Popeye’s BFF

Just a quick lunch break entry as I can’t quite promise an everyday entry. At times, the much exaggerated “writer’s block” excuse seems to be the best reason I could come up with, but these days, work-related time hindrance is a much more applicable situation.

So, what’s my beef with vegetables? They go way back into my childhood days. Grandpa used to trick me into eating Grandma’s spinach soup by vainly using one of my favourite cartoon characters then (we early 80’s babies) – Popeye. Don’t get me wrong, Grandma’s cooking holds a very high standard of excellency! Getting Little Miss Dee to munch on vegetables like Billy the Goat however, was a recollection of horrific attempts. As a child, I pretty much swore off any kind of vegetables (except for the sweeter ones such as corns, potatoes & pumpkins), which I terribly regret now. I think I could have grown much taller if I did.

For those of you who have never heard of Popeye

Thank God I grew out of it & thank you very much Grandpa & Grandma for convincing me to eat the very delicious Popeye’s soup. The spinach has become one of my favorite must haves ever since, making it my personal mission to grow some within my little nook of green. Well, the man of the house eats almost every kind of vegetables the world has to offer so he wouldn’t complain about those beautiful reddish green hued leaves.

I bought the seeds from Servay’s gardening section. A pack of MYR 1.90 contains a LOT of these micro ball bearings-like seeds. As you can see, I managed to successfully germinate the first batch, but decided to re-pot within a week’s time as the bed was too low & the sides of the pot were casting wide shadows on them babies. They need ample amount of sunlight to grow healthily.

* Note to self – make sure there is enough soil to fill in the pots with before nursing any seeds. Else, quit being lazy & go get more soil before opening the foil-packed seeds.

I went out to water & check on the plants the next morning after re-potting the mini Popeyes. Much to my dismay, I was greeted by withered bunches where a patch of lush reddish green sprouts once were. The instructions on the packet clearly said to re-pot only, I repeat, ONLY after a month but I did it within a week anyway. Boo-hoo! My impatience has gotten the worst of my spinaches. Poor darlings. I’m dreadfully sorry, Popeye. I killed a fair bit of your “fisks” powers infusing substance. I assume I didn’t place them back in the soil carefully & deep enough.

Disappointments aside, I went back to Servay to get another pack of seeds in a vain attempt to resurrect the balding patches. They ran out of the first batch of species (the red spinach) that are currently growing on my balcony so I had to settle with the ordinary ones although somehow the photo on the pack showed ones with the red hues as well.

I pray these micro ball bearings-like seeds will settle nicely in their new home & start sprouting soon. Until then, go forth & multiply, little ones!

Red or Purple, Smelly & They Sting.

As most of you would probably know by now, I choose to plant only vegetables that both the man of the house & I consume. Given the limited spaces to experiment on our tiny apartment’s balcony, I had to carefully choose the types of vegetables to plant.

Here is one of the must haves in our Asian kitchen : The Red Onions…

Otherwise known as the shallots? I couldn’t confirm if they are of the same species. The pictures for both the red onions & the shallots shown on Google Images looked similar. Either way, please correct me if I’m wrong.

I can imagine some ROFL meme type of cringing faces when one thinks about those torturing times of tearing up while cutting these (I once wore a pair of swimming googles while chopping them up!) & having to deal with the aftermath’s unpleasant smell on the fingers & nails. Hate or love them, these red small beauties are an essential for Asian Recipes.

I’ve done some researches (obviously from the Internet) on rooting or cultivating these bulbs. A site (I forgot its name) mentioned that purchasing & attempting to grow the supermarket sold bulbs might not produce satisfactory results as these bulbs are treated with retardants for longer keepsakes. The site highly recommend to get the bulbs from proper plant nurseries.

