Grafted avocado plant

It has been difficult to get one grafted avocado plant in Singapore. If you are lucky, you may find one grafted avocado selling at around $80 in one of the nurseries. I have checked World Farm and they are selling avocado trees grown from seeds. It is around $100 and at least 5ft tall. Well, if you follow my blog posts, you will know that I have grown avocado from seeds in end 2014. The trees that I have now are about 6ft tall (coming to 3 years old).

Most articles said that it will take 7 to 13 years for the avocado trees that are grown from seeds to bear fruits. They may not even fruit even after 13 years. Even if the tree bears flowers, it will not be able to get pollinated without the different types of flowers (Type A and Type B).

However, I have come across lone tree bearing fruits in Singapore. From the FB group posts, there is someone who has a fruiting avocado tree outside his house. The variety is unknown but it was bearing fruits even without other type nearby. He was trying to do air-layering to propagate the avocado tree. However, he was not successful. I have not done air-layering to my avocado but I have successfully rooted a cutting. I think rooting via cutting maybe a better option if air-layering failed. There is another matured avocado tree in Singapore. I will not disclose this location openingly but if you are interested, drop me a comment or message. It is at least 2 stories high and it is in a compound. I saw a couple of fruits around the canopy. Well, I was hoping that if they ever prune it, I can get a scion or two from them for me to graft on my seedlings. However, I think it is NOID type.

Avocado Tree in Singapore

The lowest branch I think is above one storey high. It is a big tree and if you zoom in the picture, you can see a couple of avocado fruits.

Grafted avocado trees are highly sought after in Singapore and especially if the variety is known. I happened to chance upon a seller in JB who has grafted Miki (fr Indonesia), Si Pendil and Kendil. But it was quite expensive and you got to bare-root them to bring them across the customs. There are also sellers that can help to courier the trees to Singapore. Since the seller is in JB area which is very near to Singapore, I contacted the seller and purchased a grafted Miki.

The seller has many grafted avocado tree and I chose the best grafted Miki. This Miki has many side buds which will develop into branches. The leaves are green, big and healthy. The seller had just repotted and fertilised it. The seller also advised on how to take care of the young tree. I will leave the tree in its black plastic bag until it has acclamatised to its new location. I bought this Miki avocado tree on 9 July 2017. Hopefully, in a couple of years from now, it will be able to bear flowers and also fruits. The seller told me that this Miki avocado is Type B flowers. I hope it will not need Type A nearby for pollination. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Grafted Miki

The master grafter tied a plastic to state the variety. The grafted area is very clean cut and fused completely. I had placed a pole beside it to stack and strengthen it. 

10 July 2017 - buds appearing

You can see that there are many side buds on the tip. I guessed the seller had pinched away the terminal bud to promote lateral branching. I chose this because I can tell from it that many side branches will propagate soon.

After 2 weeks in its new location, the Miki has grown very well and you can see the branching taking place. I will wait until the branches have at least 8 to 10 leaves and I will pinch away the terminal buds to promote more branchings.

Branching in progress

This Miki is not under direct sunlight as I don't want to cause sun-burn leaves. The seller mentioned that it is better to place the young avocado under a big tree so that it can get shaded sunlight. When I have more branchings, I will be experimenting on grafting Miki onto my young seedlings. Stand tuned for the grafting of avocado.

Grapevine flowering in Singapore

I have three grapevines that I bought from World Farm last year. They had grown a lot and as they were new growths, I know that they would not flower last year.

However, I didn't understand or know the method to make them flower. I know that in places whether the grapevines will go through a dormant stage (in winter), they will bud and flower in spring after pruning.

I wasn't sure about how to make them flower in Singapore. We don't have winter here and wonder how to make the grapevine goes through the dormant stage. I just leave the grapevine alone and one day in April, I was pretty annoyed at the way the grapevines had grown. There were few leaves and mostly brown leaves on the vine. Armed with a pruning tool, I cut the vines down to a couple feets tall. I added some compost on the top of the soil and just left it alone. I thought I had killed the grapevines.

In late April, I noticed some buds appearing from the end of the pruned vines. I realised I didn't kill them. After a week, the vines had extended and leaves appeared. I didn't notice the tiny little "flowers" actually were developing inflorescences that came out from the branches. I thought what those things were.

Suddenly, I realised that they were the flowers of the grapevines. I was very excited and continued to research on this. I believed that my grapevines belong to the northern hemisphere type where the bud break at around May. For southern hemisphere type, the bud break will be in September. I have another grapevine which I do not prune. I think I can try it during August to see the effect.

