Showing 1 - 9 of 9
All the fruits of the fair
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 24/05/2015
» Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha seems to have the lot of agriculturists at heart. Once again he turned the road behind Government House into a marketplace, this time for Thai fruit and vegetables, and presided over the opening ceremony himself on May 6. Dubbed the Thai Fruit and Vegetable Festival, the market opens at 10am every day. It closes at 7pm from Monday to Thursday and at 8pm from Friday to Sunday until the end of this month.
From small seeds grow fig ideas
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 22/03/2015
» I know I promised I would not write about Chatuchak plant market again in a long while. But when reader Ian Windsor wrote to ask where one could find fig trees in Thailand, I felt obliged to find out.
The awesome avocado
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 23/11/2014
» Last Sunday's Green Fingers was about the leaves that my friend Julia gathers from her backyard and brews for tea. Soursop leaves, pandan and lemongrass all have medicinal properties, and as long as they get full sun all can be grown, even in a small space.
Mystery fruit UNMASKED
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 15/06/2014
» How many times have you seen something but paid no attention to it, until somebody asks you about it and you cannot answer? That’s what happened to me when Euna Kamath wrote to say that she came across some fruit that looked a lot like lychees but were much smaller, with a seed that was quite like that of rambutan.
Fine Feathered
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 16/02/2014
» Unlike other plants, ferns produce neither flowers nor seeds. They reproduce by spores, which appear on the underside or along the veins or margins of mature fronds. Some are elongated in shape while others are round, kidney-shaped, cup-shaped or chain-like, depending on the species. Spores are light and can be easily dispersed by wind. If they fall on a place which is moist, with enough light and lots of organic matter, they will germinate and grow into new plants.
Pharmacy on the forest floor
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 10/11/2013
» After making a name for herself as one of Thailand's top marine biologists, Hansa Chansang took advantage of an early retirement scheme to pursue her other passion: growing trees. She cleared most of her family's rubber plantation in Cherngtalay, near the popular Laguna tourist area in Phuket's Thalang district, and planted it with many different species of forest trees. Visiting her plantation recently, I marvelled not only at how tall her trees have grown since I last saw them five years ago, but also at the diversity of wild plants growing on the floor of the man-made forest.
Teas for tuning up the body
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 11/08/2013
» Some time ago, John Gibson wrote from Khon Kaen to say that he had been using the dried leaves of two trees he planted a few years ago to make tea, and they seemed to have helped lower his cholesterol by nearly half. "I have a complete check-up once a year, and last year my cholesterol had miraculously lowered," he wrote. "The only thing I could think of was the sadao and marum tea I had been drinking."
They'll smell as sweet, But choose your roses wisely
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 23/06/2013
» Roy Beevor wrote to say that he had a piece of land in Nakhon Ratchasima's Wang Nam Khieo district and would like to grow roses there. "An article in the gardening supplement of the Financial Times Weekend recommended the apricot pink Abraham Darby, the deep pink Princess Alexandra of Kent and the copper-coloured Fortune's Yellow. I would be grateful for your comments/advice," he wrote.
Jack of all trades
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 29/01/2012
» James Anderson wants to know what causes the fruit of a large jackfruit tree behind the school where he teaches in Thung Lung, Songkhla province, to turn black and rot. "The fruit are huge _ the size of the trunk of a small child _ but they are covered with disease," he wrote. " [They have] large gaping dark black or dark brown holes with putrid brown juices dripping from them, and all eventually just fall to the ground rotten.