Some might even call me stubborn as I’m trying to defy facts that has been discovered & written by one who is much more of an expert than I am. Determined to prove them wrong, I went to the local fresh produce market (the Tamu along the seaside of Sinsuran) to hunt for some onion bulbs. I recall seeing the ones sold in supermarkets (i.e Servay / Giant) do not have that healthy luscious red-purple hue on them. They’re mostly much smaller in size & looked very dry. The local market’s bunch of bulbs are very much healthier, ample sized & they are also available in a smaller pack of MYR 2.00. A small pack like that could last us two good weeks of cooking as there are only the two of us.

Let’s get down to serious business now. My first attempt in planting the bulbs was not a total failure. Just too slow. As instructed by several websites, I basically filled a ceramic pot with soil, popped the bulbs into in, watered & left the pot on a sunny spot. Fed up of waiting, I dug up those bulb only to find very little progress. Thus my second attempt with an entirely different approach.

I recalled Grandma’s gardening stints. I vaguely remembered the water, a rack & the bulbs. So in the attempt to recreate Grandma’s method, I took out a plastic (transparent so I could monitor the rooting progress) container & place the bulbs inside with their butts facing down & their top facing up. No soil is needed at this stage. After making sure that the bulbs would not shift around, I filled the container with water, only until it touches a little of the bulbs’ butts. Do ensure that the bulbs are not floating in the water. Else, pour out a little bit of the water until they stop floating.

Two days later, the roots were still considered to be emerging rather slowly. I didn’t see anything emerging at all with some of the bulbs. I’ve to admit, I can get very impatient. My own method of speeding it up? Placed a mesh (you could substitute with a rack or anything of that sort that is available at home) inside the container, rearranged the bulbs on the mesh & filled the container with more water until it touches the bulbs’ butts again. Suspending the bulbs a little higher proves to accelerate the roots’ growth. It’s actually an accidental discovery. The container was crowded so some of the bulbs were resting on each other. The bulbs that were slightly suspended seem to root much faster than the ones resting directly on the container’s surface.

Until they are ready to be planted in the soil, I’ve attached some visual references so you could understand the stages that I will be explaining. I know how frustrating it can be when most sites only show you the firmly-planted-in-soil bulbs.

As days passed by, I had to remind myself to continuously top up the water in the container until it touches the butt of the bulbs. Like human beings, they also get thirsty.

It takes about a week for these bulbs to root into these alien-like tentacles. Forgive my deranged description of it. I’m from a sci-fi generation where alien based movies seem to always become the Hollywood blockbuster hits.

A day before the bulbs were transferred to their new home, I went to get some pots. Daiso sells simple rectangular (long to boot) plastic pots for MYR 5.00 each. As for the soil, I used the leftovers of the 10kg bag of organic ready-to-plant soil, specially pre-fertilized for vegetables.

After filling up the pots with soil (leaving a space of 1″ from the top of brims), I dug nicely grid-lined individual holes of 2″ in depth & 2″ apart from each other. For some bulbs, slightly deeper holes were needed to accommodate their roots as they’ve grown longer than their comrades. Carefully placing the bulbs & their roots inside their holes, I covered them with soil until I could only see a small portion of their heads emerging (as shown in the topmost picture of this journal). I placed the pot on our balcony’s sunny spot, watered them & said a little prayer.

True enough, I woke up the next morning to find cute little sprouts of green. RIGHT ON! My determination (in other words, crazy-must-prove-you-wrong kind of attitude) did not fail me this time around & I hope it will be the same for you.

P.S – Have you ever wondered if the planted bulbs will multiply beneath the soil? Will it continue to grow to only be that eleven bulbs that were initially planted? Most writers only give you the planting, caring & harvesting instructions. None of them has ever answered that question. I guess we will just have to wait for a while until this experiment goes beyond a few months. After all, the self experiences are the main point of these experiments.

  

The Mother of ALL…

I’ve been wanting to follow up with an entry which is officially about gardening itself since the last entry was solely an introduction of the blog’s purpose. After all, the greens are the fundamental substance of this blog & shame be on me if I were to bore the audience with non-related words.

Let me introduce the mother of this green project (which led to a garden gnome label for myself as I consider gnomes to be the guardians of all gardens) to the public.

