Where to shop for soil, pots & real plants?

[mornglori]

I'd like to put a balcony garden together. Can anyone suggest a shop or area where all the retail plant nurseries are at? Reasonably priced too?

[x9200]

There are dozens around. Specify your location first or use google.

[mornglori]

I found wholesale and services online. No real details but an address. Thought I get some opinions. I just don't want to show up at a place disappointed. I live in the Bukit Batok area - know any around here?

Thanks.

[x9200]

Not in Bukit Batok but pretty close. There is one very reasonable close to the 10 mile junction (LRT) down Bukit Timah, Chua Chu Kang direction.
Paste this to Street Directory: Prince\'s Garden Centre, Lot 210 Upper Bukit Timah Road

[carolynW]

I am not sure where bukit batok is but I go to Pioneer landscape at Jalan Lekar, its really in the "armpits" of singapore but they are quite reasonable and can come to arrange to give you a quote to build your balcony garden.

There is a very helpful indian guy there called Raj. If you have kids you can make a day out of it by going to the fish farm near there for longkang fishing. They also have loads of orchid nurseries too.

Best if you have a car. I don't have Raj's number with me now but if you want it, PM me, I'll find it. He may be able to arrange to come to yours, quote and do the job.

[JR8]

I created a garden on our small terrace. Ended up with ginger (edible), lime, Ixora, sweet basil, chili, citronella, yellow palm, Thai basil, bouganvillea and a few others. In part a kitchen garden!

We didn't have all those plants at the same time, maybe just circa 6 pots at a time. Learned pretty quickly which ones were suitable. The lime and Ixora were visited by butterlies but they layed eggs from which the catepillers eat the hell out of them, so you have to spray every two weeks. Even had humminbirds visit, yep, on the 6th floor The chili was moody and very high maintenance, The citronella started like a rocket, but picked up some mealy bugs from the chili, and did not take well to the spaying! The bouganvillea needs a huge amount of direct sun, and you have to prune hard to get some shape out of it. Sweet basil went like a rocket too (it grew over a metre high at one point), but prune it back very hard or it repeatedly flowers and is finished. I used to feed bi-weekly with a general food I bought in the local NTUC. Experiment and learn All the info is out there on the internet. Depending which way the balcony faces, and how large your pots are will determe a good choice of plants.

I bought all of mine, plus potting mix, pots, sprays, planters etc from Hawaiin Landscape on Upper Thompson Road (junction of Olive Road). There is a strip of 6-8 big nurseries all in a row there... so a pleasant browse before you decide on which one gets your vote...

Have fun!

[mornglori]

Thanks for all the great replies! Sounds like there's hope to getting this garden together and I'm excited (all except for the bugs!).

I hear papayas pretty easy to grow too. It needs little soil and it'll take off immediately. Just take some seeds from the ripen fruits, dry it out for about 3 days and then plant them. Of course, it'll be a year or so until the plant can fruit.

[imogenben]

Do check out Thomson Road+Lornie Road junction (near Macritchie Reservoir) for plant shops. That is where I get my non-edible greens!

[JR8]

Thanks for all the great replies! Sounds like there's hope to getting this garden together and I'm excited (all except for the bugs!).

I hear papayas pretty easy to grow too. It needs little soil and it'll take off immediately. Just take some seeds from the ripen fruits, dry it out for about 3 days and then plant them. Of course, it'll be a year or so until the plant can fruit.

That's how I got the ginger plant - DIY. I had a piece of ginger the size of an end thumb knuckle. Noticed it had a couple of green nodules on it that looked they might turn into buds. Planted it on a whim, and it took off. Before we recently packed up and left SG, it had grown as much as the pot would allow, was over a metre high and the root was 750grams which was harvested and given to the mother in law for her beef rendang

p.s. re: the bugs. The butterflies we had were Lemon butterflies. Very pretty. I thought they were so called because of their colour. No, they lay eggs on citrus shrubs/trees and the caterpillers eat the living hell out of them! Shame because otherwise lime is easy to grow, and popping a squeezed home-grown fruit into a glass of cold water for visitors from Europe always had a touch of the exotic lol. I never saw what lay the eggs on the Ixora. The mealy bugs probably spread from the neighbours in the immediately adjacent unit, as their plants were infested and they never sprayed them. By the way the mealy bugs live commensally with ants... so you might find then popping up in your unit too. But don't let that put you off

[FelineUK]

I would love to grow lime trees... Did you buy them as small plants and nurture them? I have never had much looks with seeds from limes as i think most are modified so the pips wont grow....

Let me know and I will give it a try. Would be nice to have a lemon tree and a lime tree growing. And hey if butterflies visit then makes a colourful roof terrace eh

I have a roof terrace on level 11. I have a few plants of various sizes - 2 x rubber trees, jasmine / marilia trees, 4 palms ferns, 1 palm tree, i cheese plant / franjipanji, basil, ivy, bouganvillea ( 1 pink and one orange) spider plants, yukka and two tall red leaved plants that i dont know what they are called but look nice and are quite hardy....

[JR8]

Wow that is some collection you have there!

The lime bush was initially about 30cm high, and ended up at about 45cm after a year or so. I can't see it would have ever grown into a tree.

There seem to be several kinds of limes
- a shrubby one, that produces the small limes about 2cm across (what I had)
- a tree that produces full size fruit (I've seen these in various sizes, from about 1m high, upwards)
- Then you can also get kaffir lime, which has a kind of double leaf that is used in cooking. The fruit are about 5cm across and knobbly.

When I bought mine, it already had maybe 12-15 fruits on it. As soon as you cut one off, the stem would reflower and fruit. The flowers smelled absolutely divine! So pungent we could smell it from inside our flat at times! So I'd harvest some even if not planning on using them to encourage regrowth. It is probably the kind of plant spurred on by pruning... not sure how/when etc though (I'd google it if I still had the plant). At it's peak it maybe had 30 fruit at a time.

You'll know if you have Lemon butterfly catepillers as you'll notice huge chomp marks out of leaves. You'll also have whole leaves missing, and leaf-drop where the leaf stalk has been eaten through and fallen off. My shrub got pretty decimated before I twigged what was going on, so if the same happens to you, then you need to get spraying pronto.

It is a pretty hardy plant, I frequently left it for a week without watering and it was fine (it would have got about 4 hours a day of direct sun). If you really parch it though you'll get a sudden leaf-drop... not all the leaves, but a good number all at once.

Mine eventually succumbed to some kind of pale brown scale. I'm sure I could have treated it, but as were packing up there was no point.

It did get mealy bugs, which due to the colour of the sap are pale green rather than the usual white! But the spraying kept those at bay, and the bush itself didn't mind the spray (unlike the citronella or ginger). If you do need to spray it, keep in mind not to harvest any fruit for 2-3 days afterwards.

Good luck

[carolynW]

For sprays esp if you are eating the veges... you can use a soapy water spry on aphids (they are small and white) or a spray consisting of water and fresh chilli sieved, then spray on the chilli water on the plant.

[dylancandis]

Hello,
We made an attempt at a garden a year ago and had some success with cabbage, tomatoes and beans but due to the weather, my wooden "garden box" has been destroyed. Plus we have decided to buy fish now instead. We have about 20kg of soil(top soil-black) and some 5kg of red soil (rockish like). We were planning on just throwing it out but if someone would like the dirt, then its yours!! We just ask that you bring a shovel/bags to haul it away.
So free dirt! Donations are welcome if you want
Msg me if interested.

[tina1980]

N/A

[sundaymorningstaple]

Further to the above post, it's located off Sembawang Road between the junctions of Yishun Ave 1 & Yishun Ave 3.