introducing Mr. & Mrs. Salak

I have 3 salak trees at home, all grown from seeds. They are about 3-4 years old, they have flowered for some time but never bear any fruit.

I finally get the answer, salak tree too have different sex. I have checked mine, I have 2 males - obviously will never ever fruit!!! and a female. The reason why the female never fruit is probably so far, they never bloomed together. According to Ibu, the expert of salak, this case can be tricked by collecting the blooming male flower, keep it in air-tight container and stick it to the fridge; it can be used to fertilise female up to 1 month.
With the new knowledge that I just obtained, hopefully I'll have little salak fruits soon. Hahaha!!!

For those who never seen what salak tree looks like, here it is. Super spiky. Careful when you walk near them. I've became the victim :(

And here are the female flowers, pretty huh? L-R: yet to bloom, blooming "Salak Mawar", blooming "Salak Pondoh", and hand-pollinated flower - see the yellow pollens on the flower.

Female Salak Flower

Male flowers
I have lost track on its variety name :) Sorry. But you can see in the pic, yet to bloom and bloomed male flowers.

Male Salak Flower

Salak fruits
L-R: Succesful pollination will bear little salak fruit-still full of spikes, salak fruits came usually in clusters, ripe salak Sidempuan - notice rose hue on its flesh. Yum!!!

note:

Salak (Salacca zalacca) is a species of palm tree native to Indonesia. It is also well-known as "snakeskin fruit" due to its scaly skin. The fruit has an astringent and sweet taste. The flesh can be crunchy or juicy depends on cultivar.

Grafting

Yesterday I learned a new lesson about plants: Grafting - it's a method of asexual propagation for hardy plants. What I need is a base plant and a stalk of interest plant. Errr.... I won't pretend that I know much about the preparation, I was only taught to do the method. I did some surgeries on some poor plants :) Hopefully they'll be alive. I'll report in 3 weeks.

Grafting Step by Step

Here is the theories, how to do it:

1. Choose a healthy base plant. Base-plant is grown from seeds so it'll have strong root system. The age differ from plants to plants, but the rule of thumb is that it already produce young "woody" stalk. Too young, it'll die. Too old, it won't be able to fuse.
2. Use a very sharp knife to slice up base-plant. It need to be precise on the middle.
3. How far should you cut? 2-3cm should be sufficient enough
4. Choose interest-plant: meaning it has desirable characteristic that you want to reproduce. You can take a stalk from adult tree that you wanted to clone. The stalk should be in "not-growing" state. This can be marked by no shoots on its tips. Remove all leaves on this stalk. Slice up the bottom part of the stalk to V-shape.
5. Insert interest-plant into the slit of base
6 & 7 They should be joined in perfect straight position. When the size of interest and base is not the same. Ensure that they meet at least on 1 side. Dun worry about the "empty" side. The idea is to fuse the cambium part of both, so we need to make both cambium to meet.
8, 9, 10. Wrap up the joining area with a plastic tape. wrap up tightly, do not leave any gaps between them.
11. Cover up the new plant with a plastic bag. Lightly tie the base of the bag, leave a small gap; you want to reduce the evaporation rate.
12. After 2-3 weeks or after you see new leaves have sprout, remove the plastic cover. And tadaaaaaa, they are all fuse nicely now. It is now just as good as its interest-plant :)

Papaya - He, She, and something in Between

Some plants have different sex on each trees. Some plants are male, they won't be able to bear fruits, but they are capable to produce pollen to fertilise the female counterparts.
Obviously, female plants are able to produce fruits. Some plants don't have Mr. and Mrs, they are just able to produce both male and female flowers on the same trees.

For papaya, they include all, they have male only, female only, and hermaphrodite. All have different chracteristic --> skinny, sexy or plump?

Male tree/ male flower do not produce any fruit (pic 1). In Indonesia, usually the male flowers are used for cookings.
Female tree / female flower only have stigma (pic 2). From sideway, she looks oval, without any distict curve (pic 4-top). They are capable to bear fruit without fertilisation, but their fruits will deform. They'll be round, seedless, and less fleshy compared to hermaphrodite ones (pic 3).  But if they are fertilised, the fruit will be just like normal papaya, elongated shape and contains seeds.

Hermaprodite flowers (pic 5 and 6) consists of both stigma and stamen, a complete kind of flower. See on pic 4-bottom, it has a sexy shape with curvy hips (just like ladyboys, they are always sexier than real women *sigh -__-*) The fruit (pic 7) usually will have elongated shape, thick flesh and of course contains hundreds of little black seeds.

Mozzies Again

A day before I came here in Balitro, my dear one has reminded me to carry insect-repellant. I did, I brought a B*ygon Electric. I thought I'd be safe. 

