ST Plant Parenting

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

Plant Parenting: A guide to LED grow lights

Grow lights generally come in the form of spot lights or tube lights.

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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.