Balcony Gardens In Cabramatta

Cabramatta. Chinatown. Vietnamesetown. Khmertown?

Cabramatta has certainly come a very long way from its murky, drug addict past. Previously, visitors at night would see drug addicts passed out on the sidewalks and police patrolling in groups. Now it's just a dining destination and has cleaned up rather well. The real estate prices reflect the change in its demography.

I love Cabra. If it wasn't such a mad house to get parking, I'd visit more frequently. Last time we visited, I saw a few interesting balcony gardens. Strata and by-laws are obviously ignored or nonexistent judging by the milk crates and buckets full of plants oozing onto the common garden area. :

Deteriorating styrofoam boxes mounted onto milk crates aren't exactly a good look.

How about an insane, out of control bouganvillea plant to screen out annoying neighbours and passer-bys on the main road? There really is a balcony hidden behind that illustrious looking bougainvillia! To combat the out-of-control bougainvillia, the second floor neighbours mounted their own attack, huge TV antennas ... :

Empty Neverfail water bottles and a rug thrown onto the balcony:

Oggling balcony gardens aside, this is why I love going to Cabra. The piles of fresh green mangoes and the delicious sugar cane juice:

It's been a while now since I've visited Cabra... Cabra and it's sugar cane juice is calling...

Repotting Succulents, Aloe Vera and Avocado Seeds

For the first time in months, I found myself with time to relax and chill at home on the weekend. So with time on my hands what did I do? I slopped on some sunscreen and got my gardening gloves on. I don't even really have a garden. I have a balcony container garden which you can see by clicking here, here and here.

Peanut and I were joking around about a mango tree growing competition and next thing you know, we had mango juices dripping down our cheeks over the next few weeks in the attempt to accumulate mango seeds to grow. Well, they're growing and the balcony is heaving with plants.

Buying pots and plants can really get expensive really fast. That's when my gardening tips are useful. Afterall, a farmers daughter should know something aight?!! After growing plants in containers and pots for a few years now, I've learnt a few things along the way which I'd like to share with anyone who loves gardening. It's been a long journey and for each lesson learnt, I've lost a plant or two along the way.

As I found out with shocking results, container and balcony gardening is vastly different from normal plant-directly-into-the-ground type of gardening. If your plants are in pots or containers and if you also live in an apartment and plan to have a balcony garden then these tips may save you from killing your plants and crushing your gardening spirit ^.^

16 Useful Gardening Tips

1. Learning to grow from propagation, cuttings and seeds will save you heaps of money. The trick is learning which plants can be grown from cuttings and which needs seeds or grafting.

• Some herbs such as the Cambodian/Vietnamese mint and watercress can be grown by stripping off the lower leaves, plonking them into a jar of water and leave in a sunny spot by the window and within a few days they'll be sprouting roots crazily. Plant them in wet soil. 
• Succulents can be grown from a simple leaf.

2. If you want to grow mango seeds, avocado seeds and any large seeds, you can sow them direct into the soil and cross your fingers and pray or you can start them off by wrapping them into damp paper towels, place into a clear plastic bag and leave on the sunny window sill until they crack and grow roots. The damp paper towel technique has worked for me 99% of the time. The 1% fail rate is because sometimes I'm so busy that I've forgotten about them and when I get around to remembering, they've rooted madly but have gone slightly mouldy.

3. If you want to grow succulents such as Echeverias from their offsets 'pups', wait until the pups are large enough to have air roots (roots that grow off the baby offset) and/or have some roots making soil contact- they're then ready to cut off and repot into their own pot

•  If growing succulents and newly repotted- give them one week to recover from transplant shock and then water very lightly once a week only. In Winter, once every 2 weeks. 
• If growing anything else except succulents, they must be watered everyday when newly transplanted until they are larger

4. With repotting Aloe Vera pups, if the pups don't come off with a tug, repot the whole Aloe (mother and pups) until the pups are larger. When they're large enough, they will easily come off with a strong tug with their own independent root ball. You can visit my archive, 'Container Gardening: Aloe Vera, Pups, Repotting and Healing'

5. Irrigate/water your plants at the soil instead of hosing down their leaves. If you water them from top down, you risk subjecting your plants to fungus/mould/rotting/diseases. Some plants need water from the top/leaves down but these are rare (eg bromeliads).

