The rooftop vegetable garden

I'm thinking of growing my own vegetable.something easy to grow like pak choy or sawi or spinach(bayam). I've a lot of seed that i used to sell through my webpage (melur.com). So why not i start my own vegetable garden. But i need a space. I dont want to sacrifice the yard just for the vegetable but the backyard is to small and i cannot grow anything there.

The only choice is on the roof of the porch.It can be access through the master bedroom , through the balcony.it's roof again....hmmm... so i need to find something light and suitable for roof top garden. I just transplanted it this afternoon after sowing it in the sowing tray for the past 2 weeks.

i'll tell you more once the plant grow....

The pink Rose

This is on of the the most beautiful flower in my garden. Not only beautiful, it smell good too.I plant it in the pot in front of the house.

unknown flower

This is one of the flower that stay with me for many years, from balcony to the garden and yet it still generously produce the flower continously.It was given by a friend (catherine) many years ago when i first join my work place now. One time it died because i think i put too much fertilizer, but luckily the bulb is still there. I manage to make it grow again (by god's willing of course...haha...)

please tell me what is the plant name...any name ...anything that i can refer to this plant rather than ' the orange flower plant with the brown leaves and bulb'

Jasminum Sambac

Jasmin is one of my favorite flower.Jasmine or Melur in Malay language is a sweet smell with flower belong to a shrub herbs. Now you know why i choose melur.com as my domain name.

I have 2 var of jasmine at home. duke of tuscany and maid of orlean. Between those 2 the latter has stronger fragrant than the former.I plant jasmine in pots in my front garden.Jasmine is actually quite easy to grow. you must make sure water is sufficient and to ensure it blooms more expose it to the full sunlight. I'm living is a tropical country so sunlight all year round is not a problem. I give the jasmines flower inducer once a months. I cut the old stem ( where the flower drop) once a month so it will turn bushy.And to encourage it to produce more flower , harvest the flower frequently ( this is my tips and my own belief...:) you can call it mitos)I believe if we appreciate the plants, they will know how to return the favour back.... hahaha...I pick the flower every day after coming back from work and put it in a bowl of water. This can make the flower release it scent throughout the night.

And jasmine is good for your heart too. You can make tea from jasmine buds the same way as lavender buds. Pick the buds before it blooms and let it dry naturaly. After 2 or 3 days your can keep the buds in air tight container. Just add 2 or 3 buds to your cup of tea. It will strengthen your heart plus it can cool you down from a stress day.

Malay old folks always keep the jasmine flower in there 'bedak sejuk' container so the 'bedak sejuk' will smell goooooodddd...Bedak sejuk is a traditional malay cosmetic made from rice.The rice will be soak in the water for months before the water will disolve it into a tick paste.The tick paste then will be drop on daun pisang and left to dry under the sun. When it was fully dry, bedak sejuk will be kept in air tight container. the water have to be change regularly until the rice start to disolve ,so it will never produce a stink smell ...which is very2 stink. when i was a kid i try to make my own bedak sejuk but i forgot change the water for almost a month, and i can tell you i'm almost vomit when i open the container. That's my first and last attempt to make the bedak sejuk.

To aply the bedak sejuk , dissolve in a few drops of water and apply it on the face.The cooling effect of the bedak sejuk is very soothing to our face. You have to try it to beleve it. It also can eliminate excess oil from our face hence prevent the acne.

alamak...why i'm talking about bedak sejuk now. I'm suppose to talk about my jasmine.better stop now.

pereskia saechnarosa/sacharosa/bleo

This is the picture of my pereskia which now i put at the the entrance garden. I have two varieties which bear purple and orange color flower. the purple one is still small while a have a few pots of orange color that i beed myselft from the srem cutting.You can have more of this plant on my website : http://www.melur.com/myherba.asp?plant_id=24 , it's in malay language.

My 'Gate' aka entrance garden

I call it entrance garden as it it locate at the entrance before the gate. Actually it is just the road divider and place where the town council put the garbage bin. The space is not much, i guess it's about , emm maybe 3" X 5". And i cannot make use the whole space as i have to reserve one alley for the garbage people to collect the garbage. the picture was taken some few months ago when we first move it to the house. we have rearrange it as my hubby said it was to cluttered...well guys...:)actually he's the one who rearrange it while i'm not at home...:)

Daisy on my balcony

Before move to this current house we stayed in a 15 floor apartment. I'm quite like it, the balcony is facing the hill and before the hill is a shooting range. Very green and eye soothing except it can be very noisy once a week when the army practiced at the shooting range.During rainy season, i can still see the mist covering the hill bringing the cool breeze to our bedroom.I kept quite a number of plant there, on the balcony. plants like mini roses (4 vareties) gerbera daisy (3 varieties), money plant, violet, japanese rose etc. I even grow a grape vine on the trailis that i hooked up to the wall.The balcony is quite big. It's actually 2 balconie linked by a planters box before we combined it into one big balcony.

I enjoy planting on the balcony. But when you gardened at a very high place from the ground few thing that you must consider are, the weight of the pots + the soil + water.So i never use terracota pot as it can be very heavy after you loaded it with soil and water.I have one terracota pots for my aquatic plants, and that's the only one.

Let me share with you a few tips of balcony or roof top gardening:

Let's enter my garden

I'm gonna share with you the current garden that i just setup ... not even half year. Yepp... we just move to a new house and i decided to start this blog because i want to keep track of all my plants properly (actually i have a database of it) and share with you guys about my plants.The new house that we move in is not that big. the lot size is 20' X 35 and the land area is 20' X 70'. It's an intermediate unit, left me a very limited space to start my masterpiece...:) . This is how it looks like when i first plant it with the taiwan grass. for cost saving i just bought 2 2'X1' pieces and cut it into smaller retangle and spread it over to cover the 10' X 30' area. It did not look nice but as I prefer to see things grow, that should be enough for the beginning.

Hi and welcome

Hi , welcome to my paradise. I'm nor from malaysia.Gardening has been my hobby since i can remember. I start to grow thing when I was very small and day by day it grows into a passionate love and devotion. I live in a fast develop city in Penang Island. A small but develop island in the north of pennisular Malaysia. At 31 I'm a mother to 3 daughters aged 6,3 and 1.

I try to share my passion for plant and garden in my website www.melur.com (oops... it's in Malay language and i'm still dont have suitable time to work on the English version of it)