Common Horticulture Pest

Aphis spp.

The female insect able to reproduce without mating with male insect or it is called parthenogenesis. This insect carried virus also known as mosaic virus. This kind of insect commonly damage leguminosae crop and would resulted in shrunk and dried fruit.

Aphis spp.
Aphid attacks crop in 3 ways, sucking plant sap on leaves, flower, and young shoot. This would caused stunted growth and curled fruit and leaves. It caused dirt on the attacked part and lower the photosynthesis rate.

Flower attacked by aphid would stunted and die.

Source : Horticulture, Laman impiana

Healing power of plant

Seeking inner calm? Look no further than your garden. Research from the Texas A&M University has found that green spaces have direct effect on our health. When patients' rooms had a view of hospital gardens, they recovered faster from surgery, had shorter hospital stays and needed fewer painkillers. The team also found that showing patients photos of nature reduced blood pressure in five minutes or less.

Nature stops us from worrying and obsessing over detail, according to environmental psychologist Clare Cooper Marcus.

"Gardens create a state of 'diffuse awareness' rather than focused attention. All our senses sight, smell, etc are aroused, making us aware of our surroundings. This relaxes our mind and restores our ability to pay attention when we return to work."

Quoted by Health Smart, Reader Digest

Shine the Light on Spinach (Spinacia oleracea)

When next shopping for leafy vegetables, choose those under supermarket lights. New research by the US Department of Agriculture has shown that spinach packed and refrigerated under bright light for three days had significantly higher levels of vitamins C,K,E and folate. It also had higer levels of carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin.

In contrast, spinach leaves stored in darkness had declining or unchanged levels of nutrients. Leafy green continue to photosynthesise even after they're picked, says plant physiologist Dr. Gene Lester who led the study. "The supermarket is a perfect environment, especially when the light are on 24/7."

The good news also applies to other leafy vegetables. "If the light is sufficient for photosynthesis in spinach," says Lester, "It is likely to be for all salad greens."

Quoted by Health Smart, Reader Digest

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea)

Chilli mosaic virus

Plant disease is caused by two factors. Abiotic (environment) and biotic (pathogen). There are so many plant pathogen which can caused disease to plant. Virus is one of them. A plant infected by virus, cannot be cured anymore. The least you can do is remove the infected plant to prevent it from infect another plant. Chilli mosaic virus (CMV) is common disease of chilli. If a plant is infected the virus would spread to the whole planting area in a short period of time since the size is very tiny so it can be spread or distributed so easily on the ground even in the air. See the image shown below.

Chilli mosaic virus
The leaves turned to unequal yellowish green. This will lesser the photosynthesis process hence the fruit produced would be low, or the fruit produced would be distorted and twisted. Beside of yelllowing leaves, the leaves tend to be twisted and curled as shown in the image below.

Curled leaves of chilli

Since the disease cannot be cured. We must do some practices in term of prevention. For example, make sure that all your gardening tools cleaned before you use it and wash it back after used, keep the planting area clean, do not smoking in the planting area, make sure that the seed you obtained is high resistant to disease and guaranteed by agriculture department of certified company which produced the seed, adjust irrigation if necessary, etc.

Fertigation System

Some people confused the fertigation word. Actually the word is combination of fertilizer + irrigation = fertigation. Fertilizer used is in liquid form. Normally they came with two types. Stock A and stock B. These two stock would completed the nutrients needed for plant growth. Fertigation system associated with protected structure (mostly), which means plants are grown on cemented floor, under transparent shelter, and netted surrounding to get maximum yield and high quality.

Smaller host
Is linked into the polybag to irrigate the plant. Using this technique would save plenty of fertilizer solution because the plant received only the needed amount but don't forget to set the time of irrigation.

Solution tank
Stock A and stock B are mixed together. Check the EC and pH before you irrigate your plant.

Rock melon
As you can see from the image, only one fruit is produced from every plant to get high quality of fruit. How is that possible?? think about that, all nutrients absorbed used to produce one fruit. That's it!

Yellow sticky bar
Hung under the shelter to control insects.

EC (Electric conductivity)
Indicate the availability of nutrients in the solution. Normally the ideal range of EC is 1.5 - 2.5. If you increase the range, nutrient absorption performance would down. Beside of EC, pH also have to be monitored. The pH range is 6.5-7.5. pH must not too low or the solution become acidic and not too high or the solution become too alcalic, if the solution become either the plant cannot absorb nutrient efficiently.

Yard long bean (Vigna sesquipedalis)

The plant type of Yard long bean is climber. Have you ever seen Yard long bean come from shrub?? Take a look at the image below.

Yard long bean

The plant is hybrid or genetic modified to become shrub. This will ease the harvesting process. But from my point of view, the plant will produce low yield quantity compared to the climber plant.

