Potatoes

There have been mixed reviews about the possibility of growing potatoes in tropical Singapore. Most say no, but a few affirmative voices have prompted me to give it a shot, even though the best case only promised very tiny potatoes.

I had a sprouting potato that has been sitting on my kitchen sill since April 2015. I have been pensive to start because of the mixed reviews. 

On 13 Sep 2015, signs of decay is spotted on the sprouting potato, so I was finally obliged. I cut out the unaffected shoot and buried it in a bag of soil to try. 

I inverted a canvas rice bag, and filled it with a mix of: garden soil, potting mix and compost. I filled the bag with 10cm of soil, placed the shoot cutting in and covered it with about 7cm of soil.

Nothing happened on the first few days.

On 16 Sep 2015, the first sign of life peeked through the soil despite the torrential rains and I was relieved that something finally happened. 

On 19 Sep 2015, the little shoot had put out more leaves. So from now it's a waiting game. The game plan is to wait for growth and start moulding the soil up every time the greens hit 4inches (about 10cm).

Carrots

We enjoyed some organic finger carrots and decided to grow some carrot tops to see where they would go. 

On 8 Jul 2015, the carrots had greens on top, so there was a chance that they might grow.

This was a day after leaving them in water. Sprouting occurs.

On the 3rd day, shoots are seen. About a week later, I popped them into a pot. 

By 31 Jul the carrot tops were lush and green. 

Update 19 Sep 2015:

Nothing much happened to the carrot tops. Read that they should just hopefully bolt and develop seeds and eventually die back. One thing for sure, there would be no carrots.

On 5 Sep 2015, I sowed some carrot seeds in our seeding ice tray. 

By 11 Sep 2015, the seeds started sprouting. 

On 19 Sep 2015, potted the seedlings in soil. This pot is rather small - about 15cm wide and 17cm deep. I kept 2 pots of 5 seedlings each. So that's a total of 10 seedlings to try.

A little update on the carrot tops. It's been about 9 weeks after we grew the carrot tops. They are no longer green and lush. Some of the leaves have even started to turn red but there are no signs of flowers. This could be a lost cause. But they are very fancy and rather ornamental to have around.

Update 26 Sep 2015:

It's been about 3 weeks since we sowed the carrot seeds and a week since we put it in the soil. The distinctive carrot leaves are finally showing up. Such joy!

As for the carrot tops, the filigree leaves are just so lovely, I put them in little pots and enjoy the prettiness on the dining table. Xo

Update 2 Feb 2016:

It has been slightly over 16 weeks (4 months) since we planted the carrot seeds. 

We grow them in thin but tall containers. They are so pretty and resilient. We have been travelling, so we have returned a couple of times to dried up carrot tips, but always seem to revive them with a lot of water.

Recently, due to the rainy season, the leaves have been growing lush and happy. We are starting to spot some carrots peeking out of the surface of the soil too!

Mystery sweet potato

I love sweet potato leaves stir fried with homemade sambal chilli. So I got a bunch of heart-shaped sweet potato leaves from the market.

I picked out a few stalks and placed them in a glass of water to root. Within a week, healthy root systems developed on a few of the stalks. So I potted them and placed them in a sunny spot. It all happened so quickly I did not take photos of the process.

2 weeks after potting, the plants are surviving in soil and have sprouted new leaves.

I will be transplanting these along with the Vietnamese variety to the raised beds. So we are growing a variety from tuber/slips and another from leaves. Hope we can eventually yield some sweet potatoes and indentify the mystery sweet potatoes. Fingers crossed!

Ginger

I heard that ginger is easy to grow, requiring low maintainace and little sunlight. Even then, my first attempt failed miserably. 

I potted 'new' ginger which had about 5 nodes, but buried them without drying out. After about a week, 3 shoots appeared. But the growth of the shoots stagnated at about an inch - then got water-logged and died! So I dug up the ginger and realised that the ginger has got so moist it disintegrated. I doubt it's over-watering, because the soil was well drained. 

So I decided to test out the different types of ginger readily available in our local markets. There is 'new' ginger that comes with green stalks and 'old' ginger which has dried out skin.

I left the ginger experiment in the pantry without sun. This is what have got to after 3 weeks:

There are a lot of nodes on the 'new' ginger. After 3 weeks the nodes are a lot more pronounced and the ginger turns greenish. It still feels 'juicy' although less firm than when I first got it. The skin is slightly drier. The green stalks that came with the ginger dried up in about 1 week, so I just snapped them off.

The 'old' ginger had less nodes, so I just picked out a piece that looked most promising. Nothing happened in a week. I read online that soaking might help, as some growers spray on growth retardants to make the produces last longer. So I soaked the ginger overnight and little nodes appeared after a couple of days. Now, a few of the nodes have got more pronounced. That is good news.

I will continue to monitor and update here. 

Update 19 August 15: 

After a long hiatus, as we got busy with renovation works, I finally got round to putting bits and pieces of the mostly dried out ginger in a pot of top soil on 31 July 2015. I covered them with approximately 2cm of soil, watered daily and waited...

Nothing happened for almost 2 weeks. I tried to probe around the soil but could not seem to find the ginger - again. Thinking they have 'disintegrated' once again, I chucked the pot aside to reuse the soil when the need arise. The pot was left unattended, so it dried out, with cracks appearing on the surface of the soil. 

On the 17th day, a tiny little green shoot peeked out of the dry soil. It was firm and strong! Thank goodness I have not got round to reusing the soil yet! 

