Solid Strand Wire - Another Versatile Gardening Material

In another entry, I extolled the use of thin insulated wires as a tool for gardening. Well, what about thick ones? Sure enough, they do have their place. But by a "thick wire", I refer only to the solid strand type of wire and not the stranded one. A stranded wire does not take shape when you bend it.

You can buy them or reuse discarded ones. A meter of gauge 14 would cost around Php15 per meter. Here's a length I managed to salvage at the height of typhoon Milenyo. Some wires at the neighborhood were inadvertently cut when they were hit by swaying branches of big trees. The phone company came and decided to just discard these old wires.

How to Lay or Replant Lawn Grass Sod or Turf

This post would be the logical continuation or part 2 of how to remove turf. But this part is much easier.


Here's what to do:

Remove Odor from Dog and Cat Poo

For months I've been having problems with stray cats and my dog doing their toilet activities in my front lawn. I could sweep up the poo and put it in a compost pit. But the odor from the leftover poo on the grass could be so bad that I couldn't linger much longer to tend to the garden. Not only that, even the compost pit would smell really bad and flies just swarm around. Ugh.

I found a product at SM Ace Hardware that removes this odor. It is in powdered form and curiously, it doesn't seem to have a name brand. But for almost Php100 it weighs 2kg (that's a lot!) and effectively removes the bad odor.

Browsing this Blog

From recent developments, I realized that this blog is best viewed using a browser OTHER than Internet Explorer Version 8. As of this writing, version 8 is the latest version of IE (Internet Explorer).

You may not get any errors when using IE8 to view this blog but you will not see the blog displayed correctly. A couple I noticed is the blog's sidebars don't appear on the main page and the posts are incomplete when browsing with IE8.

I've used Mozilla Firefox and have never had problems with it thus far. There are other browsers like Apple Safari and Google Chrome which I haven't tried. But for now, I would strongly suggest to avoid using Internet Explorer when viewing this blog.

If you're unsure, shown below are the icons of the above mentioned browsers:

How to Remove Lawn Grass Sod or Turf

A few months ago (May), we needed to clear a part of the bermuda lawn close to the wall. This was to provide space for some new plants (see them at the foreground below). The area is a bit substantial and has a width of 10 inches and length of 6 feet.


To cleanly clear out that portion of the lawn, this is what you need to do.

Pereskia Bleo aka Rose Cactus or Wax Rose

Finally, I was able to positively identify this beautiful yet potentially harmful plant growing in our front yard. All I knew was that the plant grew from a cutting that came from Davao. Thanx to the kind folks at the forums of gardenweb.com, I learned that the plant is of the genus Pereskia (leafy cactus). From that lead, I searched the web and found the plant to be Pereskia Bleo, also known by esoteric names such as Rose Cactus or Wax Rose.


Saying it's "potentially harmful" is a bit of an understatement, however. "Vicious" as one blogger described it is more apt.

The plant itself is unremarkable except for the needle-like vicious thorns that line the vertical shaft of the stem. It's almost impossible to handle the plant without getting pricked. Just look at one thorn jutting out under the flower in the photo above.

The plant is very easy to propagate with cuttings. Here's an entry from desert-gardens.com:

Pereskia bleo

Scientific Name: Pereskia bleo (Kunth) DC.

Synonym: Pereskia cruenta, Pereskia panamensis, Rhodocactus corrugatus, Pereskia corrugata, Rhodocactus bleo, Cactus bleo

Family: Cactaceae

Minimum Avg. Temperature: 50°F (10°C)

Sun Exposure: Morning sun or bright shade

Origin: Panama and Colombia

Watering Needs: Enjoy some humidity in the air. They need good drainage, but the soil should stay moist in summer. Keep drier in winter.

Propagation: Contrary to other cacti, this plant is not succulent, and the cuttings should be planted in a moist soil mixture immediately instead of being left to dry out a couple of days.

Below is a closeup of the flower with a bug caught savoring the nectar.


Anyway, when we have visitors at home, I can now say without hesitation that it's a Rose Cactus and no longer "a plant from Davao".



The Rose Cactus exhibits flower color changes due to change in temperature.
Note: NONE of the photos above were digitally enhanced.

First Cypress Vine Flower

After several weeks of waiting, one of our cypress vines finally produced the first bloom ever!

I admit I was a bit impatient after building its trellis. I'd visit the vines everyday and wonder what's keeping them too long. This is especially when the main stems have turned browned indicating maturity and the vines were already crowding the top part of the trellis.

Ampalaya or Bitter Gourd or Bitter Melon

Our Ampalaya plants have started bearing fruits. This rainy season's really wonderful for the veggies. The type that we have are the small ones commonly used for Ilocano type dishes like Pinakbet.

Eggplants!

I've been so preoccupied with our front garden's vines (cypress vine, millionaire's vine) that I was surprised to find DH harvesting our eggplants at the back!

A Better Way to Tie Metal Wires to a Trellis Bracket

With the success of the vine attachments I assembled for the flowering vines in the front yard, I decided to do the same for the backyard. We're hoping to grow vegetables here and have ampalaya (bitter gourd), patola (sponge gourd) and maybe pipino (cucumber) - all of them climbing vines.