Extraordinary corn disease

For your information, corn is monoecious plant. Means they have two seperate male and female flower in one single plant. Take a look at the image below.

(Corn gall) (male flower)
This is male flower of corn. They grew at the top of the plant and supposed to produce pollen which would dropped into the female flower (pollination) then corn is produced. But this male flower produced corn grain!! It was weird.. wasn't it?

(Normal corn male flower)


(Normal corn female flower)

I cannot explain scientifically why the grains grew on the male flower. I did some research it might caused by an insect named gall midge. I did not know this for sure, the insect injected some chemical substance into the plant part (in this case the male flower) then the galls were formed. But, if it was really the gall midge there must be a larvae in each galls. When I pinched the galls with my finger there was nothing in there. It was fully developed corn grain. Just like in the female flower (where it supposed to be).


Gall midge


Symptom caused by gall midge

Self-grown or bought vegetable, which do you prefer?

Nowadays, land use or reserved for agriculture purposes are almost gone due to the building construction, road, and so on. Because of that people tend to buy vegetables from the market. Don't you know, most of the vegetable sold at the market quite hazardous. If you looked at the physical appearances, it definately looked fine. Didn't you ever try to smell the vegetable? You might be able to smell the pesticide used on the vegetable. If the vegetable smell fresh, you're free to buy it. Some people thought the physical-perfect vegetable is good. Don't be tricked! Better buy vegetable that got holes on it. At least you know the vegetable is pesticide-free or low pesticide used on it. What are the effect if you consume the hazardous vegetable? You may not see the effect soon or later. But after around 10 years, it will starts affecting you. Maybe you'll get heart failure, kidney problem, and other failure of internal organ. To avoid all these things, lets grow our own vegetable. You still can do it even you live in apartment or something like that. No need large space to plant. I show you the simplest method to grow vegetable.

This are the seeds of Poh Choy (Brassica chinensis)


Then sow the seed in a seed tray if u got one. If not you can sow it in small pot. That weren't the Poh Choy seeds. I didn't take pictures the day i sown them. Sorry~ But the concept is same.


Wrap the seed tray with transparent plastic to keep the moisture. So you don't have to irrigate the seeds until its germinate.


Carefully pull the seedlings off from the seed tray then transplant the seedlings into small pots. I used the small pot so that the nutrient given, absorbed by one plant therefore it will grow vigourously. I supplied the plant with organic fertilizer (chicken dung). Don't put the fertilizer on the medium surface but dipped into the medium. Remember, plant root is geotropisme +ve. They cannot grow upward unless to search water or moist and don't put too much fertilizer.


After two weeks later. Don't forget to apply the chicken dung once every two weeks. As the plant grow you must increase the fertilizer amount a bit.


The vegetables ready to be harvested after 4 weeks. Fresh, Pesticide-free, and vigorous!

Spring

Holding Sakura tree. If you notice, plenty of pinkish white spot on the canopy. It's the flower bud of Sakura and soon all the flowers blossom then you'll see how beauty the tree is.

Scenery of spring season in four season temperate house. You now can compare the previous images at the same spot. See the difference? As you can see from these images, the leaves of existed plant still not grow yet. Its started to grow a week later.

Pre - Spring

These are the other temperate plant beside tulip

Single tulip

Muscari

Hyacinth
Muscari and hyacinth are fragrant flower. The fragrant odor could cover the whole parts of four season house even from one single plant!

Pre - Spring (cultivation process)

Planting process took about 2 weeks to be completed. So tired, but the result was amazing! most of visitors were mesmerized as they went into the four season house. Since Malaysia do not have spring season so they were so eager to see tulip with their very own eyes.

Pre - Spring

Normally the company i did my internship program with, imported a few of temperate flowers and plant from europe such as tulip, hyacinth, and muscari. The other temperate plant they grew themselves at nursery which the seeds are imported as well from Australia. They are chrysanthemum, daisy, pansy, etc.

The company bought tulip bulbs, but the bulb has been germinated when it came to Malaysia. So we placed them in the cooling room and the temperature was adjusted and maintained 5-10 'c to ensure the tulips growth according to plan. The tulip will grow faster if temperature increase.

After about 2 weeks, the flower bud emerged.

After few days later, its ready to be transplanted in the Four Season House.

Inter - season (checking irrigation system)

The irrigation systems are buried beneath the ground to supply water and nutrient (liquid fertilizer) to the plant.

Inter - Season (between winter & spring)

It's time to demolish the igloo!

These are the scenery after snow melted.

Four Season Temperate House @ Malaysia Agriculture Park

The name is Four Season Temperate House, but they display one season at a time. Since, there is no budget to add more season house. The images showed are winter, then followed by spring, summer, and autumn. The season is just the same as season at north hemisphere. All the plants and snow in here are real! But most of people misunderstood all the elements inside the house for artificial.