We're READY TO HARVEST

How long has it been since we planted our first seed? About 7 weeks I guess. Not too long, not too short and finally, we're ready to harvest our first batch of crop! Our Sawi looks mature enough to be on the plate, and I'm proud to say that this is the first batch of ORGANIC plant that BioSoc members have put all their efforts in to produce! Just a few snapshots before the next post soon on our harvesting process.

Our Bayam is a few more weeks away from being harvested. Never seem healthier!

One of our main planter checking on our sawi. The sawi are at their perfect time to be harvested. 

Close-up at our sawi crop. Delicious looking aye?

Another shot of our sawi plants. We finally managed to produce our first batch of ORGANIC crop.

So it really took a lot of time and effort, but the first batch of crop really put a big smile on our face. Not only that our efforts are not waster, but seeing the greens bloom in the absence of pesticide makes us feel like we achieved something for the environment. Still, a long way to go, so I'll see you in the next post on our HARVESTING day!

Vermiculture: A Worms Story

So its another farming day and our spirits were definitely lifted when we saw that our first hedge have shown a positive sign of life! YES! The KANGKUNG that we planted last week has germinated! Cute little leaves protruding from the ground kept us smiling for quite some time. I guess everyone feels that our effort have paid off. Here's a picture of the little helion:

A new life spawn, a spirit lifted, thou are all the helpers. :)

So I read a blog the other day about vermiculture, and this guy turned trash into gold by just using vermiculture. Impressive! Plus the fact that he started from what he described as "room-scale" instead of "garden-scale" made it all that special. SO this week, we decided to work on that vermiculture plot that we have earlier mentioned in the previous blog. What we have to do is simple. Just dig up the soil, collect the worms, put them into a bottle(preferably 5L size bottle) and culture by keeping the soil moist. Not that complicated I guess. 

Boy oh boy was that the easy part. The hard part was yet to come. Due to the dry conditions, the soil is really hard, and this made it hard for us to dig deeper in for worms! It took us hours and we did come up with some big healthy looking worms, but some are just plain skinny and malnourished. 

Trust me, this critters are really evasive! Go into the bottle you WORM! :)

Soil are added along the way, providing the worms with their new niche.

Looking for worms. Trust me, IT'S NOT EASY! 

You gotta take those hard soil, break it into pieces by hand and see if they are inside those soil. Why don't we break it with a hoe? Simple, you might hit the jackpot and kill the worm instead. 

Anddddd they will come out something like these, safe, sound and ready to be moved, well, literally.

The girls having a light moment with the camera. :) Notice one of them is holding a watering can. We had to soften the soil by watering it before digging in. The weather is really giving us a hard time I must say.

So we got our first HALF bottle of soil and worm done, after hours of work. We are going to put more effort to it tomorrow, all in the effort of learning and spreading the knowledge. Never try, never know. By the way, from what I read, the worms will feed on food leftovers, papers and whatever you throw in(degradebles only please), so, is this a new way to keep the environment clean? Lets do find out together. Thats all for this post, gotta head out to water the plants again soon. Happy Farming and see you soon!

Bye!!! :)

Another Day, Another FEW Task Done

Well, it's Sunday and yet the members are awake 8.30 in the morning working on the farm. Gotta get things done today. We bought 5 more hoes and 3 rakes to ease our job. I gotta say those wooden+steel hoes gets the job done way quicker than the fully metal hoes, but the lightweight of the metal hoes does help in energy efficiency. Even choice of hoe and method of getting the job done is important in our farming, considering how we want to learn and transmit the knowledge.

The lighter metal hoe seems to be a favorite choice for our female member here.

 

So we decided to clear a bigger space and raise a few more hedge. The unfertilized soil will be rejuvenated with our newly purchased Goat Dung Fertilizer. It's quite costly(RM5 per kg), therefore a few KG would be enough for now. Gotta find other ways of getting more sustainable and CHEAP fertilizer. Maybe we should consider food leftovers?

By 10.30am, we completed our hedging, and this time, to make sure no grass will grow on the hedge again, we decided to use a simple mulch technique, covering it with Banana Fan Tree leaves that by luck, we found lying beside the road near our farm(most probably the workers had a cutting leaves day).

This is what our mulching looks like.

Anyway, we will wait a few days before working on the fertilizing. While waiting, we decided to grow our crop first in our little nursery plot that we purchased before transferring them to the farm for actual growth. That way, the crops will go through the most crucial period with adequate care.

Our nursery plot. Its more than enough for now. Besides, we have two of this.

OH ya and I forgot to mention, we had our first visitor today! Mr and Mrs Chong, who stays at a apartment that overlooks our farm came by! They mentioned that they were looking at us from their apartment and decided to came by to check out what we were working on. Knowing that we are concentrating on Organic Planting, Mrs Chong did not even hesitate to buy or first bash of product once its out! Boy did that inspired us or what! Anyway, the next blog post should be up real soon on our planting. So I'll see you next time! Be sure to check in again fans!

We've Got NEW Company!

The semester break is over and now it's time to start working on our farm again. Horray! Happy spirit filled us all when we made our way to the farm, but boy was it replaced by horror quicker than we know. Our hedge, which took us hours to work on are covered with a NEW invasive species, much stronger and studier than our old enemy the Rusiga plant! Here's a picture of our invaded hedge...

They are healthy, dense and tough!

Well, no time to waste, lets get to work! First we cleared out our new enemy and since the grass is really tall now, we decided to make a pathway through the middle of the farm to make it more accessible. I really hope the grass cutter is gonna give our farm a visit soon or it will not be safe for our people to work around such places anymore.

The soil in our plot has been malnourished, probably due to the nutrient intake by those invasive plants. Another problem that we have to overcome before we start planting. The solution that we came across was to fertilize the soil, using our organic method, which comes in the form of our Orange Skin leftover, which comes from the enzyme bin! To fertilize our plot, we scattered those skins on it and hope that it will at least nourish it slightly before we come with a better and more effective solution.

Orange peel leftover from the enzyme we made.

SO now that work is restarted, and there are so many more obstacles, I'll keep updating on our progress and see how well it goes. They say that starting a new thing is never easy, and I think Biosoc members are FARRRRRRRRRRR from giving up on this project yet. See you soon readers!