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!

Worm Tea Anyone?

So in the previous post, I did mention our intention of making a vermicompost plot at our site. Now, I'm gonna try my very best to explain what a vermicompost is and what are our plans.

Our main consultant for the vermicompost site is Dr. Hasnah, our beloved lecturer from the School of Biological Sciences. Termed "The Worm Lady" ( I don't know how many ladies out there wanna be called a worm), she has years of experience in managing and culturing of worm as part of her research.

So we approached Dr. Hasnah and her suggestions for us is:

1. Dig a plot for the worms to feed.

2. Cover the plot with dried leaves

3. Make sure the leaves are moist all the time

So what are the point of doing all those? Well for starters, it's to attract the worms to our plot by providing them with adequate food. Secondly, the point of getting a plot done is to ease us in obtaining the soil that contains the feces in case the worm does reside in out plot.

The question is: Why don't we use the cultured worms at the plot?

According to Dr. Hasnah, introducing a new type of worm to a plot would not be a smart move due to invasive reason and also sometimes, it is hard to a new species of worm to live with native species.

Another question: What are the outcomes of having a vermicompost plot?

Well as we said, we are expecting worms to do the composting for us, which of course will result in the prodcution of feces. The feces obtained will be used as fertilizer for our plants, which is said to be good comparatively to chemical fertilizer. On a second note, we are aiming to obtain WORM TEA, which is the urine of the worm. It is not scientifically proven yet, but worm tea are said to be able to control some pest which of course, is TRY-WORTHY at our farm.

So below are some pictures that might help in explaining.

The worms that we found looks well nourished. Good sign definitely.

Our plot for Vermicompost. Notice that we leave the dried leaves as a food source for the worms.

Teamwork, that's what it's all about getting things done. :)

In the next post, I will update you guys on more of our progress. Till then, good bye!!

P/s: If there are any suggestion, do leave it at the comment and suggestion box.

Just Don't Make It Look Ugly

      

"Just don't make it look ugly".

That was the last warning advice that Dr.Lee Lik Meng gave to the member of BioSoc before the work on our very first Organic Farm started.

A brief introduction on our farm. Our planting site is a 20m X 25m X 28m X 25m plot, which will be fenced out by a 'live fence'. Live fence is the brainchild concept by the members of Biosociety. In an effort to promote more green, we are fencing our area not with bamboo trunks, then we will connect the bamboo using thin wire and on the wire will be our creeping Passion Fruit plant.Once it's done, it will look like a wall of green, SO WAIT FOR IT. Our plot is located beside Tasik Aman, so of course we have a lot to worry, but we'll leave that for a later time.

First things first, we had to mark out our area according to our plan sketching,

 We decided to use rafia string for starters, but it'll be off soon once the bamboo is up.

Marking out our space: One of the most important part of our early planning

We met our first BLOCKADE when we discovered  a type of really invasive grass, Rusiga (common name) all over the place. This grass has a sort of triangle trunk symmetry and is really hardy (grows easily but are hard to be removed) , not to mention that it breeds really fast after a rainy day.

Removing the grass and throwing it aside would only worsen the condition, mainly because that is how we help them to pollinate. Our best and only choice now is to remove it and keep it at a distance away from our farm in bulk, which will be used later for vermicompost.

Speaking of vermicompost, YES, we decided to do some vermicompost on our farm! You'll not believe how big the worms is here, making our choice to start a vermicompost plot that much more wise.

We found a lot of worms during our digging, and this one is considered the averagely sized ones.

 For those who aren't sure what vermicompost is, a general description would be: Raring of worms so they can help in composing materials such as leaves and grass, producing  a type of natural fertilizer that we believe is a mixture of soil and also worm deposits.

 Digging for our vermiculture plot.

Well, general description at least. We decided that we would DIG into the knowledge of vermiculture ourselves and of course, post it up HERE so that we ALL can share the knowledge together. So our first day proceeded, and I guess I will let the pictures do the talking.

 A lot of digging is involved, and trust me, its hard work. I might put up a post just on DIGGING itself.

Top: Yes, you've guessed it right, that PILE there is the Rusiga that I mentioned earlier.
Bottom:Something to start off with, gloves, seeds and of course, the wire for our living fence

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