Bayam.

In Malaysian English, it is sometimes called Chinese Spinach. But in any other kind of English, there is nothing spinachy about it at all. Malaysians call it spinach because when they watched the popeye cartoon when they were young, the spinach in the cartoon looks exactly like bayam.

Actually, the English name is amaranth (borrowed from Indian word; where got Chinese?!). Green amaranth also got. Red amaranth also got. Red spot amaranth also got. Round leaf amaranth also got. Got many many varieties.

Bayam has three times more calcium and three times more niacin (Vitamin B3) than popeye’s spinach. It has TWENTY times more calcium and seven times more iron than lettuce (which for your information is not a very nutritious vegetable so please just treat lettuce as decorative dressings from now on). It is also a Class One source of carotene, iron, magnesium and many other trace minerals. Red amaranth got extra iron.

The problem with bayam is that if you buy it in the market, the farmers normally grow them till they are over two feet tall. It’s a bit old by then and it will be tough to bite unless you peel the stems first, which can be tedious.

If you harvest your own bayam when they are around 1-1.5 feet tall, they will be nice and tender. Don’t pull out the roots ok? Cut the stem around 4-6 inches from the ground. Got chance that the stem will reshoot. If insects destroy the cut stem, then only you pull out and replant.

If you harvest your own bayam when they are just around 6-7 inches tall, they make fantastic salads. Just trickle some lightly heated olive oil on top and add fine salt. Can also mix with baby tomatoes for a sour tang. Add cubed chicken and bread and you have a complete meal.

Young bayam is also very good for helping millions of children who have a problem with eating vegetables. The taste is mild and the texture is soft. Chop them up and make bayam omelette seasoned with maggi seasoning sauce and your children will love it and learn to like vegetables.

If you let your bayam grow and grow, it produces spectacular flowers in long, drooping tassels or tiny globes of red or pink or yellow or cream. The striking flowers produce thousands of tiny edible seeds. Grow in a row, three feet or more apart from each other and some bayam variety can grow up to six feet tall! Cut off the young shoots for cooking. They don’t mind.

Bayam is also very hardy. It tolerates our awesome sun, coping with heat and dry conditions better than any other leafy organic sayur. So it’s the perfect organic sayur for busy Malaysians

To start, use planter boxes 20-30cm tall. Tesco got a lot. Buy the bayam seeds from Tesco also can. Fill it up with WormOrganics. Draw shallow grooves along the length of the planter box.

Pour some of the tiny seeds of the bayam onto one palm, then using a finger from your other hand, pick up a few seeds. If cannot pick up you wet your finger first la.

Tiny little bayam seeds stick to finger easily when your finger is wet.

Then after that, lightly rub the seeds into the groove. Cover the seeds with a very thin layer of WormOrganics. Then water the surface nicely and wait for the seeds to germinate.

One thing ah, when you buy the seeds, the instructions at the back of the packing will tell you to mix the fine seeds with sand and sprinkle and all that. Leceh lah. As long as you are not as rough as gajah like that, it’s safe enough to pick up the seeds with your sticky fingers and softly rub them into the WormOrganics you prepared.

Please ah. Rub in the seeds lightly ok. If you press too hard the seeds will pecah.

The seeds will germinate in 2-3 days. When the seedlings are around 15cm tall, keep the tallest, best looking seedlings and carefully pull out the rest. Each individual seedlings that you select can be around 8-10 cm from each other along each row. Take the discarded seedlings to make salad or to put in your maggi mee. The remaining seedlings will take 3-4 weeks to reach 30cm height.

Bayam seeds don’t germinate well. So put A LOT of the seeds. If you find large areas on your bed where the seeds didn’t germinate, add more seeds.

Popularity: 56% [?]

People say already mah. Lettuce is best grown in 4 degrees to 15 degrees Celcius. Like that means must grow it inside the fridge lor. Even air cond room down to 20 degrees Celcius also not enough.

But if people ask us to jump off a building why we never jump?

So we still try. And regret.

