Grow your food at Zabeel Park and Social Enterprise

I visited Zabeel Park in Dubai on Friday evening, it costs £1 for entry and parking was plenty and free.

My purpose was to find out more about the Grow your own Campaign. There weren't many stalls, but I registered, picked up some organic seeds, cuddled a chicken, listened to a vision of the future with the focus on school gardening.

The Ripe Market starts this week and I'm very much looking forward to being a frequent visitor there.

The park is huge, I was only there for an hour and took a quick walk around as it was very humid.

There is plenty to do there, free public toilets that were lovely and clean, BBQ areas, cafeterias, Mega bowl, an exhibition centre currently featuring 'Reading is Positive Energy' a children's play area and a handy train at a small fee to help you get around.

As always when you're in Dubai, you can see the Burj Khalifa from everywhere. The grass was green, trees numerous and birds on almost every branch.

One of the stalls at the Grow your Own event were a Social Enterprise group called Enable. The aim of the project is to create entrepreneurial skills for people with special abilities, starting with product concept, manufacturing, merchandising and selling, to enable individuals to start their own retail units and achieve financial independence.

100% of Enable products are ploughed back into development with the individual receiving 15% of the sale.

I purchased a succulent in a beautiful wooden pot and on Saturday saw a wider variety of items for sale at the local garden centre.

Last week I blogged about Forcing Cut Roses to drink and went out to buy some to try it out.

Wow, it really worked. You can see from the pictures the difference after 5 days, between putting a spot of bleach in the water, just putting them in normal tap water and having plunged them in hot water first.

Day 1 v Day 5

Forced to drink (plunged in boiling water)

                                   

 Normal tap water

Bleach in water

I couldn't find any Hydrangeas to Hydrate, but today one of my students brought me this beautiful bouquet as I'd been off sick all week, so I've hydrated the one on the left and we'll see how it goes next week.

The school gardening club, nearly fell at the first hurdle. last week we made newspaper pots and planted tomato seeds, no one watered them all week, so we were really surprised to see how they had grown, this week we 'pricked' them out and then planted some peas in plastic bags with cotton wool, so we can see how the roots grow.

Next week I'll be in the UK, so the students will be designing plant labels and on my return we'll be planting sunflowers, lettuce and cress seeds.

Dubai Municipality Nursery and Indoor plants

Peter and I have been fostering dogs, collecting them from Warsan, out in the desert and we came across the Municipality Gardens Nursery. These aren't photos of the actual place as it is government owned and the laws on publishing photo's are a bit hazy, so I've posted pictures of the independent nursery's next door.

You can buy just about anything here, from bedding plants at 40p and fully grown palm tress in pots. It's close to where I work and I intend to call on a regular basis.

 My indoor plants have done rather well, I'm surprised by the basil, but I still have a few empty pots that need filling.

My son bought me an orchid, I've been advised to give it an ice cube once a week so I don't over water it, it seems to be doing ok for now.

I'm running a gardening group as an after school activity and during my research I've found an organic farm, that I need to go and visit, fortunately it's near where I work also, so I'll hopefully be able to pop in during the week.

I've been doing some research on cut flowers, they are very expensive to buy in Dubai and typically only last a few days. Two of my favourite cut flowers are roses and hydrangeas and I learnt these tips that I'm going to try out. I'll let you know how I got on.

How to Hydrate Hydrangeas.

Place each bloom face down in room temperature water and leave to soak for 20 minutes, shake gently and remove any loose foliage.

How to Shock Roses into drinking water.

Wrap the flowers in brown paper, then snip a 1/4 inch off the stems and place them into an inch of boiling hot water. The Shock forces the air out of the stems, leave in the water until it cools, give the stems a fresh cut and transfer to cool water.

Time lapse photography - Peony Opening HDYGG

Camera - iPhone5s

Settings -automatic

White balance - harsh strip lighting

Focus mode - automatic (lens could probably do with cleaning)

Aperture- no idea what this is

ISO - again no idea what this is

Lens - 0mm

I love peonies, my mother had them in her garden, she'd taken the tubers from her mothers garden around the time she got married which was in 1944. The great, great, great grand children of these tubers are still going strong in her garden today and I assume the other gardens around the UK where she has lived.

I saw these cut peonies in the supermarket and they reminded me of my mum, it was her birthday on Monday and I'm 3000 miles away in Dubai so I bought them to cheer me up, my mother however would prefer fuchsias as they remind her of her mother.

I took photos of the peonies because I don't have much luck with cut flowers in Dubai, the shelf life is usually 2-3 days, before they start to wilt. I have no idea why this is, but I'm sure the aircon and lack of cold water probably contributes to their demise.