Wednesday, February 25, 2009

My Plant Rack (Indoor)


Been using this indoor plant rack i set up myself for some time. Pretty simple and compact, also been testing these T8 lights under indoor conditions to monitor whether there are suitable for my water jasmine plants which to some extent yes(otherwise they would have been dead long ago), but the conditions cannot be compared to outdoor with good direct sources of sunlight for sure. If it still goes well, might install a 2nd plant rack in my room soon.

Anyway these are HO(high output) white T8 lights which are very low watts. Everyday on 2 sets of these light-tube for 8hrs a day, and for 30 days(est. a month), will cost about only $3+ of electrical bill. Neat.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Bowl of Cactus



This going out to ferlyn for moving into her new house and chinese happy lunar new year, all in one, and yes.. belated, but better than never. Though i never promised you anything, i kept my words =P (I know its horribly arranged)

OCH Water Jasmine 01

(21/02/2009)

Source: och(oh chin huat), seed grown

This was a "wild" water jasmine that i bought from och(oh chin huat) a few months back. It was in a bad shape, though the mass of roots stood right into 13-14inch deep pot, the top growth from trunk up was less than 9-10inch. The trunk and branches were covered with fungus. Foliage was very very sparse and many branches were already withered and dead. I have no wish to let it grow bigger and wanted to make a shohin out of it thus i did some major operations on it.

Old clayish soil was cleared, about 80% of the roots were totally pruned off. A portion of the roots was used to develop Water Jasmine Root Cutting 001. Some branches were removed as you can see from the wounds on it. I wired and spread some roots out in a radial direction as i wanted to develop more shallow root growth in future to come. In the process of doing so, i broke off one main root while wiring. It was heart wrenching, but lesson well learnt the hard way haha.

Because most of the main branches all grew in the same direction without much alternation, i decided to wire them in a slight windswept style. And so during the first few weeks, leaves gradually dropped and the whole plant was in a very weak health. Only after frequent watering with diluted weak seaweed solutions over about a month or so, the roots slowly recovered and developed more feeder roots which in turn the plant started to bud. Initially i let them grow wherever they want so they could produce leaves to make more food and in turn more leaves. Afterwhich at this stage i cherry picked which shoots and branches to keep.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Water Jasmine Seedlings

(12/04/2009)

The T8 lights and frequent seaweed helps!

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(16/02/2009)

1st set of true leaves developing. Here its more obvious that some haven't even started to develop their 1st set of true leaves. From here on, slowly those that haven't develop true leaves will get filtered out. Subsequently in the course of next few weeks, those that grow very slow and not into next 2nd/3rd set of leaves will get filtered to one side as well.

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(26/01/2009)

Babies germinating, from here we can see which are the ones that germinate faster despite being sowed on the same day under same conditions.

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(18/01/2009)

Water jasmine seeds that i sowed from the pods that cut off from a park along with jing yi who was helping me with the watch-out lol

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Water Jasmine Shohin 016 (12/04/09)

(12/04/09)

Source: Root cutting
Letting it grow wild, shifted to a more shallow and wider container to let more roots grow outwards.

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(01/03/09)

Source: Root cutting
Overall quite happy with the growth. Multiple budding points which i pointed earlier on gives rise to potential clump style in future to come. At this point i like to train them when they as young as in the stage of growing green young shoots getting ready to harden in months to come. Im using soft brass wire of .41mm and wire them loosely to style them. So now will be letting them grow wild to thicken up and harden. My way of wiring in stage as early as this doesn't go all the way to the end of the shoot/new young branch, cos all i need is to let them thicken so the remaining 50% or more will be pruned off in future to encourage more ramification. So it doesnt really matter how it grows after the 50% length to me.

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(21/02/09)

Source: Root cutting
Wonderful growth here, its really worth the effort and time to develop it into a clump style shohin in next 3-4years time considering how the buds sprouts all around the cut area.

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(17/02/2009)

Source: Root cutting
Signs of vigorous growth. Potential clump style in future to come.

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(15/02/2009)

5 days later after it budded. We can see several locations of the new buds thats appearing around the cut at the main root cutting.
Source: Root cutting

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(10/02/2009)

This is one of main root that was cutted off from the och(oh chin huat) water jasmine that i bought over some time ago. As much as i could, tried to retain some feeder roots and planted it straight in soil and kept it moist for about 4 weeks before it started budding.
Source: Root cutting

Pots


Neat little mame pot that was "considered" a "gift" from a friend.


More new additions, i like the small little pot im holding in hand, makes an excellent mame pot, but would hav to drill the drainage hole myself which isnt a prob at all but considering this size, probably i can do without the hole. Other one on right side in last picture is actually a tea cup but has feet. I thought the round cup and height makes and excellent pot for cascading/semi-cascade shohin/mame, issue here again is the need to drill the hole myself lol


woot new addition, $2 from sunflora lol


Love those fine crafted pots, especially the unglazed ones. Gearing much into shohin/mame nowadays. Guess new stocks will come in around june.