All fully established and growing in earnest.

If you plant lady’s finger and manage to make it die, you definitely have issues.

This plant originated from Africa, you know? How many gold medals they won in the Olympics oredi? So tough, the plant, you only need to remember to water and it will grow properly still. Lady’s finger are also found growing truly wild along the River Nile. Have you ever seen siew pak choy growing in the wild before? Or tomatoes? Or brinjals? No leh. That is a testament to how tough and disease resistant the lady’s finger is.

(UPDATE: I found someone’s garden growing lady’s finger on ordinary soil. Will take a pic of it in a few days and display the stark difference of growing it on WormOrganics.)

So if you have never ever grown any food before, grow lady’s fingers. In a cluster of 15-30, they make a beautiful bush.

A cluster of lady's fingers like this will produce enough pods to feed a family of five.

Note the trumpet shaped, light yellow flowers, and the two small lady's finger pods.

They also produce pretty, light yellow flowers. It takes roughly two months for the plants to begin flowering. The flowers last for two days, max. Then, it drops off and a little lady’s finger pod takes its place. In just two to three days time, the pod will be ready for harvesting. Each plant will give you between one and two pods each time.

Plant into the ground also can. Into a pot also can, but make sure big pot lah. Their roots go deep.

Close-up of a perfectly formed lady's finger pod, less than an inch long.

Very few diseases affect the plants.

Insects love them as much as we do, but most organic insect pesticides and repellents will do the trick.

Even if the pods are affected by aphids, actual destruction is rare.

Not only that, you can grow RED lady’s fingers, which are absolutely marvellous to view. They taste a little sweeter than the green ones, while the green ones are VERY, VERY, SUPER nice to eat RAW when they are less than three inches long.

Health benefits: they reduce cholesterol, prevent colon cancer, help reduce heart attack risk. Some sources claim eating a lot of eat helps with our sex lives too…but don’t be too quick to agree with everything anyone claims.

Note: The beautiful red hue only lasts when it is fresh. When cooked, it reverts to dark green.

Close-up of a lady's finger pod being attacked by little aphid. This photo is magnified 300% to make the aphids visible. The aphids are the size of about a third of a sesame seed. Click on the photo to get a better view.

Popularity: 22% [?]

I needed to attract more bees to my food garden.

I happen to have a old jasmine growing in a big pot.

I went out and bought a small pack of blue NPK pellets and some potassium salts. Spent RM5 nyah.

I pumped my jasmine with it. I tell you, I was grinning like an evil maniac as I did it! It felt so fun to use chemicals after years of slogging with organic tricks.

And BOOM! In less than a week, the plant produced over 100 jasmine flowers all at once! Not only did bees and lady birds come a-calling, but my whole garden and living room is blessed with the sweet fragrance of jasmines every night with just that one old plant.

Chemical fertilizers got its benefits ya? But remember not to eat the jasmine flowers when you visit my garden.

Over 100 jasmine flowers produced in less than a week with chemical fertilizers.

Popularity: 13% [?]

We are going to give you a sneak preview of how we make FishOrganics in OrganicSayur. We use:

A) A Beautiful Lake

B) Good Equipment

C) Good Fish

Far from human cacophony, far from pollution

If we are going to catch fish to make FishOrganics, might as well enjoy it. These kayaks are specially designed for catching fish.

9kg Toman

1.5kg Peacock Bass

Mayan Cichlids & a Haruan

In the pot, ready to be cooked.

We cook the fish slowly overnight like fish soup.

When fish is cooked like that, most of the amino acids will be dissolved into the water.

This rich, thick, fishy soup is FishOrganics; a powerful, high nitrogen, plant soluble liquid fertilizer.

We tested it on a cluster of lady’s fingers growing on pure WormOrganics. After adding FishOrganics, here are the results:

Amazing Growth Rate

A cluster of 30 Lady's Finger seedlings, growing well. Photo taken on January 28, 2010.

The cluster, on Feb 3, 2010, one week after the first photo was taken. Photo was taken during a freak storm; the cluster had to be tied together to keep fierce winds from ripping it apart.

The cluster, on Feb 17, 2010, about two weeks after the storm photo above.

Photo taken March 8, 2010. Taller than the farmer oredi. With the most impressive leaf foliage.

Impressive Sizes

It's central leaves are THREE TIMES LARGER than lady's fingers grown on WormOrganics alone.

We left some of the pods to grow for five days on the plants. This one is nearly a foot long.

Why FishOrganics is better than ordinary fish emulsion

Fish emulsion is the waste product of factories that make fish meal and fish oil. Almost all available nutrients have been preserved in the meal and oil, which is used to make everything from Omega-3 supplements to fish burgers to chicken feed. The emulsion itself is just waste water that drip out of the whole process.

So susah….just buy fish from the market and cook it lah.

You think the Straits of Malacca very clean meh? Cadmium, mercury, chromium, you name it. It’s there. Don’t talk about the normal heavy metals like lead and zinc yet.

If once a year you go and hantam ikan bakar with your friends next to the Straits of Malacca is okay lah. But the tenet of OrganicSayur is to help people grow organic food of the very highest quality for themselves. If just use fish from the wet market, might as well save time and buy commercial fish emulsion fertilizer lah.

This FishOrganics experiment is made using fish caught in Lake Kenneth, a wetlands system spanning nearly 1,000 acres. To get there, we drive 20km off-road on four-wheel drive vehicles. When we arrive at dawn, large herds of wild boars numbering 40-50 can be seen running like mad to get away from us. At certain times of the year, thousands of migratory birds stop in Lake Kenneth to feed and rest. The fish in FishOrganics is caught in a truly natural and wild place, ensuring that we don’t introduce heavy metals and other man-made nonsense into growing our OrganicSayur.

Wah….so good ah? How to buy FishOrganics?

Not yet. This is a sneak preview which we put up just because we are so excited about it. We are refining the cooking process; looking into pressure cooking now. We are also running another two experiments related to how we apply FishOrganics for best effect.

We have only confirmed that FishOrganics will be sold frozen to preserve it without adding any sort of preservative.

We also know that it will be very expensive. More expensive than any other organic fish-based fertilizer in the market. But it is certainly the best.

UPDATE

Someone asked what if we used chicken or some other meat thing.

Very clever ah, you. People make FishOrganics, you want to make ChickenOrganics. Lawyer buruk. Malaysia Boleh.

The question is answered with protein digestibility. Fish protein is a very digestible form of protein. It also means that it breaks down much more easily to supply nitrogen to plants. Also, fat levels are very much higher in other types of meat. Try not to introduce fat into growing organic sayur. Got some good reasons. But in general, fat content in organic sayur fertilizers give more problems than solutions.

Popularity: 16% [?]