Developing inflorescences

The flowers are very tiny and they are self-pollinating. However, I wanted to make sure that all of the flowers will be pollinated so I took a twiser to pick up one stamen and dusted on all the stigma. I certainly hoped this helped.

Calyptra is shed, liberating pollen

I think my pruning didn't yield many flowers. Only about 20 flowers appeared. So, in the end, I ended up with only 10 grapes. Well, it is better than none! At least I know that the grapevine will flower in Singapore and I just need to make sure I do the pruning currently to leave a couple of buds of the one year old growth.

I will update the progress of the grape maturing and hopefully the birds will not beat me to it.

Growing watermelon from seeds

I think it is impossible to grow watermelon in Singapore. This is because watermelon requires a lot of space for it to grow. There are successful cases whether people grow watermelon on a trellis or wall. The fruits can be hanged using old clothes or stockings or nettings.

I remembered my mother used to tell me that growing watermelon in pot or container is futile. She grew watermelon before and there was no fruit in sight.

After researching in the internet and using YouTube, I came to the conclusion that it is possible to grow watermelon in vertical garden using trellis or some kinds of structure to let the watermelon climbed.

One day, I happened to eat a watermelon and I placed the black seeds into the soil. These were from watermelon with red flesh. Two days later, I ate a watermelon with yellow flesh and placed the seeds into the same pot. The seeds germinated but I couldn't tell which one is yellow or red flesh. Too excited and forgotten which one is red.

Anyway, I think it is not an issue. I have four watermelon seedlings in the pot. I was too afraid to remove any of them. The seedlings grew quite well in a couple of weeks and started to throw out flowers. There are two type of flowers, one is male and the other female. Most of the time, you will only see the male flowers. There is nothing much you can do except to look for the female flower. The most obvious difference between the male and female flowers is the small watermelon liked thing beneath the flower. Of course, the next tell-tale sign is the sticky stigma, well, not exactly sticky. Just that there is no pollen on the female flower.

Normally, there is only one female flower among the say one to three male flowers when they bloomed. I would pluck the male flowers and rub the pollen onto the stigma. Make sure that the stigma has been coated with pollen. This would give the watermelon a rounded shape. The flowers will bloom for half a day and close in the late afternoon. When the flowers bloom, just hope that the weather is sunny and not a rainy day. Rain will definitely affect the quality of the pollination.

Watermelon liked flower (female flower) going to bloom

After the female flower has been successfully pollinated, the flower will close and in a couple of days, the flower which was pointed up will now point downwards. The watermelon will thus be hanging or lying on the ground.

In my case, due to lack of land, I grew the watermelon in a pot and used structures to let the vines climb. The tendrils can stretch out and twine round the support structures. The leaves can be spaced out to catch the maximum amount of sunlight.

Watermelon developing

I started to measure the perimeter of the watermelon each day. In the beginning, the perimeter increased by 1cm each day. However, after two weeks, the size stopped growing. I'm wondering what happened. I understand that the watermelon will ripe in about 50 days or so. If the tendrils dried up, the watermelon has ripen.

Mulberry Plant

I was shopping for groceries at the JEM NTUC Fairprice when I noticed little green "caterpillar liked" things on a small plant. The things looked hairy and didn't appear to be flowers. Upon close examination, it appeared to be some kinds of berries. I wasn't sure what it was. I looked at the label on the pot and it said "Mulberry". It was priced at $7.90. I googled and found out that mulberry is edible when ripe. Interesting. I was curious how the mulberry developed the berries since I didn't see any flowers. The tiny hair liked structures on the berries seemed to be the one that developed the berries. Cool, I think!

Caterpillar liked berries

Mulberry Plant @ $7.90

Well, I grabbed the one that looked the healthiest. I was buying something that I had not planted before. I wanted something that is easy to take care and at the end provided abundant amount of fruits. I was really excited and couldn't wait for the little green berries to grow bigger and longer. I acclimatised the plant by placing it in partial shade and then gradually in full direct sunlight. The plant is doing well and some of the green berries started to turn to red. Wait a minute, it seemed to me that the berries were quite small to me. I think that placing them in full sun had accelerated the berries turning red. Oh no... I saw two berries had turned from red to dark purple. I took a leap of faith and washed the berries. I ate them. They had a bit of sourness in them but generally they tasted good. I waited for a couple of hours and nothing bad happened to me. So, they are edible. I was excited.

After a couple of weeks, I cut the long branches away and placed the cuttings into soil to try to propagate them. I believed that by pruning away the branches, it would promote more berries to appear and I was right! After three weeks in full sunlight, receving about at least 6 hours of them, the mulberry plant has bigger and longer berries. Today, I harvest two dark purple berries and they are very sweet.

Dark purple mulberry ready to be eaten