The Cherry Tomatoes…

I’m unable to provide you with the specific details of the plant, heck, I don’t even know its species nor its fancy Latin given name as I’m certainly no botanical expert. Even with the help of Mr. Google, I wouldn’t be able to identify which exact species is the one that I’m currently tending to. I do wish an Amazon-like app exists so I could scan a plant or seed’s barcode to get its summary, reviews, ratings & recommendations (please do add in care instructions if you’re one of those tech-wiz whose ideabulb just lit up at the mention of this). Come to think of it, a Shazam-like app is a much better option as plants do not have barcodes stamped on them.

Tech terms from a tech noob aside, I bought these seeds back in February from the cashier’s counter of Times Bookstore, One Borneo. Strange place to buy seeds? Well, let’s just say that it was an impulsive buy induced by a shopping trip during which Paps, Mum & the little sis were visiting for a week (the Chap Goh Mei’s weekend).

By far the reigning queen of the most expensive bunch of seeds I’ve yet to spend on (MYR 25.90), the 2″x 2″ starter box consist of a small square ceramic pot, water soluble soil, seeds & of course, a leaflet of pre-post care instructions. Straightforward instructions of prepping the soil (just add water accordingly), spreading the seeds & the standard procedure of covering the seeds with the remaining soil (keeping it to 1/3″ or 1/2″ above the seeds).

Once done (with Mum’s help of course), the cute little white pot filled with seeds was placed at an area which receives an ample amount of morning sunlight. In this case, the windowsill of our kitchen sink. Morning sunlights are best for any seeds’ germinating process as the heat is quite bearable compared to the scorching hot afternoon sun, so choose a spot around your apartment carefully.

The seedlings sprouted much faster than what I’ve psyched myself up for, growing as if they were on some sort of steroids for plants! The day that Paps, Mum & Supang left, they have grown at least an inch tall. It has yet to grow as pictured on the starter kit’s box although I doubt it will ever look exactly like that photoshopped image.

I can’t help much with suggestions on obtaining the seeds as I could only suggest Times Bookstore (provided it is still in stock), nor can I elaborate much about the plant’s growth rate at this stage. However, do stay tuned for future entries where the real deal began as I encountered some roadblocks a month or two after the steroid like growth rate has punctured down to an agonizing standstill.

Genes-infused green fingers.

I might be a descendant of the Yeo’s women, the bunch of women who are abundantly blessed with dainty green fingers but let’s be very honest here…

I killed my rosemary plant in less than a week! Yet it was fully matured, lush green, off the counter & readily planted in a pot kind of plant. Cheating, you say? Guilty as charged. But how did I manage to murder a perfectly mature & healthy plant, you ask? I had absolutely no idea where to even start the autopsy.

Most probably it was overwatered as diagnosed by Google. An epidemic of moss started infesting the stems! That was only the third day after I brought the pretty little rosemary home. Google suggested that I should dry the plant out in the sun to stop the moss epidemic. And so, in my attempt to “heal” the situation, I practically sun-bathed the poor plant until it withered. Yes, my first attempt at gardening was a major boo-boo.

A year later – HELLO, beautiful Kota Kinabalu! It must be the fresher & less polluted air that ward off the bad ju-jus of gardening failures suffered back in Kuala Lumpur. As ambitious as the Rat of the Chinese zodiac-born lass that I am, I wasn’t ready to start again until I came across the “guaranteed to grow” cherry tomato’s seeds. No longer on the 11th floor of a condominium complex smack in the concrete jungle, my dainty ( genes-infused ) green fingers started itching like mad, fell for that marketing gimmick & happily carted away that tiny box of starter pack. Little did I know that it was the start of the successful home grown vegetables garden on our little nook of an apartment balcony.

Thus, this little journal of a blog was born to document my experiments with apartment based gardening. Of course, the man of the house played a major role in encouraging his lady to keep a journal. So, thank you, Honey! As I write this introduction post, enjoying the cool night breeze while gazing at my tiny green balcony garden, I thank God for never allowing me to quit after a failure.

Do enjoy the chronologies of my mishaps & successes, my friends.