The king wanted some really good bittergourd. So we dug a hole and threw 100kg of WormOrganics into it. We planted some seeds and left.

Three months later, I drove by to say to Hi to His Majesty. The fella was watering his plants.

Good morning, sir. How are the plants doing?

Not bad, said the Bittergourd King. “So busy nowadays, I can only water them once a day.”

His lady’s fingers were nearly 10ft tall now. “Ya lah. Growing bored of eating lady’s fingers oredi. I want to uproot them and grow something else.”

Sure. Want some brinjal seeds? “Of course!” I gave His Majesty some. And passed him some kai lan and red bayam and siew pak choy seeds also.

The Bittergourd King had four bittergourd plants. Being an electrician and an overall handy man, he had built a sturdy wall of mesh netting for his bittergourds to climb. They made a beautiful green wall.

The bittergourd wall. Note how the the shade of the palm tree protects the wall from the aftersoon sun as the clock edges closer to 11am.

Good to eat? “Wah, very bitter leh. But syiok also lah.”

The wall measured 4ft wide and 6ft tall. The sides faced east and west, and it grew underneath a tall palm tree. This way, the bittergourds get the brightest morning and evening sun, but they are kept cool under the shade of the palm tree when the afternoon sun blazed unbidden.

Oik…you have some bittergourd fruits that are staring to turn yellow, my King. Better to harvest them, leaving the fruits to ripen on the plants will tire them. It’s always good to harvest the fruits young, they will not be too bitter and you keep your plants healthy. They’ll flower and fruit more too.

“Really ah? Ok ok. Lemme go get my scissors.”

I touched his wall to feel the leaves. Wah!! The wall is very thick with the healthy leaves. Wait a minute….aiyoh!! My King! Your bittergourd wall is full of fruits hiding under the leaves!

The Bittergourd King's bittergourd harvest

“Hah!? Aiyoh…I so busy with work nowadays I no time to check lah. Where? Where? Come we cut them out.”

Five minutes later, we had a pail of around 20 bittergourd fruits.

The King was smiling from ear to ear.

All hail Alan Nyu from Klang. The Bittergourd King.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Halo, halo.

Suddenly, my website’s back office shows a spike in visitors from Penang. And this, at the same time, the Penang Affiliates of the National Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Malaysia are having their meeting. Surely this means that members of Nawem are dropping by for a visit.

I very terharu that you sanggup drop by. Yati has urged me to come to Penang to meet you all, but I am so sorry for timing sudah lari.

Nonetheless, unable to connect, I leave this little post here to acknowledge your presence.

Welcome, welcome.

I hope to meet you all soon enough and talk about making a better world the organic way. It’s unfortunate that I am living in a hulu realm and can never seem to find the right timing to be where everyone else is to meet. But don’t worry, karma will bring us together soon enough.

Green always,

Arnold JS Loh

017 272 0990

Popularity: 7% [?]

These four pots are for sale! The one on the left is the oldest; on the right, the youngest. Age difference about two weeks apart.

I do a lot of testing.

Don’t try don’t know mah. Sometimes, I mess up and everything dies. Sometimes I hit the jackpot and I learn.

I hit the jackpot with these four pots. They were grown with a combination of WormOrganics and FishOrganics. And the results are fabulous.

But I have A LOT of lady’s fingers ady. So I decide to put these for sale.

View from the top.

 RM150 each. Flowering and fruiting in less than a month. A mixture of red and green lady’s fingers.

They are more suited to belong to singles or small families. Not large families because there are only 4-7 ladies per pot. Excellent for display in offices too. (But need A LOT of sunlight, ok?)

Two of the pots have an extra large sawi growing happily underneath, for beauty’s sake. But can eat also lah. The sawi is extra large thanks to the FishOrganics and  flowering soon also. Don’t eat the sawi’s main stem, very tough ady. 

One of the pots with the pretty, big sawi growing beneath.

