Magnolia

Another thing that I 'harvest' from the garden is scent.

One of the most prolific bloomers in our garden, is the White Champaca (Magnolia x alba), a hybrid between the Magnolia Champaca and Magnolia Montana.

Like the Jasmine flower, the Magnolia flower is used to scent Chinese tea - Yulan Tea - via infusion.

The plant was almost 2m and not flowering when I first got it. Placed in the balcony with full day of sun, the flowers start to bloom at night and shed throughout the day. However, the leaves started to turn brown and drop off rapidly too. 

Eventually, I found a better spot in the backyard. With 3-4 hours of direct sun and watering twice a day, the tree started to flower more and shed less leaves.

On the average, this little 'tree' is now producing about 3-5 fragrant blooms per night. Enough to scent the entire backyard. Sometimes, I catch a whiff of them from the adjacent kitchen.

Hopefully, I can nurse it back to bloom even more!

Lemongrass

I am rooting some organic lemongrass in water glasses. They started without any roots, in a couple of days they sprouted leaves (at the top) and developed thick roots. I leave them at the window sill - northwest facing, well lit, with no direct sunlight

It has been more than 10 days and the stalks are still going strong. The new leaves are longer and are a healthy green. The roots have extended and are starting to grow more rigorously. A couple of stalks have even developed a tiny shoot at the base. 

I should start to pot them in soil soon. 

Update 28 May 15:

So I potted the lemongrass in the images above about 2 weeks after. There were more roots and even little saplings. Some of the outer leaves were even dried up.

I left them by a lit window that did not have any direct sunlight (bad choice), but I did read somewhere that lemongrass does not need direct sunlight.

The entire stalk withered and died out in 2 weeks.

So I repeated the process of rooting. I selected thicker stalks to root this time round. I also potted the stalks in 3 weeks and am leaving the pot by a window sill that gets a couple of hours of direct sun each day.  Fingers crossed!

Update 5 August 2015:

For nearly 2 months after I potted the lemon grass, they looked like they were on the verge of dying off too. In fact one stalk did conk off. The remaining 2 looked fragile and were barely able to stand. Progress was super slow.

Then after ignoring the entire pot and almost neglecting it, the lemongrass stems started to firm up and new leaves appeared too. So now I leave the pot to its own devices in the background and hopefully it will sprout new shoots soon.