Growing a Telang Biru!

Hi all!

I am very excited to create this new page to tell readers about my journey growing a 'telang biru' as a mini project for BSM4503. I would like to extend my gratitude to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Parameswari Namasivayam and Dr. Nur Fatihah Mohd Yusoff as coordinatoors of this subject. I also would like to thank my partner, Siti Hajar Hamdan who helped me a lot in this project.

From this project, I learnt a lot on plant development when growing a plant and encountered failures as well as success throughout this project. A thing that new to me was plants need love and tender to keep growing! They have feelings too, like human. For example, after germination, the small young plant is very fragile and needs adequate amount of light and water. I once transferred one young plant into new pot but unfortunately it died. Now I know that during the stage, as long as the young plant still does not form true leaves, I cannot touch or transfer it.

I was so excited seeing the not-true leaves formed!

After two weeks of germination

The thing I did not understand is the right time to water the plant. Why it is avoided to water the plant during the noon? Why the plant will wilt after that? I thought plant can be watered anytime, once in a  day. When I did some readings, watering in the afternoon affect the plant so much. This is presumably because the plant does not absorb the water well and becomes evaporated. 

However, something bad happened after the two weeks of germination. The young plants started to wilt and died off. When we remove them from the soil, the roots had became brownish in colour. We panicked because we thought there will be no problem with the composed soil. Then we tried to mix the soil composition by adding clay soil. Fortunately, the young plants became healthy again! Now we knew that mixture of soil composition enhances water absorption by 'telang biru'.

In this project, I can relate the plant development with the course. I observed the growth pattern of 'telang biru' based on the heights and number of leaves.

1) Vegetative growth

     a. seed germination: Week 0 to Week 2

     b. development of vegetative plant: Week 2 to Week 14

Number of leaves per branch

2) Reproductive growth

    No observation was made because 'telang biru' needs more than 14 week to start reproduce.

Our 'telang biru'

In short, i enjoyed so much running this project. I appreciate plants more as compared to before. If I get the chance to repeat this project, i would like to improve my skills on growing the 'telang biru' by treating it with organic fertilizer for flowering. I think that would accelerate the growth of my plant until flower formation so that I could analyze more on the growth pattern of 'telang biru'.