Gone Fishing

It always makes me happy to see seedlings and young shoots. Even on bad days. Or, perhaps especially on bad days since green kind of makes the day a little brighter. 

Sis got me a mother leaf with an exquisite terrarium accessory; an angler in a boat! I have been buying terrarium accessories online, and most of them aren't as detailed in their craft, but of course, since I don't really pay a lot for them, I can't expect a lot too. 

This little piece that Sis got for me is definitely of a higher quality, with a little boat made of a wood-like material (it feels just like wood, perhaps it is wood) and an uncle with a beefy chest! The piece is made in Germany by Preiser and hand-painted in Mauritius. 

Check out the "angler in a boat" on Amazon!

Since I intend to let the Mother Leaf sprout, Sis suggested a fishing-setup. This is very different from my usual soil-based terrarium, and it looks extremely zen on my work table! It's simple and elegant; an easy distraction from work. Till I get a tiny enough pole to put it into his hands, the angler really has to make do with just enjoying the water and breeze!

Sis bought two pieces of Mother Leaf. I left the other piece on the bookshelf where there's more light. More shoots are sprouting than the leaf on my table. We are guessing more will shoots will sprout since the lighting is stronger. 

Terrarium seems to be in trend again suddenly. And, I truly hope the trend continues and goes beyond what we have seen in the past. There has not been much advancement in terms of the accessories and set-up ideas. 

I also bought a few pots of succulents and HAPPY PLANTS! 

Happy plants are supposedly the little black seeds in dragon fruits. They would eventually grow to be full grown plants after a few years if given the right condition, according to the vendor. 

After three weeks, and not dying on me, I decided it was time to re-pot the happy plants. Sis commented it was cute, so it was "adopted" as soon as it was made!

Nothing very fanciful, but the bathtub container kind of liven up the look. Ladybird has never failed me so far. They are good in almost any situation that calls for a little touch-up, not too overwhelming but it brings a touch of colour. Red just so happens to match nicely with green, always. 

The bathtub is now happily sitting on Sis's work desk. I read reports that happy plants are able to absorb radiation emitted by the computer. Not sure how true this is, though. If it truly works, I guess they should be all over Japan?   

And, the kale seeds that I bought during the Gardeners' Day Out is finally sprouting! 

The seeds germinated 2 days after they were planted. I planted 5 seeds, and 4 germinated! That's a pretty good success rate!

Check out the kale seeds available on Amazon!

Kale seems to thrive better in slightly acidic soil, with pH not exceeding 6.8. Therefore, coffee grounds should be a good booster since its pH is around there. I am now using the coffee grounds that my family throws out after their morning coffee. Nothing like blue mountain, just the normal local coffee. 

I am quite excited to see how the kale would turn out. If my setup works, there would definitely be more veggie projects coming up!

We are Harvesting!

There is this sense of calmness when I dig and plant. It pleased me enormously to see the small strip of garden growing healthily. I even play the plants music when I read somewhere that plants grow better with music. I love the touch of soil on my hand and whenever I could, I would experiment interesting growing methods. Recently, we tried to cultivate  earthworms in the garden. I was told since young that where there is earthworms, the soil is good. We found out from friends that we could start by burying stuff like leftover fruits, vegetables scraps into the soil. Instead of using leftovers, which we were worried that it would take a long time to decompose, and invite tons of maggots, we decided to use the fruit waste from the juicer. These waste was a lot finer and drier; they were kind of powdery as well so it was the perfect candidate to be mixed into the soil. After three weeks, I found an earthworm! I was ecstatic! I snapped a shoot using my iPhone but the picture was not good enough. Duh.

The hubby harvested the kangkong from the garden a couple of nights ago and sent me the below photo. I love the kangkong mainly for its productivity, haha! After sowing the seeds, and making sure the seedlings sprout, there is nothing much to do except fertilising. According to the nursery, we just need to cut off the kangkong when it is tall enough to be harvested, and leave the plant alone to grow again for the next harvest :) This is what we lazy people love, haha!

Courtesy of hubby

Below are the green beans plants which were grown accidentally. There were about four, five green beans plants planted against the wall. From seedlings to fully grown and sprouting green bean pods, it took slightly more than two months. Except for some re location of the seedlings and fertilising, the plants grow relatively well. Our challenge had always been watering, and given the hubby's challenging hours, I frequently need to clear off dried plants whenever I am in KL. Hence, I was so thankful for the watering system; ever since installing the watering system, the plants' survival rate was almost 100%! 

