Gardening, a hobby

At least gardening will make us walk, bend, and move. These are basic movements that everyone has to get used to, to get muscle, blood and heart to their optimum. Some are lucky where they have to move around and climb up stairs while working. Some just sit on the chair throughout with slight movements of fingers at the keyboard.

Gardening allows limbs to function as it was designed, to bring both of us around the garden, doing things what a hobby gardener would normally do.

mixed vegetable bed - everything inside including weeds!!
(flowers, peanuts, spinach, red okra,)

passionfruit  ready to open

passionfruit flower ready to open

another passionfruit flower, half way through

a passionfruit flower full bloom

sweet potato

our pineapples

bangchik and kakdah

my little vegetable garden

Grandmother.

Grandmother, grandma, and Opah. These are endearing terms connecting people over the generations.  The grandchildren came over the other day and Kakdah was the happiest grandma.

adlina and adli -  Agro-educational trip to the backyard

adlina

adli

alya

getting ready

kakdah, farah and the three grandchildren

and they left, 

bangchik and kakdah

my little vegetable garden

Thumbs up to chili harvest.

I have a few brothers, one is Azman or pakteh to the nieces and nephews. The whole family came last weekend. They gave thumbs up to the marvellous experience of chili harvest at the backyard. The price of chili had been stable at RM14 per kilo.

pakteh and makteh, thumbs up.

they were having fun

The 2000 chili project is coming to an interesting phase. Growing, fertilising, getting rid of pest and watering begin to be less pressing, as the team get used to the whole process. Marketing is a new thing for most of them, but Aina  and her friends manage to walk through, creating new contacts, opening up new opportunities. They are learning to serve more and more regular customers.  

The next  project will be more challenging as they are now planning to participate in MAHA 2012,  The International Agriculture, Horticulture and Agro tourism Exhibition to be held  at  Malaysian Agro Exposition Park Serdang from Nov 23rd to Dec 2nd. They are putting quite a high business target to deal with 3 million expected visitors.

bangchik and kakdah

my little vegetable garden

Garden, random pictures

Some plants are designed to keep growing. That's our green spinach. We had to be back in Sitiawan and Pantaai Remis during Hari Raya celebrations, and other appointments over in KL, Putrajaya and Terengganu. Daily rainfalls helped plants very much, and they survived including green spinach or bayam hijau.  Kakdah did her usual sup bayam. Sup bayam is the simplest - bayam boiled in a few cups of water, adding shrimps, onions and red chili.

green spinach (bayam)

purple flower

flower of ornamental palm

I am back online after 2 weeks off.   I need to mention about delivery of 200 stevia seedlings to blogger friend in Ipoh during Raya days and the recent mail of 50 roselle seeds to autumn belle. We only grow roselle from the old world, the type I had seen since small.  I am currently getting quite serious with stevia, having 100 seedlings at the backyard under the shade of  netting, 40 percent light penetration.

bangchik and kakdah

my little vegetable garden

red okra - bendi merah - red lady's finger

This is definitely the kind of okra / bendi / lady's fingers we are not very familiar with, both growing or eating. There are 9 plants all over the garden. They behave just like the green version, except everything seem to be red. Kakdah is thinking about the right recipe for these healthy looking fruits. The colour tone matches well against 50 roselle plants in the garden.

red okra

red okra

bangchik and kakdah

johor