6. If your plants will be in a very sunny or windy location, mulch heavily to prevent moisture evaporation.

7, If you have tried many times to grow plants and have failed, go for the hardier succulents which requires minimal care and watering, or go for the drought tolerant type of plants, or go for the varieties that are 'resilient' (you'll see them at the nursery ~ these are usually hybrid and bred to be resiliant to pests and a few other botanical problems).

8. Buy good quality potting soil. They have water crystals and retain water for a lot longer. I've bought both, the expensive ones and the cheap ones to test whether there is any difference. Result? Yes there is a huge difference! The cheap ones dry a lot quicker, are poor at retaining moisture, tend to dry and then harden into clumps, lack the rich, deep brown composted soil, lack nutrients and will affect the quailty of your plants' growth.

9, The soil will eventually run low and lack nutrients so fertilise. In normal ground soil, the debris and leaf litter usually breaks down and decomposes into nutrients. In container gardens and balcony gardens, there is no plant debris and leaf litter so the potted soil eventually runs out of nutrients. The horticulturalist at Eden Garden recommends using Blood and Bone fertiliser alternated with Dynamic Lifter every three months ~ they're considered as soil conditioners. You can also use liquid fertiliser when the plant is fruiting or flowering ~ considered as plant conditioners. If you are repotting, transplanting or had a shockingly hot day and find your plants heavily wilted ~ Seasol will hydrate and sooth your plants.

10. Fertilise lightly ~ frequently is better than heavy applications. Heavy applications can lead to burning the plants (leaves dying or going black after a bout of fertilising are symptomatic of too much fertiliser).

11. If your plants wilt heavily in summer, there are a few options: repot into larger pots, raise the pots off the hot tiles/concrete/ground by using pot feets, add water storing granules or wetting agents to your soil mixture, use large ceramic glazed pots (ceramic glazed are cooler than terracotta which are cooler than plastic pots).

12. For container/balcony gardens ~ large pots (eg 40-50cm in diameter) are better than lots of little ones because they keep the roots cooler and are better for moisture retention

13. Plants reliant on good drainage ~ you can fill the pots with a shallow layer of gravel before filling with potting mix giving you great drainage

14.  Plant sickness, disease and/or infections. Keep an eye out for plants that are yellowing (too much or too little watering), having white mildew on the leaves (fungicide), going brown on the tips (too much or too little watering), missing chunks of its leaves (caterpillars or bugs are eating your plants), white fine webs on the plants (spidermites).

15.  If your plants' health are deteriorating and the weather and your watering patterns have been consistent, there may be other larger problems on hand, such as pest infestations. Lean in close to your plants and *stare* at your plants leaves, under the leaves, at the shoots and at the base and you are likely to find pests such as caterpillars, aphids, spidermites and leaf miners eating your plants and slowly killing your plants.

16. If you go away on holidays or trips, get someone to water your plants regularly. I went away for Christmas only to return and find all my plants heavily wilted, distressed and requiring water. Even two months later, some of the plants still haven't recovered. I probably should have watered them with Seasol but I've been very busy with other things.

Phew. What a mammoth post!! Good luck with the gardening and trying to grow your plants. If you managed to read to the very end, share your gardening tips if you have any. Advice is most welcome.

xx

Other Balcony Gardens

Found some balcony gardening images that I'd saved from the net last year and I can't recall where they came from (sorry!) so if you see your image, please let me know and I will remove/delete/acknowledge/credit the source.

I can't stop myself from trawling the net for container and balcony gardens. It will be awesome to move into a house so that I can grow whatever I want without always having to lug 300 litres of soil home from the shop all the time. Either that or grow me some muscles >.<

Such luscious greenery on people's balconies ~ so pretty!