See lah. The sawi is towering over it oredi.

Sensitive vegetable. Terkena the wall of the planter box and the leaf bruised oredi.

Like princess like that. Kena the planter box a bit also cannot...

Kena rain also the leaf will koyak.

One good rain koyak oredi. Bruised some more.

The one and only lettuce that is perfectly formed is the one growing underneath my lady’s finger plants. The broad leaves of the lady’s finger protect the lettuce from our fantastic sun.

There. In the middle of the photo below the broad leaves of the lady's fingers. The one and only lettuce that got no problems.

Lettuce isn’t a very nutritious organic sayur lah. Mostly water. The only good thing is that they are mild tasting and add a nice crunchy texture to salads. I feel like pulling out all the setengah mati lettuce and feeding them to my little bunny rabbit. A while more lah. See how far they can go. Can still salvage and make salad what.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Are you an oxymoron? What would you do if you found out you were an oxymoron?

Aiyoh we don’t know woh. Serious thing like this you must figure it out yourself. But we can tell you one thing definitely for sure:

“Organic fertilizer” is an oxymoron.

But first, you know what’s oxymoron or not? Don’t know, leh. Something to do with moron, is it?

An oxymoron, my friend, is a term in which words that seem incongruous or contradictory are combined to achieve a particular effect or description. Like “deafening silence” or “mournful optimist”. Or “working vacation”  Or “idiot genius”. Faham tak?

Ok. So. “Organic fertilizer” is an oxymoron because organic fertilizers are not really fertilizers as far as fertilizers go.

You see, ah. When you use fertilizer, you fertilize the plant of your choice kan? You fertilize your roses, the grass on your lawn, your sawi, or your kangkung.

But organic fertilizers have no direct effect on plants. It is something you put into the soil so that your soil comes alive with all kinds of microbes. The microbes will digest the stuff that organize fertilizers are made of. Plants absorb what the microbes make when they digest organic fertilizers.

Why want to use organic fertilizer? Oh a lot of reasons.

Sodium chloride. That’s salt. The one you sprinkle on your fried bayam to get a higher blood pressure. Chemical fertilizers. These are also salts, you know? All chemical fertilizers are technically known as chemical salts. You know how dangerous salt is to a plant, ah? You pour a cup of salt water on your favourite plant and see.

Even worse, salt and microbes don’t mix. This one no need to explain one. Salted fish, salted vegetables, salted eggs. They can last for a long time right? Because microbes cannot touch them mah.

So when you whack your plants with chemical fertilizer, all the microbes will definitely die for sure. Micro-biological activity in the soil stops. Your plants have nothing to feed on but the chemicals you use. Then the problem really starts up.

Let’s say we use a fertilizer that’s very rich in nitrogen. Actually, most of the nitrogen evaporates into the air in just a few hours. You won’t notice lah because the air around you is 70% nitrogen already. Only a little bit is left, but even then, this little bit is VERY strong. Your plants will react madly. They will grow like crazy. But the growth is erratic because that little bit of nitrogen will be used up without you knowing. The plants will all of the sudden stop growing because the nutrients finish already. Must wait for you to remember to add more fertilizer. Meanwhile, all the half-grown, incomplete parts of the plants that suddenly stopped growing are extremely vulnerable and waiting for insects and fungus to attack them. So now you have to use pesticides and fungicides pulak. Die lah, like that.

And your plants are not stupid you know? They know how to “talk” to microbes. At required times, they release a variety of bio-chemicals and even ultra violet and infra red light that microbes will respond to. These bio-signals trigger the microbes to react in infinitesimal ways. The microbes will generate a library list of hormones, stimulants and nutrients that your plants need whether to grow kah, to make fruits or flowers kah, to fight diseases kah or whatever lah. Some of these good stuff are produced in micrograms, but enough already.

Plants do it to animals too. You think your plants make fruits and flowers for you ah? Please lah. It’s for the birds and the bees!

