Showing 1 - 10 of 13
Jack of all fruits
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 09/10/2016
» The world population was listed at one billion in 1804. Statistics show that 123 years passed before it reached two billion in 1927, but it took only 33 years to hit the three billion mark in 1960. From then on it rose by leaps and bounds, taking only 14 years to reach four billion in 1974 and 13 years to rise to five billion in 1987. I still remember reading about the world population reaching six billion in 1999. It now stands at 7.5 billion, and it took only 17 years to reach that number.
Not just the bee's knees
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 24/07/2016
» Following the column on pollination two weeks ago, regular reader Bob Neylon wrote from Pattaya to say that he had a small vegetable garden as well as many fruit trees and shrubs. A couple of years ago, he bought a hive of the stingless variety of bees from the local agriculture department to pollinate his plants. "They have been OK but no real big deal," he wrote.
Xerophytes win water fights
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 22/05/2016
» May is almost at an end. Usually around this time, our friends Bantherng and his wife Phen are busy harvesting lychee in their orchard in Phetchabun. This year, however, not one of their more than 100 trees bore fruit. In fact, not one lychee tree in their district of Nam Nao, some 40km from Nam Nao National Park, had fruit this year.
The agony andthe ecstasy
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 15/05/2016
» I was ecstatic when I saw fruits hanging for the first time from the branches of my Pouteria campechiana tree, otherwise known as canistel or eggfruit. It is called lamut khamen in Thai but actually few Thais know it, and even fewer have tasted it. I suspect that the first tree grown in Thailand came from the seed of a fruit taken from across the border in Cambodia, and the grower named it "lamut khamen" after the country or its people (khamen is the Thai word for Cambodian), as he did not know its proper name.
All the small things
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 20/03/2016
» Records show that the Japanese have practised the art of bonsai, or cultivating miniature trees in pots and trays, since the 9th century. However, for hundreds of years it remained the preserve of monks and the nobility. It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that it gained popularity at every level of the Japanese society.
High and dry
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 26/07/2015
» Where have all the flowers gone? Last time I was on our farm six months ago, the flowering plants and shrubs were blooming in all their glory. But during a visit two weeks ago, there were very few flowers, and even the bougainvilleas, which bloom nearly all year round, were missing.
Leave those trees alone
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 12/07/2015
» I was on my way to fetch my grandson from school last week when I passed by workmen busy trimming tamarind trees along Si Ayutthaya Road outside the Chitralada Palace compound. As branches cut from the trees fell to the ground, other workers picked them up and loaded them onto a lorry. They were still busy working on that particular stretch of road when I passed them on the way back.
How to play it cool
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 05/07/2015
» The severe heatwaves that gripped India and Pakistan in May and June, killing more than 4,000 people, must be a matter of grave concern for us in Thailand. With the Earth’s changing climate patterns, there might come a time when temperatures of up to 40-45C could sweep this country, too.
Living art in miniature
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 01/06/2014
» During a trip to Japan years ago, I visited a village in Omiya, in Saitama prefecture outside Tokyo, where more than a dozen families grew and sold bonsai. “We get visitors from all over the world all the time,” Saburo Katoh, owner of Mansei-en nursery and founder of the Omiya bonsai village, told me at the time. “But the bonsai season is in October and November, when seasoned bonsai enthusiasts come to buy plants.
Leisurely look at nature
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 27/04/2014
» My family has made it a tradition to travel together, either to our country home near Loei or to my daughter Nalinee’s workplace in Phuket, at least once a year. It is our way of spending quality time together. Even when we are driving to her place, Nalinee flies into Bangkok to join us for the trip. Driving 900km to Cape Panwa in Phuket is not everybody’s idea of fun, but it was not as bad as it sounds as we made stops along the way when we went there during the long Songkran holiday recently.