[Image source: Splinteredart.blogspot]

 

[Image source: Lifeonthebalcony]



[Image source: Sorry dunno]



[Herb container garden. Image source: Lifeonthebalcony]

[Loving the contemporary look of this balcony garden]

[Loving the rambling, riotous splashes of colour in this potted courtyard garden]





[This balcony garden has a Meditteranean look to it. Must be the peach/tangerine coloured wall]

[If trees could look fierce... ]



Container Gardening: Pests, Fruit, Herbs and Flowers

That Guilty Feeling Pleasure
On the weekend, I went nuts shopping at Bunnings Warehouse and Eden Gardens. I bought so much that I'm feeling slightly guilty. As usual, the dilemma was: flowers vs fruits vs herbs.

Why am I feeling guilty? I'm *supposed* to be saving up a deposit/down payment. Maybe it was the stress of rushing to eight open houses on Saturday that brought on the need to unwind by shopping for pots and plants. One thing leads to another...if you buy plants, you'll need to buy pots and if you buy pots first, then you want to buy plants to fill up the pot ^.^

I spent roughly $400 on gardening plants and items on the weekend and if I had saved up that $400 to use as a deposit/downpayment on my future mortgage, it would have saved me paying $5,400 in interest. Insane isn't it!! Although the pleasure of living in the here and now would have dissipated somewhat if I applied that theory to everything.

For what I spent on the snowboarding trip to NZ recently, used as a deposit/down payment, that would have saved my poor future-self from paying $54,000 in mortgage interest. But since it can't be guaranteed that I'll live to a ripe old age, I think I should enjoy myself along the way :)

Making That Humble Dollar Work

How did I arrive at that scenario? I'll illustrate using a simple example.

Scenario One: IF I borrowed $300k @ 9% for 30 years (Interest rates were at 9.8% in 2008 so it's not farfetched to think that rates may increase to those levels in the future):

a) If I deposited $1 against the mortgage in the first month, total interest paid is $568,975.67
b) If I didn't deposit $1 in the first month, total interest paid is $568,989.51
So that single dollar paid into the mortgage in the first month would have saved me from paying a total of $1 principle + $13.84 interest, a total saving of $14.84

Scenario Two: IF I borrowed $400k @ 9% for 30 years:

a) If I deposited $1 against the mortgage in the first month, total interest paid is $758,643.63
b) If I didn't deposit $1 in the first month, total interest paid is $758, 656.77
So that single dollar paid into the mortgage in the first month would have saved me from paying a total of $1 principle + $13.14 interest, a total saving of $14.14

Who cares huh? Look at what I bought :)

* $25 Yates Blood & Bone Fertiliser: Will be using this alternately with Dynamic Lifter. The horticulturalist advised me to apply Dynamic Lifter which is a slow release fertiliser. In two or three months, sprinkle with Blood & Bone. Two to three months later, Dynamic Lifter again and repeat cycle. We also have Thrive which is supposed to be good when plants are fruiting or flowering. Thrive is supposed to treat the plant while Dynamic Lifter + Blood and Bone are soil conditioners and treat the soil.

* $16 Nootka Raspberry Plants: Two small plants. It will be my first time planting Raspberries and I'll be potting them up. I read that Raspberry plants have canes (the branch/leafy bits) that grow vigorously with vigorous roots that spread. So the horticulturalist advised that for container gardens, you must use a ceramic glazed pot or else the roots will eventually be strong enough to break your pots or grow through the cracks in your terracotta pots. The roots also need to be kept cool so the pot needs to be deeper rather than wider. The plants don't fruit in the first year but will fruit in the second year. After the second year fruit, you're supposed to cut the canes down to the soil level while pruning the one year old canes. Advice on the internet is consistent and advises that one year old canes are a lighter green whereas the two year old ones are a darker colour. Alternate with the fertiliser method above when they start growing again. It's going to be exciting because I don't know anyone else who grows their own raspberries.

* $24 Dahlia bulbs: I bought three Dahlia bulbs/rhizomes. Suddenly I've been madly buying bulbs. Normally bulbs scare me because I'm not the type to dig them out when they die down and then I can't bear the thought of them rotting in the ground if I don't. Some will hibernate very well without being dug out. Anyway, I'm hoping my Dahlias will spread and I can eventually share some bulbs with family and friends. I've been growing the following that should eventually multiply: Tulips, Dahlias, Daffodils, Dutch Irises, Lillies

* $2.50 Sunflower Dwarf Sensation seeds: As long as I stay away from extreme hybrids, the flowers and herbs should go to seed and enable me to plant next year from seed harvested. To grow anything from seed, you really need the fruit or flower to ripen and shrivel on the plant until it looks dry or browned and then you collect the seeds and store them in a jar in a dry place. Soak overnight before planting or sowing them in the following year.

