My Starter Balcony Garden

I choose to start off my balcony garden with a few potted plants that I bought from a gardening centre and a supermarket.

Thai Chilli (Capsicum Frutescens)

Sweet Basil (Ocimum Basilicum)

Pandan (Pandanus amaryllifolius)

It has been a couple of weeks already, and the plants are thankfully still surviving. When I looked up on plant care, most websites say that you are more likely to ruin your houseplants by overwatering them. But not these three plant species. The Sweet Basil especially, will start to droop and look sad if I don’t water it every day. The Thai Chilli needs a good shower every couple of days, and a good soaking in the sink every other week. The Pandan also needs a good soak every week, besides daily misting.

All these plants need lots of sunlight, but not the scorching midday sun! I learnt this lesson the hard way. When I first bought these plants. I put the basil, chilli and one of the pots of pandan (each pot has three plants) on top of a cabinet at the back of the balcony. The other pandan pot, I put nearer the front of the balcony, below two orchid plants. My east-facing balcony is of double height, with the top half uncovered. The area is very sunny most of the day. So any plants that I put near the parapet, even if the plant’s height is below the level of the parapet, will get the full brunt of the midday sun from above. So after some time, that particular pot of pandan leaves started to turn yellow. I moved that poor pot back, next to the other pot. Then I had to trim off all the dried parts of the plants, and coax them back to life.

So far, I’ve been able to enjoy cooking with the chillies and the sweet basil. I used the latter in my Three-Cheese Chicken Lasagna recipe. I used the herb in the lasagna cheese mixture, as well as on top of the dish as garnish. I was unsure of plucking the leaves of the plant at first, but it didn’t make sense to buy packaged sweet basil when I already had the whole plant. I didn’t know how to harvest the leaves without stunting the plant’s growth. So I looked up several websites and found out that I should cut about ¼ inch above the node. I fact, regularly harvesting the sweet basil will encourage it to produce more leaves, exponentially. My plant has since grown a lot of baby leaves and is overall bigger than when I first bought it.

For the chilli plant, I’ve plucked some of the red chillies and used them whole when cooking. This way, the will just give a hint of the flavour, but not much of the heat.

I’ve discovered this very good resource on caring for edible plants — Flora & Fauna Web by National Parks Board. Particularly useful if you are living in Singapore or anywhere else with a tropical climate. You can type the name of a common plant in the search bar, and find out more information about the species, and how to care for it. This website also, as the name suggests, features a lot of other “cultivated and native plants” as well as “a variety of animals sighted in our parks and nature areas”.