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% [?]

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% [?]

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% [?]

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% [?]