Name: Mamut
Origin: Son of Stray Cat
Facts:
1. Loves annoying other cats especially females
2. Will take punishment when he did wrong (seriously)
3. Would steal my blanket at night
4. Does the ‘high 5’ trick when he wants something
5. Mildly crossed-eyed, not sure if it was caused by eye infection he had as a kitten
Kangkung ni kalau digoreng belacan sedappp… Ada orang suka masak lemak. I read somewhere that kangkung was a staple diet somewhere in China masa perang. Banyak khasiat.
Growing kangkung is relatively easy. I find that soaking the seeds in water for a few hours helps speed up germination. These are my kangkung after 9 days of germination. They are so tall and skinny with arms outstretched (teringat lyrics lagu Rihanna, “I threw my hands in the air, said show me something…”}seolah-olah rejoicing over the rainfall. Rainfall? Yes, kangkung is a water loving vegetable. They should be fine with daily watering — kot? Well, at least they are fine with my overgenerous watering.
These kangkung are placed on a table by the window. I am not sure if they’d stay in or will be moved outdoor. We’ll see…
Will it grow?
I have always find potato plant an amazing plant; it’s mysterious plant because you just don’t know what you’ll get; abundance or a disappointment. For that, there has always been attempts to grow potatoes and so far, the have never reached the maturity state. Most of the potato plants I had would die before they produce anything. I think my problem was, over-watering. But my latest failure was attacks by my horrible cats – they actually peed in the pot where the potato was starting to grow. Grrr…
I’ve been watching a lot of youtube videos on tips and tricks on growing potatoes and of course, my favourite video to watch is the harvest. It’s always exciting to see new spuds emerging from underneath the dirt broken and scattered by hungry hands.
For the umph time, I am going to attempt at growing potato (AGAIN???). So I got me this rather small potato from my mom’s potato box and got it to chit on my sunny desk. I’ve got the medium prepared – just a regular potting soil mixed with sand to improve drainage and I only need to decide on the size and type of container to use.
Growing this tater in the ground is out of the question as the weather has been pretty cruel lately. Update shall follow.
Poof!
To me spinach is one of the trickiest vegetables to sow, let alone to grow. Reading from the internet, it’s been said that spinach would require cool condition to germinate (really??) and the seeds are delectable to ants. One second: it’s HOT in here and ants roam free where I live, red, black, small, big, biting and non-biting, you name it!
But I am not giving up just yet. This variety, Spinach Viridis is the fourth variety of spinach that I’d bought (following the Space Hybrid, Regular Spinach and Horensou varieties) and I haven’t had any luck so far. But I kept buying more and more spinach seeds, just for the fun of it. So I took a few and sprinkled them into this tiny nursery pot and added a thin layer of soil on top. I watered the seeds when needed and at the same time I’d make sure that there were no ants coming along to steal the DNA cocoons. One day, two days, then coming to 9 days, nothing yet. Actually, by the 5th day I was already giving up – I’d stopped watering – and was already contemplating on what to sow next in this tiny pot.
Then on the 10th day, BOOM, a tiny sprout came up from underneath, out of how many seeds, I do not know. Oh well, I suppose, without the patience, forgetfulness and tardiness can sometimes save a ‘dormant’ seeds’ from being denied of their right to grow.
How far it will go? Is it going to grow into a good size spinach? I pray that it will.
Peace.
Puny corn
This corn came from the only 2-sprouting seeds given by a friend, out of 50 in a pack. Why only 2 out of 50 seeds? Hahahhaa..
My gardening fetish happened at the wrong time. Now Malaysia is in the monsoon season and these corns were grown only a few weeks before the wet season and just when the plants started to put out the tassel rain started to come, beating the earth mercilessly and this baby had to withstand 4 days of consistent hard rain and afterwards, daily evening hard short rain. I figured, most of the pollens got washed away by the rain and only a handful few managed to pollinate the silk.
I had no hope whatsoever on the yield but ears actually formed on these two plants, very small in size. And today, seeing that the silk had browned out – I pluck one ear off the plant, only to find that I harvested the baby a tad bit too early (rookie mistake, and patience has never been my virtue). I didn’t realise that the silk went brown due to rain. Oh well.
