I’m not entirely sure which of these two is supposed to be you and me, or if that’s what you’re trying to do, but I certainly fit the first category. Two mint plants in medium health.
One of them is impressively durable. I pruned it back to nothing due to a caterpillar infestation and was too lazy to throw it away at the time. But it grew back!
That’s good to hear. But don’t underestimate me. I have a kind of reverse midas touch with plants and pets. In 2013, in Daxi, my girlfriend and I won a turtle at the Thursday night street market. We took it home, named it Donatello IIRC, and put it on the balcony. We gave it lettuce and other veg. But one day, I went out and he wasn’t moving. I touched his shell, and it was all squishy. We buried it in the Daxi river. I felt like a pseudo-beatnik douche.
So ended my fling with nature.
~O~
But that’s good news. Im hoping mint and chili pair well togther, and like 6 hours of sunlight a day. Will research it.
Mint is damn useful in salads, and it’s actually kind of hard to find in the average wet market. So it’ll make a solid first choice.
I remember in Santiago De Cuba, I stayed with some African-Cubans. The grandfather was growing mint on the roof. The whole area was covered with it… so mint might work for me. I love the taste anyway, and it cools my occasionally choleric temperament.
Diary.
11:34am: Mint pot 2 has been lashed to the first prototype. Now have one chili plant and 2 mint.
Thread went over most Forumosans heads, as expected. Bear is angry.
June 14th, 2022.
- HHC, Taibei.
God knows what you think of me after the Surly Cow thread.
It’s not like I’m going to be trundling them round the Brass Monkey on wheels.
Imagine this…
I live for the Street Theater here. I rarely go to bars. Every evening I challenge myself to go out, take an instrument. sit somewhere in Danshui, Ximen, where-ever… play, and see who walks up to me.
About 50% of the time someone will start a conversation. Else I just chill and practice. My entire life centers around the boardwalk right now. It’s not a bad focal point.
Two weeks ago I talked to a girl who was sketching GuanYinShan. Yesterday a Buddhist Nun walked up to me and we chatted for 3-4 hours. IT was one of the most interesting conversation’s I’ve had recently.
A simple prop can open up innumerable paths
I have a friend who wants to start a project. We might open a cosplay street market stall. Just a simple thing with 2,000TWD of products. Keep it subtle and simple. Kowtow to the police if necessary, but I’ve rarely seen anyone bothered if they don’t overstep their bounds.
So…
A 5 liter plastic bottle, painted, with a branch stuck in it, and 3-5 mint/chili/flower plants hanging from it, or nestled in the branches.
That’s a prop, which can open innumerable, infinite conversations.
I’ll take my plastic saber as well.
Should be a fun evening.
Get a hang
Christ. You got me pegged. I bought one last November. I got two pairs of lensless glasses too. And yeah, I went bucket drumming last night.
What about a hangdrum/bucket drum and the portable plant show?
At least I’ve got to spruce up my yangtai. It looks like THX-1138 meets Portlandia right now. A barren hipster wasteland.
~O~
I realized I can make each model for about 150 to 200, and 30 minutes work. Easy. If I make one a day for 10 days I’ll fill up my patio.
I grew lavender in full sun on my balcony (Taipei — Zhongshan district). It needs to be watered daily here. I think I had one English and one French. It lived well until I forgot to water them for two days. A LOT of it died after only two days w/o water. This runs contrary to most advice about not “overwatering” it.
Thanks for the story mate. Need tips like that. I guess I have to start a Google Doc for each plant.
Yeah my lavender is super thirsty. Strangely my peppermint hates water. And sun.
Basil is among the easiest in my opinion. Sweet basil or Thai basil, for example, because they’re otherwise hard to get here.
Cilantro might be okay, but I’ve had aphid problems the last couple of times I’ve tried. You’d probably also want fairly large containers to make it worthwhile, and it’s not something you can just go and cut bits off when you want then let it continue growing (because it’ll start to bolt/flower).