* $15.79 Yates Insecticide/Natrasoap: My poor plants have been suffering from a batch of Aphid attacks and trying more natural homemade/organic insecticide recipes didn't work so I bought a bottle of insecticide to try and banish the pesky aphids from destroying the plants. Clean, dry eggshells that I've crushed are helping to keep snails at bay. Crushed eggshells are an awesome, natural snail and slug repellant and they also provide calcium to the plants.

* $23 Wild Irises: These grow in clumps and the leaves don't die down leaving you with a bare looking pot. Wild Irises do require transplanting/splitting when the clumps are too large for pots or garden areas.

* $27 Americana Geraniums: Beautiful fuschia blooms in clumps on taller stems. I'm going to try and do some geranium cuttings when the plant matures somewhat.

* $13 Seasol Concentrate: 1 capful to 9 litres of water. Seasol is made from seaweed and is considered a 'tonic' to help stressed plants. Stressed plants? Yep you read it right - plants get stressed when they're transplanted, split, re-potted, suffer from heat waves or haven't been watered for several weeks because you've been away on holiday. The Eden Garden horticulturalist advised to mix, apply and wait two weeks prior to using any other fertiliser.

* $189 for two 47cmx53cm Primo Glazed Ceramic Pots: For the raspberries I bought - see above

* $64.95 for one 45cmx34cm Forest Green Primo Glazed Ceramic Pot: For the Wild Irises I bought - see above

Ceramic glazed pots just ain't cheap in Australia. Sigh.

Spring Time: Plant Fruit Trees, Herbs and Seedlings

It's five days into Spring if you live in the Southern Hemisphere. Now is the best time to start planting all those herbs and flowers. To start applying fertiliser. The Eden Garden horticulturalist told me that my plants may have yellowed somewhat due to our cold winter but Spring should see them starting to absorb more nutrients now that the soil will warm up and certain plants break out of their dormancy.

Container Gardening Pests: How To Get Rid Of Aphids, Spidermites, Leaf Miners

Although this is a PF blog, most personal finance bloggers grow plants, herbs and vegetables for the most obvious reason. I grow mine for pleasure. Visual and edible pleasure : ) Lately, the wide range of plants, herbs and flowers on my balcony has attracted so many pests and it has been a struggle to deal with them so far until the last few days. I have found a new gardening weapon. It's called the humble sticky tape.

The Failure of Commercial Pesticide

Yates aphid and bug spray didn't achieve anything. The aphids still made out like crazy and flourished. It may have killed beneficial insects instead and left me with a swarm of spidermites that were out of control. I had to uproot my mint plants and dump them. My purple miniature rose were cut back to the stems and I'm not sure if they'll ever recover from the shock. The poor hibiscus cuttings are now under attack and the last thing I wanted to do was chuck another plant out.

Using Sticky Tape to Remove Aphids and Spidermites

Suddenly I had a brainstorm. If the humble sticky tape can remove dust and lint off every surface - then why couldn't I use it to remove bugs from my plants? With my 1.5 inch wide tape, I cut off a bit and stuck the tape to the aphids and the results were amazing - it picked up all the aphids in the vicinity of the tape! The bugs couldn't escape and I didn't have to squish them one by one which can take hours. I used a skewer and rolled it along the surface of the tape and suddenly the 5-10 aphids stuck on the tape were vanquished. Just keep reusing the tape until it's covered with dead bugs. It's gross but highly effective.

Day one= 150 aphids squished. Day two=20 aphids, Day three=40 aphids and Day four= 5 aphids only. The numbers are dwindling rapidly and at this rate, by day 7 there will be none left. You'll need good eyesite to spot your aphids. Check in between the flower buds, under the flower buds, on new shoots, on top of the leaf and particularly the underside of leaves are where they love to congregate and on the underside of the leaves near the soil.