As far as we know, plants haven’t learned to talk to chemical fertilizers yet. But can talk also no use. Chemical salts are mostly one-dimensional. They don’t have all the trace minerals your plants need. Boron lah (Not moron ah). Magnesium lah. Copper lah. Gibberelin lah. Etc, etc, etc.

So you see, the correct approach to sustainable agriculture is actually to make sure you got good, living soil. Then the soil will make good plants for you. If you think you are very smart and use chemicals, then Mother Nature will move to one side and you will be all alone. Don’t know lah. What d’you think? No need Mother Nature ah?

And actually, if you have really good soil, then all types of fertilizers can be considered as morons which are even more worse than oxymorons because you won’t need them at all.

So now. What happens if you use 100% worm compost to grow plants? Hah. Click here.

Popularity: 30% [?]

We give you one idea ok?

1. Take an old pot.

Find the oldest pot you can. Kuali pun boleh.

2. Use something sharp and make a lot of holes at the bottom.

If aluminium pot very easy lah. If you want to poke the old kuali, you need a hammer. Don't make the holes too small or tiny bits of WormOrganics will clog them up.

3. Then wash it clean. Wipe it dry. And spray with the colour you want. To spray nicely, you don’t spray one single thick layer lah. Spray a thin layer first. Let it dry for 5 minutes, then spray another layer. About three or four layers will be great la. No need to make your first layer cover the entire surface one. If you degil and try to spray the whole pot thick-thick in one go, the paint will drip and make ugly lines on the pot. Then program rosak oredi lor.  To make it dry super fast, use your hair dryer. Drying quickly with hot air will also make the paint set firmly to the pot. I like black. So……

A very cool and unique organic sayur pot! I plan to give it to my mama as a present.

Now all you have to do is fill it up with WormOrganics and plant some seeds. Wait for about two weeks so that pretty little organic sayur seedlings come up. And you now have a fantastic gift!

The best people to receive this kind of gift is your close family members, like your brother or your sister.

First, buy a really nice pot from the shopping centre and then go to your mama house and give her the pot. Then ask her as nicely as you can for the old pot that she has been using to cook for you all. Take the pot home and turn it into an organic sayur pot.

When it’s time to go to your brother’s house, present him with the pot full of happily growing organic sayur and tell him that that is mama’s pot. So nice hor? He gets organic sayur from a pot that he used to eat from when he was still small! Some more if he leave it somewhere and watch it grow for a few more weeks before he makan, it will help him to appreciate the gift further. From experience, we also learn that watching organic sayur develop over the days can help relieve stress and give anyone a sense of accomplishment.

If your brother is not very skilled with growing things, don’t plant cauliflower seeds into mama’s pot lah. Choose something hardy like bayam or lady’s finger.

Popularity: 34% [?]

WormOrganics Features & Benefits

Got many live earthworms and earthworm eggs inside.

An active biological mixture of microbes, hormones, enzymes & minerals that are beneficial to plants.

Will not burn even the most delicate plants.

Immense moisture retention capabilities.

Before we pack WormOrganics for you, we will take back our earthworms in the compost. But the eggs are very, very small. And the newborn earthworms are only 2cm long. If we try to take back all the eggs and the babies, until the cows come home also we not yet finish packing man. So we only take back the adults and we pass the babies to you.

Nah....not many people got chance to see this. This is an earthworm egg. Size is same like kacang hijau.

Please take good care of the babies ok? When you use WormOrganics, the earthworms will continue to live in the pot. Everything they do will help your organic sayur to grow big and strong.

How to Use

1. Take some pots.

Planter boxes, earthen pots, vegetable seeds, 50kg of WormOrganics.

2. Fill them up with WormOrganics.

Make them full full ok. As time goes by, WormOrganics will mature and settle into the pots. You see the sack still got a little left? Can plant organic sayur inside also. Recycle the bag into a pot.

3. Plant some organic sayur seeds and watch them grow.

This planter box is growing a mix of sawi and baby kailan.

That’s all lah. So easy kan? If you never planted vegetables before, try this first lah. Get your license first.