I took my tiny harvest inside the house and showed it to my father and he just smiled at me, remarking that I’d plucked it too early. But then, after tearing open the bright green leaf and removing the still green silk, I saw plump kernels, very inviting. Without waiting, I boiled it and albeit the size, the taste was nectar sweet.
11 days after the last post
The onions have started to put out new stalk; are they called stalk? Anyways, compared to the apple, progress for these onions are quite slow, but, they are getting there. I’ve decided that they will stay indoor for at least another 2 weeks – or at least until the thickness of the plants are about the size of a matchstick before I could place this box out in my little garden (no immediate transplant in the garden, yet).
I realised by now that indoor sowing yield better and way faster results. A batch of these onion had been directly sown in the ground and NONE, I repeat, NONE of them germinated – they might as well have been destroyed by the weather or may be eaten by snails even – so, this are actually the second batch.
I started out with 18 seeds and now there are 16 left in the box (it’s a small tissue box which I’d decided to use as germination station before discarding/recycling. I wonder if all 16 will make it. Fingers crossed.
Also, whenever sowing seeds, I always decide to not to use up the whole packet just in case the particular batch failed, especially for rare and exotic seeds as securing them may require me to go overseas myself to get them or buy online from worldwide seed sellers like Thompson and Morgan and risk damage in the mail.
I still have some seeds left. I wonder where I can get Ailsa Craig seeds here in Malaysia should I fail to get one successfully grown onion to flower and seed.
Variety – Rose Apple
This is an update of the apple tree that I’d planted from seed. It’s now 18 days old. I haven’t been doing much to it – actually, I am not sure what I should do. I water it every couple of days, and have started to add in organic fertilizer. It seems to be growing very well and top leaves are getting larger.
The plant is growing in my bedroom still, on a table by the window, getting a couple of short hours of afternoon sunlight (which is somewhat less now that it is monsoon season) and 14-16 or so hours of cool white light. No idea actually if the plant has been benefiting from the artificial light but hey, it’s been growing ain’t it?
On a more serious note, from my random readings about apples; apple grown from seeds, if the tree produce fruits, the fruits may not (highly likely) be the same of the fruit the seed had come from. And some say that the apples may not be edible at all, combined with the fact that it might take 10 years for an apple tree grown from seed to bear fruit! (Have I mentioned this in my previous posting about this seedling? Mehh.. no worries)
But it is perfectly OK. I adore this seedling regardless. I hope it’ll continue to grow happy and healthy and besides, I can always buy apples at the store can’t I?
Peace…
One of the easiest vegetable to grow is Mung bean sprouts or taugeh and it is actually cheaply sold in markets too. But for some reasons, despite being easy, most people I know don’t really know how to make them, or rather, don’t care to make them, especially the new generation like myself. It is easy to make. All you need is, mung beans (obviously), water, proper container, and pieces of gunny cloths.
Actually, I’d never made taugehs in my life and I didn’t really know how to make it. But out of curiosity, I’d been reading and watching the how-to videos on taugehs and decided to make it my own way. So here it went:
First of all, soak mung beans over night. You don’t need much of them as a small amount will significantly expand in volume once they’ve drank up water over night. In this first batch, I only used around 100gms or so, for experiment purpose.
Mung beans day 1
This are the mung beans that had bean soaked over night and wrapped in wet cloth. Tiny roots start to shoot out.
Mung beans day 2, transferred into newly made container
On the second day, I decided to make a proper container specially for mung bean making. I had already available, plastic pots which I had bought for gardening. As plant pots have holes at the bottom, they make perfect container for taugeh making. Then, I rummaged through my mom’s recycle boxes and found old gunny sacks and cut them to fit in the pot for layering.
However, notice that my taugehs are all over the place, not growing tall in unison, root at the bottom and shoots the top? This is because, when I transferred the sprouts to the new place, they were all halfway ready. Anyways… Better late than never kan?
