Plantita Saturdays: Grew Blue Ternate from the Pod it Produced

I grew my blue ternate plant from seeds I bought online. It took weeks before it sprouted and then quite awhile before it started to produce flowers. I eventually found out though that it really likes banana peel tea. When I started giving it banana peel tea* it produced more flowers and started growing pods. I was ecstatic because it meant I can grow more plants eventually. 

I harvested the pod when it started drying. Left it to dry more and then I popped it in a seedling tray. It sprouted faster than the seeds I bought online, probably because the seed tray kept the soil moist. I was surprised to find out that the plant requires very little soil. It's been three months and I haven't transplanted it. it's grown about three feet since October. 

I'm really happy I was able to grow a plant from seeds my garden produced. I always thought that growing flowering plants is hard since i haven't been successful with others I tried growing from seeds. There is hope! The original blue ternate plant I grew is still alive. It has survived a lot of my garden's disasters (higad, drought, aphids, leaf miners etc.) and it's been easy to maintain. I'll probably re-pot this new one soon so it can grow and produce more flowers we can make into tea. 

Happy gardening everyone!

*How to make banana peel tea - 

http://thebalconyfarmer.blogspot.com/2020/07/plant-fertilizer-from-what-you-have-at.html

Plantita Saturdays: Got My Blue Ternate to Bloom More Flowers

Got some blue ternate seeds from this shop and planted them last summer. It took awhile before it sprouted. When it did it started to grow longer and produce many leaves. It just grew longer and longer with no flowers in sight. 

I thought maybe I was doing something wrong. Did some research and found out that you have to prune it a bit. It's the way to tell the plant to start blooming. After three months since I planted the seeds it finally bloomed on June 3. It was just one big flower. It was so pretty.

I noticed though that there were tiny dots on it. Also noticed that some of the leaves were being eaten by leaf miners. I immediately cut them off. I got excited when more flowers started to appear. Things quickly went bad when we suddenly had an infestation of caterpillars. To save the plant, I physically removed the caterpillars and treated it with neem oil. Surprisingly, the plant seemed to like the neem oil and started to produce more blooms. 

The caterpillars though left the plant weak. It looked sad and got more sad when I got busy taking care of the boys when they got sick. I eventually found the time and started giving the plant some fertilizer. I also sprayed it with neem oil again since the caterpillars came back. After two weeks it started producing big blooms again. 

I think we should be able to use the blue ternate flowers for tea! Yay! The secret sauce to getting your blue ternate to bloom more is TLC + weekly fertilizer + neem oil twice a week. :)

#BeKind #StaySafe