The 2nd pond was to be for the climbing perch, but it was a disaster. You can see in this shot how bad the leak was (the left pond)
So came the tedious job of dismantling it (lots of centipedes hiding in the crevices)...
... and reassembling. What I learnt from the guppy pond was that a depth of 2 bricks was too shallow, causing the water to heat up considerably in the midday sun. This version is 3 bricks deep.
Completed pond. with an Indian almond leaf.
Lets pray there are no leaks! I will know tomorrow.
Passed by a Starbucks this morning and just thought I'd try my luck asking them for their used coffee grounds. They were happy to pass it all over for free... 3kgs of it!!
Put some in the compost but most of it direct around the plants. Our garden never smelt so good.
We planted the tree too close to the neighbour's fence. Right from the start the young bananas had a rough time...
When we first spotted the pouch thingy that contained the fruit, it was resting on the fence, stabbed by the metal ends.
Then we dislodged it and let it hang inside our compound.
The next day our neighbour called us to her side to show that the 2nd comb of fruit was being stabbed again! F@(&!!
Now we tried putting it back to the original position, resting on the fence, but this time with some padding to protect from the metal fence.
I knew it was a bad idea but just didn't know what else to do. We soon realised that the weight was still too heavy and the bottom fruit would be affected. So we pushed it back to our side completely.
The next day, the fruit was pressing on the padding so we had to rethink this whole problem! Had to cut quite a few green leaves to access the tree better. Sorry banana tree.
Then we padded the trunk and wedged a stick to push the whole tree away from the wall.
It worked to give the fruit some space. but the force of the stick stabbing the padded trunk was too much and I could see water oozing out. That wasn't a good sign. So we wedged a piece of wood parallel to the trunk to distribute the pressure a bit more. Think it worked.
The fruit have some space now, not much, but it's still space.
Have to monitor the trunk and fruits daily.
30Oct2019 update: Fruits look ok and not pressing against the fence.
5 Nov 2019 update: Lots more tiny fruit/flowers below. It's so small that it doesn't look like it will develop into a full fruit.
The flower was so heavy and resting on a metal fence, it was slightly damaged :(
Hopefully it doesn't have any negative effects on the tree and fruit. With help from our neighbour, we managed to dislodge it. This is the view from the street. What a sight!!
Peace lilies are supposed to be this wonder plant that can detoxify the air. Lots of people must have read that study coz the first shop I found it in was selling the plant for MYR99!! The salesgirl tried to convince me to get it saying that it was rare, had special healing properties, and the vase it was in was unique. I have better things to spend MYR99 on, like some Guinness.
Finally found a local garden shop selling this for MYR14. It didn't have the unique pot but I'll live with that.
Watched a few videos on propagating it. This guy had a clever idea on how to have a flower all the time, but I was stressed out watching him mess up his kitchen!!
Anyways it was time to attempt repotting the plant. I wasn't prepared for what I found after removing the plastic pot.
It took me close to an hour to pry, cut, mutilate the plant. It wasn't a very peaceful process. This was the result...
Most of the videos I watched mentioned handling the plant with care coz it was easy to stress out. I definitely did the opposite. Will update this post in a month or so to report on how many survived the ordeal.
One day later update: They all look quite ok! Fingers crossed they keep it up. I placed them in different locations with varying levels of light and conditions...
Indoors, by the window, no direct sunlight, in water. This was the biggest plant with the most roots.
Outdoors, no direct sunlight, 2 pots with soil, and a few in water.
These 2 sets in the same shaded place as the 2 soil pots earlier, but these are even more shaded by other plants, and immersed in pond water. The last photo was of the smallest shoots which also had hardly any roots attached.
I had no time yesterday but I will be working on some kind of holder to immerse a couple of shoots in the indoor community aquarium.
23Oct2019 update: A much smaller peace lily was for sale in Tesco for MYR14.90. Good to know I got a better bargain earlier.
24Oct2019 update: My prototype wire plant hangar holding a peace lily and spring onion.
This area gets hardly any natural light.
I placed one in gravel and water. Gets a fair amount of indirect sun.
Few problems... the plastic sheet wasnt wide enough for the original plan. So had to reduce the depth and width to accommodate it. Testing the overflow...
We will have a go at climbing perch here. But I will have to solve a few things first to make it safe for the fish. The main issue will be some sort of cover coz it has a tendency to jump. Also a supply of live feeder guppies.
UPDATE: The day after... F@^&!!! The water level was half way down!
It had a small hole that wasn't visible yesterday when we were laying it. In fact it's not visible at all. If I could see it, maybe I could try a patch. What a waste of time and effort. Oh well, back to the hunt for a big enough plastic sheet, WITHOUT INVISIBLE HOLES.
Currently, there are 5 sources of water we are using to fertilise the veges...
Indoor 300l community aquarium
Indoor 140l Betta sorority aquarium
Outdoor 60l Guppy pond
Outdoor 20l misc fish black rectangle plastic container
Outdoor 15l misc fish round ceramic container
The 1st 3 are the main sources. Tested the water parameters today...
The indoor aquariums looked ok.
The nitrates had a slight reading, but that's ok considering it was done just before a water change.
The outdoor guppy pond is a revelation. The nitrates were close to zero.
I suspect a few reasons for that.
rain - lots of natural water changes due to heavy downpours over the last week.
auto filling dechlorinated tap water 4 times a day from a reservoir. With these results, now I can either reduce it to 3, or maybe redirect it altogether to water some plants.
algae (manageable levels) and the floating rack of kangkung sucking up the nitrates. If this is the reason then, great!! coz that's aquaponics in action!
using the pond water for watering veges outside the pond. I will stop that practice now, and just let the kangkung within the pond exclusively use its nitrates.
Some thoughts in no particular order...
- I should make this a monthly update
- If I dont have the plant name, I will just describe it :)
- Please correct me if any are wrongly named
- We have reached double digits in the variety of plants!
1. Blue pea, butterfly pea (clitoria ternatea)
2. Large-leaf pennywort (hydrocotyle bonariensis) A
large-leaf pennywort B
3. Banana tree (x2)
4. Curry leaf tree (Murraya koenigii)
5. Brinjal a
Brinjal b
6. Misc greens a
misc greens b
misc greens c
misc greens d
7. Kangkung a
Kangkung b
8. Thulasi / holy basil (ocimum tenuiflorum)
9. Blood pressure plant I got the ailment wrong... Bring down blood sugar plant