Using sticky tape to remove the pests is non toxic(can someone prove otherwise?), easy, cheap and very effective. I've been sticking the tape to the underside of the hibiscus plant leaves, gently pressed the leaves against the tape to squish the microscopic red spidermites and crush the eggs, gently unpeeling the tape from the leaves. Hundreds of squished red spider mites, eggs and webbing were on the tape. If I had done that one by one by hand it would have taken hours, I would have missed heaps and you can barely see the mites anyway so it would have failed. The sticky tape picks up so much due to its sticky residue. It was gross but the option was to either spray a lot of pesticides frequently or use a tiny bit of sticky tape over and over again on the infected leaves.

Using Water Spray and Natural Methods to Remove Aphids and Spidermites

Advice on the internet is to use pesticide or spray your plant hard with water and water jets. They will simply just fly or climb back onto your plants. Spraying with water just doesn't work and I've tried all those techniques. Even using a soapy spray mix doesn't work. I've tried the garlic + chilli soap spray method and it doesnt work for me. Admittedly I haven't tried mixing soap+oil+water which is another 'natural' option. Some people buy ladybugs/lady beetles to eat the aphids. I also haven't tried filling a bright yellow dish with water- yellow is supposedly attractive to the aphids.

Using Plants to Ward Off Aphids and Other Bugs

Some recommend planting dill, geraniums, chives, corriander, garlic, onions, petunias and radishes etc to attract beneficial predatory bugs but that doesn't seem to work with my container plants. Sure the aphids doesn't eat my geranium and chives yet they aren't scared off either. They love to munch on my corriander so that advice isn't effective.

There are so many plant bugs around that love to dine on my tasty plants. The sticky tape solution will work on aphids, mealy bugs, spider mites and soft scale. It's still early days yet to see whether it will fully solve my problem however there are significantly less and less bugs! This should help the plant to recover somewhat and eventually all the pest eggs will have hatched and will be removed via the humble sticky tape.

Rainy Days And Mondays

Sunday passed much too quickly with blurry wetness and now it's Monday again.

Rainy days can be rather depressing. Sometimes I can smell the fresh damp air and it feels uplifting but sometimes it can be depressing. When it rains on Sundays or Mondays, I can't help but think of poor Karen Carpenter who died when she was still so young- she was the first known celebrity to die from anorexia nervosa. On that melancholic bent, I found myself thinking about Left Eye(Lisa Lopes from TLC), Aaliyah(plane crash), Selena(her mentally unstable fan club manager shot her) - the three other singers who also died so young.

On a brighter note, since it rained all Sunday, you may have noticed that I inundated you with with three posts yesterday! And another one today! Didn't do much yesterday. Didn't go out. Didn't do anything productive. Just cleaned the wet balcony again and pottered around out there with the DSLR and did a load of reading. Can't tell you how fantastic it feels to be home and do absolutely nothing much all day. I didn't even eat breakfast nor dinner - just lunch.

Here are some happy shots from the dslr and the results of a rainy Sunday:

 

Last of my blooming daffodils starting to wilt and droop *sob sob*

My gorgeous pink daisies blooming profusely

Dahlia shoots

Pumpkin seedlings that I rescued from our compost is on steroids (figuratively speaking before y'all start thinking I'm some druggo lordess lol)

Sunflowers are peeking their shy heads

Raspberry plants are starting to flower (already?!)

Apartment Gardens: Container Gardening on Balconies

Blame all these gardening posts on Spring!!!! I can't help but dwell on green things with everything blooming and sprouting like crazy. I will promise to write about personal finance after I get this out of my system ^.^

Before shot of the balcony garden:

Shot of the balcony garden now:

I tells ya, those beautiful blue, ceramic glazed pots are eye wateringly expensive ;_;
But ain't that a pretty sight : ) 

Sixteen days ago - bought some HUGE empty pots:

Over these last two weeks, wild irises were planted into the round one:

And raspberry canes were planted into the squarish, rectangular ones:

Falling in love with succulents:

Even my compost bin has become a germinating machine with mouldy pumpkin seeds and old potting soil that had old marigold seeds start sprouting. Pumpkin seedlings that I had to rescue from my compost bin before they consumed more nitrogen:

Oh yeah, and those are certainly toilet paper rolls used to pot up some of the pumpkin seedlings. Not only is it recycling but it's also going to decompose and add carbon to the soil. All those seedlings in the dunny paper roll can be planted directly into the ground as is.

