at its best. A coconut tree so low, that you can choose and pluck the one you like best.  Our nephew was collecting the coconut juice. His son was accompanying him, learning something new for the day.

~bangchik and kakdah
Putrajaya, Malaysia

The beauty of winged bean plant

winged beans

on three legged trellis.

I read some where about winged beans being very independent. They survive even on the most hostile soil. It is suggested that their roots are fairly productive. Not only they take in water and whatever nutrients available, the roots  are also able to manufacture their own nutrients....

The photo was taken from the pedestrian walkway. This probably is the view seen by people walking up and down the walkway. Some mothers push their babies in prams. Even babies turn their eyes towards winged beans... haha. I wish I knew, what they were cursing at.... @#uo&////!! +-$#.....

I am very conscious about gardening in this neighborhood. I don't want neighbors to send complaint letters to the council about my garden being a nuisance, dirty or something, blocking their view, spoiling the whole image or whatever.... So gardening here is not only about the intended produce and harvest but about the look, about cleanliness, about the suitable general presentation and the bottom line is all about being accepted by the neighbors, people walking up and down the walkway and the babies too!!!...

You may have your own opinion about the look....

even if it's bitter, i really don't mind... haha

Have Fun
~bangchik
Putrajaya, Malaysia

How does it feel to be left abandoned....

 a view of

grey and red structure

through the leaves of Pulai tree

location: 

USJ R&R along the highway towards KLIA.

Economic downturn that hit Asia badly mid 90's left many projects abandoned half way through. Those are choices people got to make.... more so when everything was very tight and  felt squeezed. Some has to be abandoned as a matter of choice (or no other choice).....

Now what about trees...... The more we leave them alone, the better they would probably be and they don't even feel abandoned.

"How does it feeeel, to be on your ownnnnn .......", 

as Bob Dylan goes on singing 

or yelling 

or groaning.

But dont leave your loved ones....
~bangchik and kakdah

Putrajaya, Malaysia

Painting red on green

Land has to be cleared to pave way for development, red replacing what used to be green. I just had a feeling that RED could never blend with GREEN.........

In due time, the developer will put back the green once the construction is completed. The new green will never be like the original green. How can it be?.....

But somehow we move on with all the inconvenience, and make the best out of everything. That has always been the way.

Shots in Kelantan.

As we jog early in the morning.

We just change pattern.
The normal 6.30pm jog is changed to 6.30am.
Very fresh!!

We jog and walk
till the sun rises well above the horizon.

the morning sun

pigeons
getting ready for more things to happen.

The whole morning exercise is too slow to be called jogging,

more of brisk walking i would say ... haha.

Anyone doing exercise lately
other than gardening
and
with morning sun as the witness?

Too early at golf course, still misty.

I was away again, this time at Bandar Darulaman in Kedah. I stayed close to the golf course there, just for a night. While having breakfast at the clubhouse with a friend Kam, I snapped few photos here to show how mist and dew had created a beautiful component of the surroundings during the first part of the morning....

We miss this interesting element of mornings, most of the time .. mist and dew. We have to rush to work around the same time. We dont want to be late.

lantana

there was a cute little fountain.

Tall grass, lalangs

Nobody grow lalangs, these tall grass. They remain wild before someone decide to clear the place up, plough the area or spray roundup the ever ready weed killer!!. However some of us may view these tall grass as being very beautiful, almost a natural artistry....

I saw these tall grass during one of my regular outings..... far north in Kedah. It may just stay as nice grassland for a while longer, before someone pour in millions of dollars to do some development!! ... more houses...

I do a little bit of search in Blotanical;
and I found these:

• Tallgrass Prairie Revealed of green thought
• Lifescapes: Tallgrass prairie

Rural setting

I was born and raised in a typical rural setting, where there were lot of trees, and neighbors' houses were quite a distance away. Trees were grown for fruits but to the kids, they were little hideouts, a place to test ones' agility, climbing up, swinging from branch to branch. We somehow grew up without many bones broken and scars.

Gardening I guess is a trip back to the rural settings, where sharing of space with plants are nurtured... or as the biology teacher said, we are inhaling oxygen exhaled by plants or rather leaves out of their daily chores of photosynthesis. And they inhale what we exhale.

Kaklong, my eldest sister is somewhat lucky to be in such setting. But her sons and daughters are everywhere, and I dont think any of hers will follow her footsteps. Hers are all urbanised!!... We really have to wait for many more years, before we will finally stay in our own house in Perak. A red roofed bungalow is currently rented out. Kakdah has alot in her mind, how we should mould the garden when we finally stay there. Many more years to go!!

The younger sister, Kakyah stayed in a 3 acre plot, surrounded with oil palm trees. Meanwhile my younger brother Yan, built a big house in one acre plot, a real haven with gajus [ cashew nut ] and tembusu trees not far. Bangmat the elder brother and other younger brothers, Man and Lan each got a house in a typical housing scheme.

Rural setting is so cool and sweet ....

Some trees simply grow too old
and has to be chopped down.
The pieces are saved.

Coconut husk, the outer skin covering the nut,
has to be peeled off.
These are dried up and kept.

slope treatment.
It is a normal sight,
where slopes are strengthened with coconut husk,
so heavy rainfall
cant erode the slopes.



Look at the coconut trunk...
Green Moss on one side explains a lot
about shade and sunlight....

@@155 Putrajaya Precint 10

I pass this place from time to time, not far away from my home.... They hang pots with beautiful blooms, and I just snapped a few to share here...

A tall coconut tree.

A tall coconut tree against the horizon is always a majestic view.... An artist will happily sit for hours to put it down onto canvas........ We just stopped the car, and froze the most spectacular tropical moment ......

I love the overlapping mountains,
and nature provides the most beautiful tone...,
shades of blue

Gerik area..
north of Perak, Malaysia.

Tasik Raban to ease your mind.

No words... Just views..