There’s no need to use soil. Anyway, most Malaysian soils have an acidity level of around pH3.5, which is too acidic for organic sayur to grow well. So you have to know how to correct the pH level. Which means you have to buy a pH meter also.

WormOrganics has a pH level of 6. Just nice.  It contains enough nutrients for you to plant organic sayur continuously for around 1-2 years before you have to refresh the nutrient levels, depending on your pot size.

for more information.

Or call or sms whatever you want to 017 272 0990.

Popularity: 90% [?]

Before that, let’s talk about Malaysians for a while. We are a proud race. We are very practical, down-to-earth, and straight-to-the-point and we don’t play-play.

If Malaysians try to learn about planting organic sayur in the house from the Internet, sooner or later they will find the Organic Gardening Techniques pdf file from the University of Missouri-Columbia. It says that one way to start organic gardening is to use “50lb to 100lb undried cattle manure”.

Undried cattle manure? Fresh cow dung kut?

….this people ah….

Dei….fresh cow dung say fresh cow dung lah. What undried cattle manure?

So ok we ask you now. How to find so much fresh cow dung?

Really must bring cow dung to my house ah?

….not yet start also busuk already….

….aiyoh kesian my neighbour….

….how lah like that aiyoh….cow dung….

Cannot cannot cannot. There must be a better way.

The Better Way

Correct correct correct. Got better way. Bring cow dung to my house…..gila meh?

Ok lah we tell you who we really are. We are earthworm farmers. You know cacing? We got a lot oh.

We feed the cacing with a lot of water hyacinth. This is a kind of wild floating vegetable that grows on lakes.

Hyacinth collection operations by the lake.

We also mix quite a lot of chicken dung with water hyacinth. But don’t worry lah. We won’t send the lorry of fresh chicken dung to your house one. It’s for the worms to eat. Nothing stays the same. And after the worms have eaten it up, the dung turns to soil.

8.5 tons of fresh chicken dung.

At first, the mix is very, very smelly. And smoking hot! The heat comes from a thermophilic process done by anaerobic bacteria. The bacteria will whack the mix of dung and water hyacinth very happily. Anaerobic bacteria is important. As living things, they are different from us. They breathe in carbon dioxide. And they breathe out oxygen! They take the carbon from carbon dioxide and spit out the oxygen (For us! Haha!) and mix the carbon with the crazy amounts of nitrogen and hydrogen and etc that is inside the mix of water hyacinth and dung to make their food. This micro kitchen process is what causes the heat. Only thing is that their kitchen is very smelly one, so don’t simply try this at home, unless you don’t mind the smell.

Our worm farm

Don't do this at home!! Smelly smelly! At first, it all looks like this. If the picture looks a bit steamy to you, don't worry. Got nothing wrong with your eyes. Really got steam coming out of the stuff one. It's very hot. It's composting and breaking down!

In a very short while, nearly all of the dung and much of the water hyacinth plus whatever other types of plant matter that got mixed in will be broken down. And eventually, there is no more carbon dioxide inside the mix. Then the heat cools down. Nearly all the anaerobic bacteria dies and the mix is full of oxygen.

And our earthworms rush in.

By the time the earthworms are full until they cannot move, everything looks different. People call it vermicompost. Vermi is Latin for cacing. There is no more dung. Just a kind of rich, black soil called humus. The plant matter doesn’t break down as fast as the dung so you still see some. But sooner or later, even the plant matter also will be fully gone, and people will call it mature earthworm castings.

We call our vermicompost WormOrganics, because the amount of organic matter, micro-organic life, and earthworms in WormOrganics are the highest that nature can give. Not a spoon full of earth or soil is added into WormOrganics. Yah. You see some bits of sand and grit. You will probably see some snail shells too. Those came along while we were collecting wild water hyacinth. We don’t make WormOrganics. We just provide the place and the materials and Mother Nature comes in and have party.

How to use? Click here.

Popularity: 100% [?]