Basil. That’s a good idea. Yes, it’s hard to get hold of. I figure mint and basil would make a good beginner’s garden. All types of basil are good. I used to drink Holy Basil tea.
Coriander is so easy to get, it might not be that worth growing the stuff. I wonder if netting can keep out aphids.
This is why Im starting the thread. To see what’s easiest for local farmers.
Have you tried H202? It’s still not that well known outside mushroom farming. It kills bacteria dead, and oxygenates the plant.
Iodine may work too, but Im not an expert. Im going to use clay to keep the soil detoxed.
I was pretty impressed with the Mark 1 design.
It looked cool, was functional and portable.
The biggest problem was; the wind, or brushing against a branch, could knock a plant off its perch. They were kinda precariously lashed to branch crossings with shoelaces.
Tomorrow Im going to have to
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+hang+plant+pots
Yeah, it’s really easy to grow from seed as well. I grow quite a lot of it.
That was my conclusion too - it’s way easier (and probably cheaper) to buy a bunch of coriander at a local market when I need it than growing it myself, and I tend to use coriander differently than basil (i.e., I want a lot of it maybe once per month to cook something, rather than small amounts over a long period as in the case of basil).
I’ve used hydrogen peroxide before, yeah, but mostly to deter mold growth in microgreens or in an attempt to sterilize old soil before planting new stuff. I haven’t looked into it very much, but I’m skeptical of claims like “oxygenates the plant” (that sounds like an alkali-water-type claim, and plants have been getting on just fine for half a billion years without humans try to “oxygenate” them), and wholesale killing all (good and bad) bacteria in the soil probably isn’t a great thing either.
H202 contains extra oxygen in it… that’s evident from the O2 at the end. So I don’t think that’s such a spurious claim.
Anyway, it’s late and I don’t have time to make a case for it.
The best way to figure it out would be to split plants into an H202 group, and a non-H202 group, and see which did better over several experiments. I understand there would be other factors like shade, which would be hard to control… but over 6 months you’d be able to get a fair picture.
Last I checked, not all plants were getting on just fine. I walked through Hongshulin Mangrove swamp with a friend this afternoon. He pointed out the plants were a little sick. An experiment with H202 might be a good idea. I could see how it works on a few plants. It’s well researched, there’s both scientific and anecdotal evidence, and it seems inexpensive.
Iodine may also work.
I know many humans are dying for lack of common nutrients like Vitamin C and Iodine. I wonder if it’s the same in the plant world.
I’m not disputing that. I have a PhD in chemistry, for what it’s worth. The issue is whether that translates into “oxygenating” the plants (that’s a really vague claim, at best, and probably meaningless) or doing anything beneficial to them at all. A lot of things contain “extra oxygen”, like sugar or phosphoric acid, but it doesn’t mean you should put them on plants.
When you put dilute hydrogen peroxide solution on soil, the majority of it just reacts immediately with the various minerals and organic matter present (you can see it fizzing), and the oxygen gas released mostly just diffuses into the atmosphere. For the small amount of oxygen that remains in the soil a bit longer, e.g., as a gas or dissolved in the water present, I’m not confident that plants are able to do much with that, or do much that they can’t do with the gaseous and dissolved oxygen normally present anyway.
There’s certain other things that may be beneficial under specific circumstances, like treating root rot or other soil pathogens (in addition to harming the beneficial microorganisms). Some of these can also be accomplished by other means, like avoiding waterlogged soil by ensuring better drainage.
Reactive oxygen species also do a whole load of other things to and inside cells, including plant cells, and it’s way more complicated and situation-dependent than just “hydrogen peroxide contains extra oxygen and oxygen is good, so it must be good for plants”.
It’s “H2O2”, btw, not “H202”. It’s the letter “O”, not the number “0”.
