ST Plant Parenting

Plant Parenting

How to multiply plants by division

Lemongrass features multiple growth points clustered tightly at the base. Division involves splitting this plant into smaller sections for replanting.

Plant Parenting

Underground edible plants to grow for Chinese New Year

These underground edibles – Chinese arrowhead, water chestnut and yam – are popular festive plants. Their food storage organs are botanically called corms, and can be used for planting.

Plant Parenting

Start your stem-cuttings strong for the new year

(From left) Mint, cassava and Philodendron can be propagated from different types of stem cuttings.

Plant Parenting

Use self-watering containers to hydrate plants when you are away

wwplant05 - Self-watering containers can be bought readily and they can be either flower pots or planter troughs.

SOURCE AND CREDIT: WILSON WONG

Plant Parenting: Colour-changing flowers in your garden to delight the senses

Flowering plants such as these varieties inject colour and beauty into any garden.

Plant Parenting: Protecting edible plants during monsoon season

Netted enclosures can prevent pest and rain damage to plants.

Plant Parenting: Growing aroids and other epiphytes

Philodendron billietiae, an eye-catching aroid with attractive orange leaf stalks, climbing up a palm at the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

Plant Parenting: How to grow orchids

Depending on their growth habits, which can be upright or pendulous, these plants can be cultivated differently.

Plant Parenting: Sizing up soil-less growing media for containers

A soil-less mix can be made by mixing (top, from left) peat moss, vermiculite and perlite, in equal parts. The resulting mix (bottom) is porous but moisture-retentive enough to raise seeds and grow a variety of plants.

Plant Parenting: Digging deeper into growing media

Clay-like soil (top left) can be improved by adding amendments such as good quality compost (top right, up to 30% by volume). Gritty inorganic materials such as fine-grade lightweight expanded clay aggregate (LECA) pellets (1 to 4 mm grain size), which are readily available for sale in local nurseries and online shopping platforms, can be added to aerate the growing medium. PHOTOS: WILSON WONG

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MDDI (P) 046/10/2025. Published by SPH Media Limited, Co. Regn. No.202120748H. Copyright © 2026 SPH Media Limited. All rights reserved.