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Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Stuck At Home? Want to grow fruit and vegetables? Aloe Vera. Oranges. Tomatoes.

Depending on where you are living during the lockdown of Covid-19, whether you are forced, or choose, to end up, you can grow cold climate seasonal fruit and vegetables or hot climate plants.

Cold Climate - d vines
In London we planted vines, six types, three white and three red. The grapes are dual purpose and can be used as eating grapes or for making wine. The leaves are also pretty. that was a long-term project. We bought plants grown i a nursery. We still had to wait a year or two to get any results.

Apple Trees
Great success. You get more apples than you can use. They go on for years. Again, you have to wait a year or twol

Fig trees
We had a fig. It took years to grow. They it took off. We had planted it away from the house. However we built a conservatory onto the back of the house. A few years late the fig tree roots started undermining our conservatory. We could see a pathway stone rising unevenly and lifted it and found the root.

What of the figs? Small hard figs, but made wonderful jam. A lot of work.

Hot climate?
The other half of the family is in Singapore.

What could we grow in the heat? Tiny tomatoes and peppers.

We had great success in Singapore with:

Aloe vera
The aloe vera was donated by a friend. (I saw several tiny ones and asked for a cutting. She pulled it up by the root and gave it to me. I later did the same for a friend.)

The aloe vera is tasteless but you can use it as a base for drinks with other flavours. Or to soothe your skin. it certainly makes a great plant. Literally great. It propogates relentlessly.

Orange-Lime
A Miniature orange-lime tree. The first one was half dead and thrown out. I never managed to revive it, although a visitor who stayed with us in Singapore said it still had green showing up the middle of the dried dark brown woody stems.

However, undeterred, when I saw a second abandoned plant, I took it in, thinkint even if it died I would enjoy the sight of the fruits for a week or longer. It lived and we used the first crop of fruit to make one and a half jars of marmalade. We now have a second crop two months later. We send photos of family plants back and forwards between the UK and Singapore.


Today I read that you can use your coffee grounds, ground up egg shells and banana peel. But you have to wait two months.

As the saying goes about vines, the best time to plant was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.

So we are stuck at home, letting our fingers do the walking, visiting gardens of the world, for tips of our new fruit and vegetable gardens.

Useful Websites
https://tendergardener.com/how-to-grow-tomatoes-in-singapore/

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