Babies' First Bloom

Playing match-maker for plants is so rewarding when you finally see the result.
On my last post Crossing Waterlilies, I have shown you those tiny sprouts... the result of waterlilies kama-sutra. Hehehehe...
Here is the picture of those babies growing up.

babies taking up their mommy's space in the pot

There were so many of them that I have them re-potted in smaller container and give bigger ones away.
I am willing to give them for free, all you need to do is to prepare a pot for them, k?

babies waterlilies for giveaway 

the first flower 

There's one baby that I separated for a couple of months and has a whole pot for itself. And this is its first flower.
I have to admit that when I mate those water lilies, I didn't label them. I never thought I would succeed on first attempt.

Looking at the fact that the baby bear a pink flower same as its mother. But it somehow have smaller bloom than its mommy's.
Maybe I mate pink flower with another pink flower.
Ooopss.... Waterlilies' infidelity, nobody knows who the daddy flower is. FYI, I mated pink one vs. pink, white and red.



Isn't it pretty? I cut it off and placed in the altar. The cut flower lasted for 4 days.

Crossing Waterlilies

Last month, before I was away for trips, my 2 of waterlilies were blooming continuously: white and purple ones. So, I did some research about how they propagate sexually, I just wanna know if one day I can make unique hybrid.

Based on what I read on WGI website, I started to cross them. Here is what I did:

white flower as pollen donor (male) / purple flower as recipient (female)

I took pollens from white flower (1-2 days old), and place it into the nectar-bowl (stigma) of newly bloomed purple flower. Sometimes I drank the nectar before the pollination process, leaving it damp enough for the pollens to stick on.

the pollination process

 The next day, the stamens will curl to cover up the stigma, you can no longer see the bowl. I guess that’s when the magic happens.

what it looks like next day after pollination

Within a week, I checked the sinking flower if they rot or swollen. If they rot, the pollination failed. If they sunk and have curly stem and swollen butt, it’s a good sign that the pollination have occurred. Since I want to collect seeds, I put a clothbag. The butt will get larger and larger until ….

top left clockwise: See the diff on non-pollinated and pollinated flower / Pollinated flower has larger butt-size / Pod placed in clothbag to ease seeds collection.

I don’t know what happened next, cos I wasn’t around for a month. When I came back that night, I dipped my hand to check the clothbag (it was dark), I was so disappointed not to feel any pod in the bag. I can feel mushy stuff in it. I thought the whole pollination has failed.

The next morning, I went to check again, and guess what I found! The seeds have sprouted inside the bag! I missed the pod stage. The seeds already released from the pod, and sprouted into little plants. Oh, so many of them. Too many!

left-right: They sprouted inside the bag // handful of them // placing them in dirt

Then I removed them into a new pot, tried to dip them slightly inside the dirt. But they kept floating around. I hope I didn’t hurt them. Really hope they’ll stay alive and grow well.

Now I am away again, I hope when I come back next month, they’ll give me nice surprises again J

Note:

I guess there are some differences between my experience and what’s written in the website. I couldn’t argue about the exact period for pod stage, and sprouting age. But I know that it all happen within a month only, and I didn’t do any special treatment (cold-storage period) to stratify the seeds. They just sprouted.

Seedless Guava

Guava with seeds

Have you ever had guava? The usual one will have a core of thousand little seeds. Such a mess, hate it! especially when it has more seeds than the flesh.


But not Dad's Seedless Guava :) it's literally SEEDLESS.
I love it when it's not fully ripe, just when it still have the "apple" crunch; it'll taste so sweet with abit of sour hint.

Of course you can consume it when it's fully ripe. It'll have softer texture and tastes just sweet, without tartness - not my fave, but some people prefer it this way



Here are some pics of the fruit stages:

1. The flower to be, still very tiny.
2. All swollen up, ready to bloom in 1-2 days.
3. The beautiful white flower. Only bloom for 1 day, need helps from some bees to fertilise it. Bees love it :)
4. Sign of successful fertilisation: the flower will lose all the petals and it'll grow some hip.
5. Still growing :)
6. At this stage, the fruit is huge enough to start releasing enough scent to attract fruit flies; start wrapping the fruit to avoid the attack.
7. Dad wrapped the fruit with plastic bag (inside lined with papers). Plastic is actually not a good wrapping media cos it'll trap moisture - paper is a better choice; if you still wanna use plastic, poke some holes for sufficient draining.
8. Here what's they look like when dad harvested it. Plump!
9. See!!! I told you, it's totally seedless :)

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.

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.

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 :)

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 *

a Pumpkin's Life

In the past few months I have been so captivated by pumpkins. Yes, my daily activity in the morning and night is to check my pumpkin garden :) Here, I'd like to share a pumpkin's life in my garden.
1. Choose good seeds. You can just insert the seeds in moist soil. But I am more kiasu, so I soaked the seeds in water for 24 hours, and it'll germinate in 2-3 days rather than a week
2. Soon, 2 tiny leaves will pop up and more true leaves will appear
3. It won't be long until pumpkin vines turn monstrous and invade your whole garden

5. This is what a male flower's butt look like when it blooms. No sexy butt.
6. Inside the male flower is a stamen. It's a long stick with sticky yellow powder, called pollen.
7. Here's a pic of sexy female flower, note the voluptuous hip
8. Inside the female flower is the stigma, and the orange part is called pistil-a receptive organ for the male pollen

 9. Now, the making-love part. The technical term is "pollination". Again I'm very kiasu, so I am doing hand-pollination (Yes, I am Dr. Love)
 So what I did is I pick a bloom male flower, remove its petals; then I rub it to female's pistil.
10. So, this is what a female stigma will look like after that tiring love-making session. Soon, her hip will become bigger and bigger, and that's what we call pumpkin :)
11. Here's a developing pumpkin, it still have a pale skin
12. A mature pumpkin will have a red-orange hue on its skin, ready to pick :)

13. This is a fruit fly. I took this picture in my garden, and look how pretty it looks. But they're nasty.
14. Look at this pumpkin :( It grew quite big, but it carried a scar from the fruit fly. When I cut the pumpkin, inside is fully of tiny maggots.
The fly will sting on young pumpkin when its outer skin is still soft (usually within 7 days of pollination), she'll leave her eggs inside. The eggs then grow into maggots and they'll feast on the pumpkin from inside :( Oh, my poor pumpkin
15. For pre-caution, this is what I did. I use old B5 or A4 envelope, turn it into a bag shape, and use it to cover the young pumpkin. Make sure the cut some tiny slit so rain won't stay in the bag.
Don't worry about the bag size will hasten pumpkin's size. It won't. The pumpkin will outburst the envelope, and by that time, the pumpkin is safe from fruit-fly anyway.

 

16. So, here's what a beautiful pumpkin look like. She's a bit plump, isn’t she?
17. Halved, see the seeds cavity :) full of tiny lil' seeds. I scoop the seeds out (18)
19. My mom cut it into few pieces, steamed it. I prefer it to be pan-fried with butter. Here's what it looks like.

It's yummy!!!! Happy pumpkinnnnnn, baby!!!

giant BANANA

Here's a pic of the largest banana on this month's harvest. It weighs at 1250g for just a finger!!!
Other banana on the same tree weigh ard 700-1000g/finger.
The giant banana was so huge that it lasts for 2 breakfasts of 5 people :)
It was made into "pisang goreng" for day 1. and "pisang bakar keju" for day 2.