I don’t think this is the case. A lot of these claims don’t seem backed up by very much. There’s a summary of the validity of some of them here:
I’ve skimmed the thread and don’t have a whole lot to add, except that if you want edible flowers, you could try clitoria ternatea (which is very easy to grow as well as being good for some schoolboy sniggering over the naming - which refers to the shape of the flower). You get lots of blue flowers that you can use in salads, or you can make drinks with it. Like many coloured plants it changes colour depending on the pH of its solution, so you can create nice effects with multiple shades of red, purple and blue if you choose your ingredients carefully.
It’s not exactly a herb - more like a small shrub - but if you feel like something more challenging on your balcony you could try roselle ( Hibiscus sabdariffa). It’s quite tolerant of abuse, so even if you stick it in a small tub with poor soil and end up with a stunted two-foot plant, it’ll still produce several edible “flowers” (it’s not actually the flower, just looks like one).
You might also like to grow plectranthus amboinicus, also known as “[random country] oregano”. It’s edible, perennial, roots easily from cuttings, and is quite hard to kill. Patchouli is the same family and similarly easy to grow. If you go to Kent Herbs in the Taipei Flower market they have a load of stuff like that.
Thanks for your contributions Andrew and Finley. I’ll get back to you later. Eyes are burning right now from too much computer time. I’ll think hard about how to apply H202, as I know it’s not a miracle cure-all. I still think it has some value. Maybe a lot of value. I’m going to do some experiments on my patio and in Hongshulin Mangrove Swamp. Can’t hurt to try it on a couple of branches.
I’m going to make 3 sprays. Iodine, Hydrogen Peroxide and maybe a light chlorine dioxide solution. The first H2O2 spray I made was too strong. White patches came up on some purple flowers within 2 hours. With H2O2, less is always more. If 2% was ideal for plants, going too high would cause you all sorts of problems. Going too low would be less problematic.
I’ve used H2O2 on myself for a few years. Had reasonable results. I know if the mixture is too strong, and it gets on your nails, it’ll make them soft and weak. I think I may have done something similar to the flowers. In future, I’m going to make a more dilute solution, and spray it on the base of the plant, instead of on the flowering head.
I get pure peroxide from tianshui lu, zhongshan, for 50TWD a bottle, no typo. 50TWD for 6 months supply.
Anyway, I’ll get researching nutrient mixes and sprays.
~O~
Thanks for those suggestions finley, I used to love patchouli when I was younger. I had this mysterious Scorpio girlfriend (not a hippy) and patchouli always reminds me of her. Hibiscus is good for Vit C. Oregano is perfect for me. And yeah, I mentally sniggerd at the name, even though I shouldn’t have.
I have to have a shower and drink a beer before I explode from computer overload.
This cool summer weather is lush. Congrats to the Weather Machine team. Good job.
Last thing. Can I buy duckweed fu2 ping2 from any old pet store? Looking forward to cultivating it in a bucket. I’m vegetarian, so a high protein food is interesting.
Any duckweed experiences are interesting. Seems easy to grow. I think the main challenge is cooking it. People seem to be making good protein drinks with it. I wonder if banana, blueberry and vanilla will cover the taste.
Having a homemade go to protein drink would save me a LOT of hassle. I deadlift, do squats and a lot of rocking planks, Im always looking to eat more protein. My staple are jobs tears, or sometimes pea protein. Peanuts are alright, but not good as a staple. I don’t like the choline in tofu. Gluten/Mianjin is good, (hail Seitan) but I don’t want a processed food as a staple. The sweet and sour mianjin they sell in Zhongxiao Fuxing is lush.
~O~
So… maybe duckweed will be fun.
Also called bluebellvine.
Update: Mint and some flowers nearly died in the blazing sun. My bad. Got to research more. Mint is idiot-proof, but obviously not imbecile proof.
The chili is doing alright, cos my patio’s been like Mexico recently.
I would suggest just growing things in the biggest possible pots, all in there together (although not packed too tightly - you need a bit of airflow). Growing plants in lots of separate pots is usually much, much harder than just having a big windowbox or similar. As well as building up a self-contained ecosystem, the plants will cope better with heat and (moderate) water stress.