Klang Valley buyers only. They must be delivered to KL by this weekend (April 3-4, 2010) or they will have grown too large to drive down decently.

If you would like to own one of them, call me, Arnold, direct at 017 272-0990 and I will deliver them to your doorstep. Terms cash; yes.

Popularity: 22% [?]

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% [?]

Welcome! Welcome! Lai! Lai! Lai! Mari! Mari! MARI!!

Three-week-old sawi

We are here to teach you how to grow your own organic sayur.

But one thing most important we have to say first about our website: We are written in Malaysian English!!

People call it Manglish (Mangled English a.k.a. Malaysian English). Of course, we could without any hardship at all opt to be written in internationally correct English. But don’t want lah! Boring.

Some more this is not a corporate website what. This is for all the happy people in our country who want to enjoy organic sayur. Want to talk like we are wearing neckties for what? Relaks lah sayang.

Still, for the benefit of international visitors, sayur is vegetable.

Malaysia Boleh is Malaysia can (do it).

Satu Malaysia is One Malaysia.

Baja is fertilizer.

Cacing is earthworm.

Kebun is garden.

These are Malay words that made it into Manglish. In fact all Malay words and all English words and some Chinese words and quite a few Tamil words are also in the National Manglish Dictionary which hopefully will be published in 2020.

Anyway, enough Manglish lessons for now. Back to organic sayur.

Why must plant your own organic sayur

Not only you like to eat vegetable. Insects like it even more. You know how insects find vegetables? By sight and smell. The more vegetables, the more the sight and the nicer the smell.

So ah. A big vegetable farm will attract insects from miles and miles around. The jungle got a lot of grass and leaves what. But why insects never sapu everything? Because a lot of the green in the jungle know how to protect themselves by making natural chemicals that the insects don’t like. Vegetables where got like that one. So when got millions of vegetables grow together-gether in hundreds of acres, insects die-die also will go there.

Pity the farmers. Use pesticide, get scolded. Don’t use but cannot send enough vege to the pasar borong, get scolded.

So no need to scold. The government is doing its job to regulate pesticide use. And fungicide also. And herbicide also. Buy and remember to wash clean clean before you cook and eat. So far, still got nobody die all of the sudden from eating vegetables from the market yet.

Or you can eat organic sayur. Of course it’s much better lah.

You can buy organic sayur from the supermarket.

Or you can plant it yourself.

If you plant it yourself:

Even if you grow it so badly that the organic sayur is blue colour, korang korang also you know for sure that it’s organic kan? You won’t spray ridsect on the sayur that you are planning to eat what.

Your house got space la. Don’t waste mah.

If your house got children, it’s good for them. It’s good for them to see organic sayur being planted, harvested, cooked and eaten. It will help them view the world and our environment with more empathy and care when they grow up.

In our small but persistent way, we help to cut down the country’s food import bill lah, reduce world hunger lah, and even level down the amount of carbon dioxide in the air oh.

Ok fine fine. Let’s assume that it’s good to plant organic sayur. Now how?

Popularity: 49% [?]

Sawi and family,
So sweet and so easy,
No need to everyday see,
Like that also can grow quickly.

Sawi and family,
Since 500 A.D.
Cross-bred for great variety,
And all very tasty.

Siew Pay Choy is short and nifty,
White Pak Choy is fat and crunchy,
Ori sawi is big and lengthy,
No need to choose wisely,
All will grow green and leafy.

Try this to grow them artistically,
Don’t grow them in rows neat and tidy,
But scatter the seeds tightly and blindly,
Growing packed together, looking wild and pretty.

Oh Sawi and family,
So hard to write your story,
Making sure it sounds like a puisi,
Oh dearie me,
I’m losing hair oredi!

Popularity: 49% [?]

Lets start at the very beginning,
A very good place to start,
When you read you begin with,
A-B-C,
When you plantorganicsayuryoubeginwith
N-P-K
N-P-K
The first three nutrients just happen to be
N-P-K
N-P-K-Mg-Zn-Ca-Fe!
Hmm…let’s see if I can make it easier.