Container Gardening: Aloe Vera, Pups, Repotting and Healing

Our Aloe Vera plant has been growing insanely. I've got a single plant and have managed to repot sixteen baby Aloe pups from the Mother Aloe plant. Bunnings and Eden Garden are our local garden centres and they sell Aloe plants at about $7 to $60 each depending on the size.

If you have a friend with a plant, just look on the side of their plants for baby pups that you could transplant and that's free. I was googling tips on repotting earlier and came across so many people who wrote in about their Aloe plant dying and they don't know why. Plants usually die because we love them too much: too much water or too much fertiliser or we drastically give them sunburn by moving them into the sun without hardening them off slowly.

Evolution of our Aloe Plant:

14th November 2010 - Mother Aloe Vera

19th March 2011 - Mother Aloe with her gazillion pups. See how the pups are draining the nutrients from the mother plant and the soil? All the tips are starting to turn brown:

19th September 2011 -Six months later... Aloe plant tipped onto her side for repotting the pups. Repotted her after work at night, hence the camera flash. See all those pups that were repotted from the Mother Aloe?!~ Crazy @_@

23rd September 2011 - She's breathing a sigh of relief after her pups have been removed and has stopped leaching all the nutrients out of the soil. With some fresh potting mix, suddenly her flower stalk has shot upwards:

Tips On Repotting Aloe Vera Pups

* Wait until the pups are large enough with about 5-8 leaves each. This makes it easier to repot because you don't have to cut the pups away from its mother. When they have 5-8 leaves, they have independant rootballs so you can just tug and they separate easily from the mother plant

* You can repot the pups into dry soil. Because the rootballs aren't large, giving the Aloe pups a lot of water will lead to rot and death. They are succulents, thus very tolerant of dry soil. You can water the Mother Aloe plant after repotting because she's got a huge rootball and will absorb the water in time without rotting.

* Their tips may turn brown. The plants may all turn brown but don't worry. It's just transplant shock and they are unkillable. Just ignore them and water them lightly a week after repotting.

* I like to leave my Aloes in a position that has only morning sun. It doesn't matter how much or little sun you have. IF you are moving them from a shady position to a sunnier position, ensure you do it VERY slowly like all other plants. Plants can get sunburnt and die. I know - how weird! When moving from shade to a sunnier position, ensure you expose them to sun for around 30mins the first few days, then 1 hr the next few days, 2 hours the next few days and after about two to three weeks of doing this (depending on your laziness), they're ready for the new sunnier position. It works the other way around too if you want to move them from full sun to a shadier spot.

* Repotting the Mother Aloe. After doing that, give her some fresh soil that are loaded with nutrients. Use the old soil for compost or whatever you want. If you repot her to a LARGER pot then be prepared for a gigantic plant. If you just replant her into the same pot, then you'll control her size somewhat. Some advice on the net recommeds trimming the rootball but we've found that restricting her to the same pot will contain her size. If you want a larger Mother Aloe, ensure you repot her into a larger size and she will grow accordingly.

Tips On Caring For Your Aloe Vera Plants

* Weekly watering in summer and in winter, every second week only
* Underwatering is better than overwatering
* When the leaves look shrivelled and dried up and not fleshy and squishy to the touch, then you need to increase the amount of water when you're watering
* Need well drained soil so excess water can seep out
* Sandy soil potting mix is best - I use potting mix that has a bit of compost mixed in with some sand - some on the net recommends 1/3rd sand to potting mix but whatever. Soil has heaps of nutrients so it's not going to hurt if you even have no sand to mix into your soil

Using Aloe Vera Gel for Healing

That's my face. Fell off my bike and grazed half my face. The after shot is about 10 days after slathering Aloe gel on my face every single day. Keeping the area moist and wet with Aloe gel. It was a bit awkward to work with Aloe goo on my face but after the shock and awe at the graze, it was back to work as usual. Almost one year later, you can't even tell that my face had looked like that.