Apart from a daily spritz of water from the spray bottle, I continue to leave the pot neglected, in the shade.

2 days later, a little leaf started to form from the shoot. I have never got so far with ginger. So this is good news. Here you can see how dry and cracked the soil is.

Update 28 August 15:

It is almost 10 days after the first leaf and another happy leaf is growing out. I keep to the daily spritz from the spray bottle and continue to leave the pot in shade. I also topped up some soil. It looks so green and happy. I hope it is here to stay.

If this little success is anything to go by, I have been overwatering the ginger. Previous trials, I have been watering till the water seeped out at the base. Looks like the roots do not survive under the super moist condition. 

I am inclined to think that it was the 'old' ginger that sprouted. To confirm, I have placed 2 more chunks of 'old' ginger in the pot. I just barely cover them in soil. And they get a daily spritz as well. Hopefully we can get another batch of ginger going. 

Update 11 Sep 15:

It has been about 6 weeks after the ginger has been placed in the soil. The shoot is almost 20cm. I think it's safe to say that this is here to stay. Yay! 

Update 17 Sep 2015:

As parts of the ginger start to peek from under the plant, I have been moulding up the soil to cover the ginger deeper. 

It's 2.5 weeks after the first leaf is spotted and 7 weeks after putting the ginger in the ground. 

The ginger plant is happily establishing itself. 

Plus new shoots appearing! 

I am not able to establish if these shoots are coming from the same ginger or old remnant ginger in the pot. Tried to dig around but it emerged from deep within. So I did not trace in case I injure the new shoots. 

I have been keeping the ginger parched. I only spritz water on the top of the soil daily. 

The tough part about growing roots and tubers for me is the mystery surrounding the success. It's a lot of groping around in the dark and keeping fingers crossed.

Update 26 Sep 2015:

Some of the lower leaves in the original ginger plant seem to turn brown. Not too sure if it's related to the couple of days of haze. But it seem to have stopped spreading. So that is a relief. 

The new shoots are growing well. Looks like there are 2 shoots growing at the same time. Happy!

Vietnamese sweet potato

Sweet potato is one of the staples in the diet of our baby who just started on semi solids. 

Really want to try to grow our own organic version. Felt encouraged by the reviews that it is easy to grow and the thought of barbecued and tempura sweet potato is too attractive. The leaves are edible too - perfect when stir fried with dried shrimp and chilli paste!

I got two varieties - Japanese and Vietnamese. Could not find organic versions, so made do with these 2.

I halved the roots and placed them cut-side down in tea cups. The roots were left by a window sill with a couple of hours of direct sunlight. Water level is kept to about an inch from the base of the sweet potato. 

The water is changed once every couple of days. I change because it starts to smell fermented. Changing the water helps. 

After 7-10 days nothing happens. The Japanese variety started to go bad - soft and mushy. So I chucked them. The Vietnamese varieties went slightly pale at the portions that were soaked in water. Apart from that, they stayed very much the same - but firm.

By the end of the second week, roots started to appear and 4-5 days later, tiny shoots appeared. Once the shoots formed, the slips grew quickly. These slips are about 3-4 days old.

I noticed that the slips that receive more sunlight grow faster.

This half is skinnier. It rooted faster and formed shoots faster. However, the slips grew slower. This cup gets slightly less sunlight - so it could be a factor.

This half is fleshier. It was 3-4 days slower when rooting and forming shoots. However, the slips grew taller and leaves bigger more quickly. Do note that this cup received slightly more sunlight. 

I am waiting for roots to form at the slips before potting some. Will keep this space posted.

Update 6 July 2015:

After 2 weeks of soaking the halved sweet potato in water, the slips have grown to about 15cm.

I selected a few slips that were stronger and had some roots attached. Carefully removed them from the tuber. To be sure, I rooted the slips in water first. It took about 3-4 days to develop a heathy root system. By then the slips have grown to about 20cm long. I then potted the slips with roots in soil.

A week after potting, the plant has grown to about 30cm vertically.

They have been growing well in a sunny spot since, but have started to develop horizontally.

I have 3 plants in this pot. The plant to the left has been potted for the longest. I am in the process of setting up raised beds for the edibles. These ones would be allowed to climb horizontally and upwards. Hope it works!

Update 30 Aug 15:

Experimenting with the sweet potatoes. 

We tried harvesting some of the sweet potato leaves from this variety. Not impressive as the stems are tough. 

So I am trying to root them in a bag. There different schools of thoughts on how to produce sweet potato tubers.

Key pointers include:

1. Try not to trim leaves, if you want to produce tubers.

2. Avoid fertilisers with more Nitrogen (N) as those promote leaf growth.

3. Avoid watering too intensively when you think the plants are ready to put out tubers - the draught scenario tricks the plant into storing food and producing more tubers.

So I repotted the 3 long plants in a sack which I folded back. I fill it up with garden soil and just wait. Read somewhere that burnt soil might work better. So if I need to eventually fill up the sack, I would add burnt soil instead. 

The longest plant, has been trimmed. I placed it at the back, with feeble attempts to bury the stem as I coil it upwards. At the bottom left, the slip has also been trimmed. I buried the stem as deeply as I can. At the bottom right, the slip has not been trimmed. I also buried the stem as deeply as I can. 

Now I wait for the leaves to die back. Hopefully, we can yield some results or at least lessons to be learnt.