On 1st night I was here, not too many mozzies yet, maybe they haven't detect my arrival. But the next days, my gosh, another mozzies invasions. Guess what, B*ygon Electric didn't work, even a mozzy just standing nicely on the device. I realised why I had quite a bit of bites. But then, I always carry some liquid insect repellant, it works for 2nd and 3rd night, well, I finished it all on 3rd night. Tonight is the 4th night, and it's damn torturing: the weather is hot, mozzies flying here and there. 

I tried to spray lemongrass oil (I happened to bought it from Research Centre today) which smell like what Porkie sent me before. This pure lemongrass oil seems to protect me for like 10 minutes only, after that the mozzies are back. 

Ugh, weather is so hot.... Can't sleep... Mozzies.... Lucky, I'm leaving tomorrow :)

Kangkong - 空心菜

Been digging and found these old pics of my kangkong patches, not that old, about 2-3 months ago. Planted quite a bit of them and get bored soon after. Btw, what I was using were land-kangkong seeds (kangkong darat), so they don't need to grow in swamp like what it's usually known. 

Btw, after growing 2 batches (ea 100-150 seeds), we all get bored of kangkong. Let's rest for a while :)

For beginners, growing kangkong is easily rewarding as it will germinate in 2-3 days and can be harvested in 3 weeks. A quickie harvest :)

Hooked by Soursop

Some new facts about Soursop (Annona muricata) that I learned today. Why does soursop's fruit 'almost' always have hooked shape? The answer is improper pollination. 

How can this happened?

In nature, soursop's flower is pollinated by ants. Soursop's flower looks like a leathery box, inside its multiple stigma is circled by hundreds of stamens. Logically, pollination is easily happened because of the complete flower equipment. But, there's a problem: its stigmas matures earlier than the pollens. So pollination usually happened by neighbouring pollens carried by ants, which walk in straight line, thus leaving a part of unpollinated stigma. Or for better shaped fruit, you can collect it's pollen by shaking the flower (by this time, stigma is no longer sticky/receptive) to pollinate other flower using brush for even pollination. Here are some pictures of soursop taken today. Enjoy!

1. picture of soursop flower

2. mature stigma, pollinated by ants

3. anatomy of soursop flower: dome of hundreds of tiny white sticky stigmas, circled by (immature) stamens packed in scale-like formation

4. mature pollens. keep in air-tight container in cool fridge, it'll last for a month; ready to pollinate any mature female.

5. successful hand-pollination, indicated by straight oblong shape. Each spikes represents single stigma

6. mature soursop fruit, indicated by stretched spikes

7. inside is white flesh with sweet sour taste. each lobes represents each spikes/stigma

8. me and yummy soursop :)

Green Garage

I've taken this picture for sometime now. This's what I called "Green Garage". The garage in the picture is now 8 months old.

The greens on top are mixture of bottle gourd, butternute pumpkin and angle gourds. Because of the rapid growth character of these 3 plants  (I have 2-4 of each), the garage can be established in as short as 2 months, and it'll last more than 8 month, hopefully longer :)

Toothless Corn

All I want is to have some sweetcorn in my garden. But I only planted a few of them over a period of time, which obviously reach maturity in different timing. Last week I harvested an ear - as you can see here, it looks like a toothless corn.

How can this happened?
As usual, I consult Mr. Google. Corn is usually pollinated by wind. Its pollen is so fine and light that it's easily fly away on slight blow of air. The problem is  when only single corn is planted (or planted far away from other corn) the pollen doesn't always land on the corn's silver hair, which is the female receptive organ.
Do you know that every single strand of hair represents each kernel of a corn? The failure to pollinate every strand may result in toothless corn as in the picture.

Lesson learned, now I am planting a new batch of Red Aztec Corn in 4x10 formation. Hopefully, I'll get a bunch of red jewels soon.

* Special thanks to AH for going through so many body search in smuggling seeds for me *

Curiosity didn't kill the Cat

Started with the thought of creating some chocolate for this year's Easter, but since there are no pretty coloured chocolate here in Padang, the thought just get killed. But as usual, my curiosity took over, so after hours of consulting Mr. Google, I finally opted for an easier to approached alternative: Cookies!!!
 

With a borrowed mixer, a tall glass for rolling pin, plastic bag as a piping tools, non-temperature-mark oven, some free cookies molds from cereal and other emergency kitchen stuff; I am really proud of these little cuties. It tastes not too bad, it's sweet, but not that sweet. This was my first time in making sugar cookies, yet alone decorating them :) I think it's not too bad at all.

Family Day

It's been a while since my last writing here. A lot has happened.
Mostly happened in my garden. But first, I wanna present some pictures from our company's family day at Pantai Carocok, Pesisir Selatan. Here I did some tug-a-war. And I also get another character marking on my body parts (not like the "X" is gone yet!)
Enjoy :)