Courtesy of hubby

A week or so more, I think the green beans should be ready to be snapped off. Now I am wondering whether these are the type of green beans which is usually being stir fry, or the harvested pods need to be beaned out? 

Courtesy of hubby

We are hoping to achieve about 60% to 70% self sufficiency hopefully by end of the year. This strip of garden did not come easy. When we first move in, the contractor overlaid the soil with a thick layer of sand. It looked nice and we thought we would leave it for the time being until the cats in the neighbourhood used it as a poo-ing ground. We grew grass next, and decided to get rid of it when the hubby's annoying backache from cutting the grass resulted in overgrown weeds. We tried numerous stuff before we came this far. Since we are lucky to have a comfortable size car porch, no kids running around to destroy my hard work (though there is a nasty cat around), end year bountiful harvest sounds really good, haha!

Miniature Vegetable Farm

It had been a long month for Chinese New Year celebration. And we had been clocking miles driving between the two homes. While the journey wasn't all that smooth as we wished for, plenty of jams as usual, the long drive on the road was nice. We did not get to spend much time together the past couple of months, and time on the drive was a nice catching-up time. We finally reached our home in KL last week. 

We went back to routine pretty quickly, work, houseworks, and gardening. The last round of vegetables that we planted did not make it to harvest. Some caught some moldy stuff from another seedling, some stopped growing and some simply died from thirst - the hubby was too busy to water them when I was not around. The only warrior that remains standing was a single broccoli. It looked promising and I re potted it directly to the ground. 

We had also added an amateur watering system to feed water directly to the garden. We had installed a water filtering system for the entire house when we first moved in. As part of the filter cleaning, the filter was set to an automatic timer and it would self clean on daily basis. To make use of the water that get flush out during the self cleaning, we attached pipe extension and ran it to the inner garden bed which was sheltered from both rain and direct sun. It was not the most advance system, but at least the soil should be moist enough to prevent seedlings dying from thirst again. 

Hence, last weekend, we made our way to our favourite nursery in Sunway intending to pick up some flowers for the front garden bed. And we found treasures! There was this uncle who gave us tips on how to grow vegetables and we got some really good quality seeds from him. We didn't feel the seeds were more expensive than those that we usually get from the supermarket. He taught us to keep the remaining seeds in the fridge if we are not able to finish them. 

We potted the seeds into a potting tray that very same day. Guess what! The seeds sprouted after two days!

We repotted some of the seedlings that sprouted over the last two days before we went off to Genting for an overnight stay. Six rows of a mini Choy Sum farm when I was done! 

We planted some Kangkong seeds directly to the ground, potted some lady fingers and chili padi. Hopefully the next trip when I am back in KL, the choy sum would be ready for harvest and seedlings from the rest would have sprouted healthily!

Gardening @ Kemuning

I have always envision self sufficiency in vegetables supply if I ever have a garden. Well, I do have a small "strip" of garden, haha! To reach self sufficiency might be a tad challenging unless I start to make use of the land around the estate :)

Hubby likes gardening, but he needs that push and doing it alone certainly isn't his first choice. Come one sunny Sunday, we decided to get our hands dirty and try our chance at growing our vegetables from scratch with the seeds we bought. Oh ya, the gardening was also to "cat proof" it.

The cat or cats, we have no idea if it is a gang or does it work solo. We would smell urine, poo early in the morning when we open our front door. Seeing the freshly planted grass dig up repeatedly was enough to made me wanted to hose the cat(s) with water! We tried to line the soil with small white pebbles and it did not work. Hence hubby suggested getting huge, gigantic ones. And it worked! 

We planted kangkong, habanero chilli, broccoli, aloe vera and xiao bai cai. And of course flowers!

Hubby loves chilli, the hotter the better. We were at the nursery and by chance we saw habanero chilli and the nursery owner told us it was one of the hottest chilli around. Having a chilli plant is always one of the things that is on our check list, and if it is the hottest, we were definitely getting it!

Aloe vera is one of the first plant in our house. It is useful for skin allergies, or simply for aloe vera jelly, a thoroughly useful plant.

We are still waiting for the rest of the vegetables to get to their full size. It may sound kind of crazy but when I am in KL, I would play music for them for a couple of hours everyday. Simple, instrumental music and a bit of meddling, watering.

Hope we can harvest soon!