Fresh Aloe gel is best, straight from the plant. Clean your area of injury. If it's bleeding, bandage it and wait until the blood stops oozing before using Aloe gel.

1. Cut the bottom leaf off
2. Cut the spikes off the oozing end by about 2cm
3. Now the spikes are gone, you can strip the skin off the top and bottom of the leaf by 2cm
4. Hold onto the pointy end with the skin and slather the gel from the fat end that you've just stripped the skin from. If there is a yellow gel, wash or scrape it off until you have clear Aloe gel
5. After using that bit, cut the skinned section off and store the rest of the leaf in an airtight glass container

Aloe leaves keeps very well for a few days in the fridge as long as the skin is still on, that's why I only strip off enough skin for each use. Keep your burn, sunburn, graze or whatever always wet and slathered with Aloe gel. What it does is encourage new cell growth on the surface of your skin. It also helps your skin to heal without forming a huge, thick, fat and dry scab that puckers and then leaves a scar once it comes off.

With Aloe gel, the injury will scab over, but very thinly and very lightly and the scab will peel off as you apply more Aloe Gel and form a new thin scab continuously until it heals almost unblemished.

Aloe Vera is a miracle healing plant for skin grazes, burns and sunburns. I've read websites with users even saying that they applied it to 3rd degree burns that were almost healed and it healed perfectly without any scarring. I had a tiny graze on my wrist and didn't bother applying Aloe gel to it but it healed with a larger, thicker scar than my face which was much worse in terms of grazed skin. Aloe gel is uber amazing.

Unless you're after an Aloe smothered garden, one plant will be plenty and with good care, you will have plenty of Aloe pups to repot, keep or give away.

Container Gardening: Balconies and Courtyards

It's such a thrill to see everything coming to life.

The peach blossoms, the fresh green buds on plants and trees. The new shoots on my plants reaffirms my sanity. I'm sure my neighbours must have viewed my behaviour as bizarre when they peeked through their windows and saw me watering masses of empty pots full of nothing but dirt for several weeks. Until the green shoots appeared suddenly enmasse.

On House Hunting

I recently posted about my friend feeling tired all the time and to be honest, I was feeling along that vein until I started forcing myself to get active with everything on my list of things to do. I spent one recent Saturday going to eight open houses. My mind was saturated with ideas and critiques on how to renovate, what needed to be renovated, what the houses should sell for given their location and conditions. I'm hoping to buy one next year so the pressure is on to gauge the market and the right price to offer vendors.

I built a frame for a canvas painting that had sat on the floor gathering dust for 8 months and I also built bedside tables from an IKEA flatpack. Can't even remember the last time I used my hammer and screwdrivers so frequently to build things. It's not exactly a feminine type of past time!


On Container Gardening

The container garden that I've been pottering on is coming along beautifully. All bulbs and seeds have been planted, my Aloe and her thirteen pups have been repotted. That was a monumental effort. I have around forty potted plants now with several in huge ceramic glazed pots.

Feeling inspired, objects and mishmash lying around the house will soon be turned into pieces of decorative art or ornaments soon. Here's some gorgeous container gardening inspiration for those of you who love to garden but have only a small balcony or courtyard:

From Martha Stewart's site:

Since when did I start developing a fondness for succulents? *Sigh* I can't help but want to buy more and more succulents and I don't even know how or when I started liking those odd, spiky fat, leafy plants.














Stone art inspiration for those with oodles of beach and rock stones lying around in jars with nothing better to do with them:

Along the lines of canvas art inspiration - you don't have to just use photos or buy generic printed stuff from the shops. You can create beautiful one off pieces from fabric or rags that you have lying around the place. Check out this gorgeous canvas bandana art from Apartment Therapy:

Or if you're like me and you have heaps of craft equipment, you can use your punches to create templates which you can use for spray painting, acrylics, oils or whatever takes your fancy. Saw this gorgeous placemat with sakura petals painted on:

Do you love gardening, plants and indoor herb gardens?