Hehehe…ok ok ok. Serious again. The Sound of Music is our favouritest movie of all, and we love every song. Now we borrow this famous song to bring emphasis to an important part of understanding organic sayur.

In school last time, our Kimia teacher was always very sad. We think it’s because his students all don’t like Kimia.

So anyway, we don’t want you to stop reading this just because you hate Kimia, so we will try to be simple.

N is for Nitrogen.

For all living tissues in the world (your tissue and organic sayur tissue also), N is like cement. Hydrogen is like bricks. These building materials make the walls of life called amino acids, which is a group of complex compounds that contain the chemical group NH2. Amino acids bundle together in even more complex ways to become protein – ‘walls’ form up to make ‘buildings’ that we call people and organic sayur.

No nitrogen and hydrogen, no growth. Organic sayur will get all the hydrogen they need from water (H2O). But nitrogen problem a bit. Actually the air got between 70% and 78% nitrogen but the problem is when the nitrogen atom is floating around freely, nobody and no organic sayur can use it. Nitrogen has to be linked with other atoms in molecular compounds (called nitrates and nitrites) for living systems to extract it. Got no logic isn’t it? So much nitrogen in the air, but cannot use. So much money in the bank but their not yours. If only our lungs can absorb oxygen AND nitrogen too. But what to do? Life is like that.

P is for Phosphorus.

P goes to the roots. Simply, P makes sure that the food made by the leaves through photosynthesis will reach the roots.

K is exactly the same as B in Malaysia.

The Malaysian car licence plate for Selangor is B mah. But “S-e-l-a-n-g-o-r” got no “B”. So K is the same as B because K is for “P-o-t-a-s-s-i-u-m” which got no K. That’s why K and B are the same.

K goes to the fruits.

K helps organic sayur to absorb and hold on to water. And it helps organic sayur synthesize protein from N. Because of that, K helps organic sayur to grow great fruits. Cili padi, lady’s fingers, cucumber are organic sayur that are actually fruits. At the same time, K helps organic sayur leaves to become tougher and be able to tolerate diseases.

So boleh tak? We hope we kept it simple for you.

N is for nitrogen and helps leaves.

P is for phosphorus and helps roots.

K is just like B and it helps fruits.

Other nutrients, generally called trace minerals, are important but needed in very tiny quantities. Magnesium, iron, zinc, copper and many others lah. In the wild, cacing and micro-organisms will break down organic matter and these will release trace minerals for plants.

But in normal farms, farmers need to grow vegetables and fruits as fast as possible and as big as possible. Business mah; don’t blame them lah. To do that, they put chemical salts into their land that give fantastic amounts of N, P and K. But the salts kill cacing and micro-organisms and this will cut down the natural supply of trace minerals. They then put other chemicals and also hormones to try to give some of those trace minerals, but this is very susah to manage manually. Plants need trace minerals at particular times in very, very, very small amounts. Put too much and plants can die. Putting too little is a waste of time because chemical salts dissolve and wash away with rain so its hard to make sure artificially put trace minerals are there for their plants whenever they’re needed.

That’s the reason that vegetables you buy in the market look big and nice, but organic sayur taste crunchier and tastier, even though they take a little bit longer to grow and don’t look so grand. Chemical salts with N, P and K will make plants grow well, but without those trace minerals, vegetables are not as nutritious as we would like it. Chemicals make vegetables LOOK good. Vegetables are supposed to supply us with vitamins, anti-oxidants, enzymes and a lot of other goodness. Eating enough fruits and vegetables can reduce your risk of developing cancer and that is so important nowadays. But can chemical vegetables really give all that? Maybe. Maybe not. Scared or not?

Where do organic farmers get these oxymoron nutrients for organic sayur?

N is normally from fresh cow dung (actually any kind of dung also got a lot of N), And also fish meal (fish that is cooked and dried and powdered) and fish emulsion (fish that is cooked for so long that its flesh is all broken up until they get a thick soup).

