Showing 1 - 8 of 8
What we do in the shadows
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 24/04/2016
» Violeta Anselmi likes plants, but the only place she can grow them is her balcony. The problem is that it does not get direct sunlight, for it is shaded most of the time. "Up to now, we have been unsuccessful in keeping our potted plants alive," she wrote.
The tree of life
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 08/11/2015
» I received an invitation to a symposium recently. Well, I thought that was what it was, for the invitation and the programme were in Vietnamese and there were only three words that I understood: Hanoi and Morinda citrifolia.
The bugs that make a meal of the garden
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 30/11/2014
» Reader Margaret McMillion sent me a picture of a pest which she said had been periodically attacking plants in her Bangkok garden. “It is most prevalent at the end of the rainy season, but it can appear at almost any time,” she wrote.
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.
Get going with guava's natural goodness
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 13/01/2013
» Guava is one of the best gifts presented by nature, according to a Korean company producing health and beauty products. I couldn't agree more. The US Department of Agriculture's handbook No8, which details the composition of foods, says the fruit is rich in vitamins A and B, calcium and iron, and contains five times more vitamin C than oranges, five times more fibre than apples, and more potassium than bananas. But there is one other reason why I think every backyard should have a guava tree: It is medicinal.
Gardener, Heal thyself
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 02/12/2012
» Orawan Chomsri sent me a photo of the red ripe fruits of a plant she and her husband Rawat found growing on their land in Ratchaburi's Ban Pong district, when they visited recently. "I've never seen [the plant] before," she wrote, adding that it was a creeper known in Thai as mawaeng, a type of native aubergine.
The diy path to a dazzling garden
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 19/08/2012
» Years ago, when several houses in my neighbourhood had lawns, there was a man who made regular rounds of the houses on weekends to mow them or prune trees. We had a gardener at the time so he did not work for us, but he had several customers in my neighbourhood. I could see him mowing the lawn of my nearest neighbour one weekend, and pruning the shrubs in the garden of a house farther down the road the next.
Grow your own
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 01/04/2012
» The floods that put nearly a third of Thailand underwater for months last year sent the price of vegetables soaring, that is if they were available at all. This served as a lesson to one couple, who decided to ensure they maintain a steady supply of herbs and vegetables, floods or no floods.