I do. I think I've inherited my parents' green thumbs.

I love gardening as much as I love my family, friends, cats, food and snowboarding in winter. Some people associate growing herbs, food or fruit with saving money and it's true, you DO save money when you grow them yourself BUT...there's a wide range of non financial benefits you can derive from growing any plant, whether they're edible or not.

The indoor plants clean and filter your air. The outdoor ones can encourage you to do a bit of pottering around, some mild exercise and best of all, lures you outdoor to the fresh air and sunshine. And if you plant edible stuff, there's the bonus of something to eat and use in your cooking after about four to twelve weeks.

I spent a huge part of my life on the farm with my family and because of that, have fallen in love with gardens, flowers, herbs and plants. My parents have a really random way of growing fruit trees. Their garden has an unusual assortment of fruit trees such as guava, paradise pears, peaches, peacharine(peach x nectarine), lemon, lime, apple, nashi, grape fruit, pears, nectarines, cumquats and kaffir lime trees. They've even got a curry tree and a patch of sugar canes growing happily in one section.

The yard, which is distinct from the actual farm, resembles an untamed jungle of edible herbs and fruit. As a partially self confessed food junkie, whichever way you look at it, it's great to beable to just step outside and pick a few herb leaves to cook with, or to cut fresh stems of lemon grass to pound in the mortar and pestle. 

I usually grow from seeds, transplants or cuttings. It's a lot cheaper and much more rewarding. Thought I'd post up some pictures of my efforts with gardening as a change from dissecting the benefits of good debt, bad debt, buying cars, calculating interest and all that personal finance stuff (yeah, I know you subscribe to this blog because of the PF stuff that I write but allow me to venture off topic, frequently! ;p ):

The pot about two weeks after planting and after approximately 4-6 weeks have passed we had herbs to eat:

After I had a disastrous biking accident which grazed the skin off half my face, I used this blessed Aloe plant's gel to recover and it is the best, most miraculous healing plant. Aloe Vera plants thrive on neglect and watering once a week is more than enough for this succulent. It has grown and grown and provided us with three independently planted offsprings and more little babies on the side to transplant soon (before and after). Hard to believe :

The basil plants were so stressful because they were so productive and literally produced more leaves and shoots at a faster rate than we could eat them. Almost every dish for a few weeks had to contain basil so that we could keep the plant in check lol ^ ^ ...Well they've finally matured and flowered so I've got to see how I can collect seeds:

Winter is pretty hard core in terms of trying to grow anything because the cold weather hampers plant growth so I've taken the herb planting indoors. All herb plants require some sunlight to grow so ensure you position them so that they get a bit of sunlight. Here's a new batch of corriander(cilantro) from seeds:



Mint is usually a very hardy plant that will suffocate all other plants in the garden if left untamed. I transplanted a few from the garden but for some reason they haven't really liked being planted in the pot so I was surprised to see that it is alive after almost giving up on them:

I planted iris bulbs in late April (I think)...first time that I've grown bulbs and I thought they had rotted in the soil since it was almost one and half to two months before I saw shoots sprouting. The daffodils are even more stubborn - it was only a few days ago that I finally saw shoots sprouting. Hard to believe that they could just lay there in the soil, dormant for up to two months without even growing and yet not be rotten:

On the weekend, I had a really busy and hectic time assisting with dismantling a glasshouse. I don't know why it's called a glasshouse when it's made of plastic? I also got the opportunity to ogle at glasshouse grown tomatoes and farms in Dural - my old childhood stomping grounds. When tomatoes are grown in glasshouses, instead of producing tomatoes for only one or two months or so, they can be fruiting for up to one year:



Well that's the end of show and tell. If you would like to see more, I blogged about wedding, weeding and zucchini plants which illustrates the type of back breaking activities that I get involved in on the weekends. Maybe that's why I save so much? lol ... If I'm way too busy and preoccupied with helping family and friends with their gardening and outdoorsy tasks then I'm too busy to hit the shops and rack up bills on my credit card! Plus I get a lot more exercise and never have to go to the gym. Ever.