Thoughts on our growing plants..... November 9th 2023

A beautiful Malaysian sky to start the day.

The cucumbers are one of our best growing plants in the nursery at the moment. I am all for letting them grow everywhere all over the ground but Ashok thinks they will do better if they are tied up and encouraged to climb. So this morning I tied them all up and we will see how they do. My feeling is that there will be some part of the plants which will crawl all over the ground.

So hopefully we get the best of both worlds.

The cuttings I planted a few days ago are still looking quite bedraggled. But hopefully they are settling into their new place and will start to grow soon.

I tidied them up so watering them is easier.

I also transplanted four marigold seedlings which were all that have so far germinated in the tray of 32 or more which I planted over a week ago. I will leave the rest a bit longer to see if more will grow.

The seedlings seemed very fragile and have taken a long time to appear, but hopefully they will grow stronger. In Buddha Garden we find them to be a tough plant that will grow anywhere.

Maybe they prefer to the dry conditions of Buddha Garden rather than the wetter conditions here - although I picked the seed from plants growing here.

Looking at one of our cucumber plants I came across the dreaded 'red bugs' (I never did find out their name) that used to decimate my pumpkin plants when I first came to Buddha Garden. I hope they won't do the same to these cucumber plants.

What I find wonderful is that the red bugs are still in Buddha garden still sitting on the pumpkin plants. Now, however, they don't cause the plants any problems apart from making a few holes in some of the leaves. One reason for this is that we save all our own seed and over the generations the plants have become more used to the conditions in Buddha Garden and able to repel the pests there more easily. The other thing is that over the years we have focused on creating more diversity with the plants which in turn creates a diversity of insects which help to keep the red bugs under control. We once had a student come and do a very nice piece of research which showed the more varieties of insects in the garden the fewer pest problems we had.

I'm not a fan of using so called 'organic' pesticides either, as I think even these disturb the ecology. Instead I prefer to allow nature to find its own balance. Although as I explained to Ashok, this relies on nature's time rather than a human schedule. Especially since given the monoculture of oil palm that we have in Chempaka Kuning creating a new ecology is not going to be a quick process.