Upcycle Living

During the few weeks of dry spell and extreme heat in January, most of our home grown  mint plants  from cuttings became rather unhealthy looking, branches were dry and hard while the leaves were browning too soon. It was my cue for a cruel to be kind action: an absolute pruning. It really seems like a very cruel thing to do, as I'd have to cut the dry and dead bits all the way down till I can see some green in the middle of the cut stems, so that the plants get to grow new shoots again. Within 10 days, we've got some fresh new leaves sprouting all over the pot, new life just in time for the Lunar New Year of the Dog! I believe we'll have lots of mint leaves to harvest and dry for another lot of homemade mint sauce 😋

Basil can grow up to quite tall but it needs to be harvested regularly, otherwise it will start to flower and then die. I try to keep mine growing for as long as possible by cutting long stalks and replant them. It's really pretty easy. All I do is pluck off all the leaves (for cooking or drying purposes) at the bottom, leaving top most 2 or 4 leaves of each stalk, then place them into a glass of fresh water. Over the period of a week or 2, they will start to root. Once the roots are about 2" long, I will transfer them into soil. I also do the same when the bottom of the basil plant start to turn woody. This would be the time I prune it all down, root the upper part that is fresh and green, and uproot the woody part to refresh the soil to be ready for new plants. Planted: 15 July 2017 7 days later: 7 weeks later, after several cuttings: 6 Sep 2017 23 Oct 2017

Since the last mint plant died when I was away for 3 whole weeks, I had to buy a bunch of cut mint (cost about 50p) for some curry. It was quite a big bunch so I've done these: Pluck off all the bottom leaves, leaving the top 2 or 4 leaves, depending on the size (if small leaves, 4; if larger leaves, 2) These stalks are then trimmed from the bottom to about 4" length, and placed into a few glasses of water to root like what I did with the  basil Half the plucked leaves are used for cooking, the rest are dried in a covered colander (for about a week), chopped up and stored for future use The stalks rooted after about 8-10 days, at different paces, which I then planted in the soil. Here's a week later (25 Aug 2017): Obviously, there are some that didn't make it; but there are a certain few strong survivors 😊 The thing with mint is, they are such a hardy plant. Even if there's only 1 stalk growing, it will eventually crawl all over the soil and be...

Some leftover from a ball of parcel string bought in 2003 is finally put to good use when I made these 2 flower pot holders. Our tiny balcony is running out of space for all our plants, and these crawly babies were twirled around some old disposable chopsticks stuck in the pot. They didn't look very healthy then. Since there are some pre-existing nails on the ceiling (probably fixed by the previous tenant to put up blinds), we thought that a hanging garden would be good for their new home. True enough, they now look really happy with their vines hanging down freely from the pots.

There are some CDs which I can't get the printing or labels off, so they can't be used for making coasters . But I still refuse to send them to the landfill and I have used them to support plant cuttings over water like these herb cultivations here: I often make cuttings from my existing herb plants such as basil and mint to prolong and increase harvesting. I will place the cuttings in old jars (especially those which labels can never be taken off) filled with water till they root and can be put into soil. However some cuttings can be rather short and the leaves may fall below water surface and they will start to rot. So I put each cutting through the hole of the old CD/DVD, then place over the jar. This way the leaves can stay dry whilst the cuttings stay safe in the water. I have done this so many times, my very first basil plant is still alive since 2008.