The sprouts day 3
On the third day, they are much bigger and the volume has expanded. And they are ready. Oh yeah, there are two important things to remember when making taugeh: water vigorously twice a day but make sure that they don’t soak, I mean, good drainage is important or else.. hehehehe… and second, make sure that they don’t get exposed to light or they will turn green; that is why I had covered the top of the taugeh pot with cloth – no light gets in but they still get the oxygen they need, I mean, just putting a piece of cloth (I used face towel as the pot cover) the pot is not airtight and thus the taugeh could breathe.
Ready to be consumed.
This is the finished products.. As it is really late in the night, I’ll cook them tomorrow. Yes I know they are not as plump gemuk2 like those you’d find in the pasar, but home made taugeh is fresh, and definitely organic. No chemicals added. Plain and simple
I’ll make another batch soon.
I got the seeds from New Zealand. Never actually cooked Zucchini and only ate it once or twice at most, when I was living in the USA many years ago. But as I am, always curious of vegetables I’d never planted, I decided to buy the seeds and give it a try here in my homeland.
This plant, greyzini, is only 3 weeks old, very scrawny, not big and lush as those seen on youtube (how did they do it???). It is possible that I hadn’t fed them enough with fertiliser. I was thinking that the soil bought from the nursery was composted enough – as they’d told me – but it turned out that I needed to do more than sow and leave. 2 days ago, I’d added in some chicken manure. I know should have done that earlier, actually, but how the heck was I supposed to know that the nursery bought soil was lacking nutrition? Oh well, it’s alright, I am learning something new today. But, being as scrawny and young as it is, 2 days ago, I noticed something else…
The plant is budding, well, I am assume that they are flower buds; I don’t know, I’ve never seen zucchini plant before. I wonder if it is normal, anyways… I’d be fun to see zucchini blossom. I read that I’d be seeing male blossoms first before female blossoms will turn up. Hopefully they’d get pollinated.
Today evening I’d give the zukes a nice dose of backyard compost which is now baking in the oven (sterilisation) to kill possible weeds and pest eggs.
Last Sunday, a nephew and two nieces of mine, aged 3-4 were given the opportunity to sow seeds. I figured, people should learn where their food comes from early in life to inculcate their appreciation of what they eat. So I got them 4 tiny baba biodegradable pots which I’d got from my sis in law Nadia and handed them to the kids. Then, I deliberately pour in 3 parts compost and 1 part sand in a shallow old aluminium pan. With no hesitation, the three kids went ahead and mixed the two items really well; they seem to not mind playing with dirt.
The Mixing Pan..
Then, nimbly with their little hands, they placed the mixture in the little pot assigned to each of them (one each) full to the brim. Ajiq, my 3 y-o nephew, finished filling the pot first and took the extra pot (there were 3 of them and there were 4 pots) and filled it full to the brim. The 2 girls didn’t mind. Qilah, one of the girls, was down with fever but she was adamant to be part of the fun so I let her join in. Damia, the other, was ready for anything, as she ever has been.
I presented to them 4 seeds (to accommodate 4 pots); 2 long bean seeds and 2 garden pea seeds. Ajiq grabbed one long bean seed and one garden pea seed, Qilah got herself a long bean seed and Damia took the remaining garden pea seed.
Can you tell which is what?
After poking a hole right in the middle of the dirt (well, supposed to be middle lol) they placed the seed in it, covered the seed lightly and poured water over. Got each of the pots labelled with name and date. They then washed their hands and continued playing and then not later than an hour, Ajiq went to the pots and grumbled, “why is there no plant yet??” Laughingly I told him that he’d have to wait 3 days to see growth, at least for the long bean. I hope he understood that.
So, on the 3rd day, this was what happened
After 3 days
That’s just amazing. 4 seeds sown the same day in the same medium by different hands yielded different results: Qilah’s seed sprouted the fasted while Damia’s still shy underneath the dirt.
I supposed, with all variables kept constant, there must be some truth in the term, ‘green thumb’.
The pix of the pots was taken yesterday. Today, Damia’s seed has decided to sprout 🙂
My Hobo Garden and Stuff 