P comes from soft rocks that have a lot of phosphates. You can also get it from meat and bone meal (cow bones and bits of meat from slaughter houses that are cooked and dried and powdered).

K normally comes from seaweed meal (seaweed that is cooked and dried and powdered) and ash (anything burnt down, ash from burnt sawdust also can).

Imagine what life will be like if you try to plant organic sayur without WormOrganics. So many things to get and manage. That why we are trying to teach Malaysians how to grow their own organic sayur without losing any hair lor.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Sunlight is organic money.

Don’t understand? See demonstration below.

The above photo shows two Lady’s Finger seedlings. Roughly one week old. These two seedlings get plenty of sunlight. Their third leaf has fully formed, and the fourth leaf is on the way. Now see the photo below.

This Lady’s finger seedling is exactly the same age as the two in the photo up there, never get enough sunlight. The third leaf is still struggling. Got no fourth leaf also.

So different kan? Just because it didn’t get enough sunlight, it’s about 30% slower.

What happens when sunlight hits organic sayur? Like this:

2n CO2 + 2n H2O + photons → 2(CH2O)n + 2n O2

Haaaahhhhh. Don’t understand leh. That’s why lah. Never concentrate in Kimia class last time. Ok ok. Translation:

Carbon Dioxide + Water + Light → Carbohydrate + Oxygen

Organic sayur takes the carbohydrates and releases the oxygen (For us! Yay!).

Chlorophyll in plant cells. They use sunlight and water to make food.

So does it mean we should make sure that all our organic sayur get a lot of sunlight? Not really.

Organic sayur absorb sunlight through their leaves. When the sayur get a lot of sunlight, it means they get plenty of food. What happens? Your sayur will then try to grow the next thing: flowers.

But you want to eat sayur or flowers? Sure sayur right? So, to make your organic sayur grow a lot of leaves, plant them in a shade. As long as the sayur is getting good nutrients from their roots, they will make as many leaves as possible to capture enough sun energy to make food so that they are strong enough to make flowers which will allow them to create seeds. Then you get big big leafy sayur.

If you really think about it, organic sayur is not too different from people. If people got a lot of money and food and are comfortable, they will have mood to make babies every night! But because life is hard, people nowadays dare not get too many children and spend more time to create opportunities to look for money. But people more clever than organic sayur lah. We know how to find jalan to make money. Then at the same time, we still know how to do that ahem ahem thing every night without making babies! Huhuh…better stop the subject here…..if not, from discussing photosynthesis we start to discuss porno pulak.

Got a few other techniques you can experiment. You can position your organic sayur pots so that they get a lot of sun in the morning, but be in the shade in the afternoon. This will produce a different result compared to planting organic sayur in the shade all the time. Some sayur can feel where the sunlight is brightest, and they long long stems to try and reach sunlight, but leaves not very big lor. So if they get a lot of sun in morning, but nothing in the afternoon, they make the best of the morning by making big leaves, and put less focus on growing long stems, and also get not enough energy to make flowers and seeds.

The situation is different if you want fruits, lah. Like cili padi, or cucumber or lady’s fingers, you want to make sure that they get as much sunlight as possible because you want to eat the fruits. Your plants need A LOT of energy to make babies….the fruits.

Having said all that….use WormOrganics. The whole purpose of organicsayur.com is to help you grow your own organic sayur without losing any hair. If you play-play with the sunlight and your organic sayur project is not getting enough nutrients, IT WILL NOT WORK. Without WormOrganics, you will also have to play-play with the nutrients by yourself. If you play-play with the nutrients, haahh, this is when you will start losing hair. WormOrganics looks like soil, but it is not soil. Got some sand and grit and some snail shells also that got mixed in when we collect water hyacinth to make WormOrganics, but other than, WormOrganics is made with high quality organic matter that will steadily supply every form of nutrient that organic sayur needs at anytime they need it.

Popularity: 28% [?]