Friday, April 9, 2010

A Pineapple Tale

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I do not normally eat raw pineapple in my homeland because 99.9% of the time it is sour and sharp. What I mean by sharp is that it irritates the inside of my mouth to extend that it causes cuts and roughness on the tongue. From a young age I learned that there are only two kinds of pineapples, the sour kind which is normal in size and the half sweet and half sour kind which is large. The large kind is called Sarawak Pineapple.
When I first visited Thailand, I was really surprised that their pineapple is 100% sweet and very nice to eat. 009 Whenever I am there I would eat as much pineapple as possible because they are sweet and heavenly to eat. To-date I have not tasted a sour pineapple from Thailand ever before. Sometimes I wonder why nobody grew the same  species here or is it just a natural thing that pineapples in Thailand are always sweet.
Quite awhile ago, my wife’s aunt gave her a Sarawak Pineapple from her own garden and almost 90% of the fruit was sweet. It was a large fruit and with the help of our son she planted the crown. At that time I was very busy climbing 004the corporate ladder and was not at all interested in  planting. Over the years we had eaten the fruits of this neglected plant a couple of times and it was really sweet but it was getting smaller and smaller.
It was in June 2008 when we had one of the fruit from the original neglected plant offspring and I was forced decided by Home Minister to plant the crown of that fruit in the mini farm. After a year and nine months plus minus a couple of days we were
rewarded with a two and a half kilo or five and a half pounds very sweet and yummie fruit. I am really glad that I was forced decided to plant it.
The crown of this fruit is now planted in a pot to be given to a very close friend of ours when she come visit next. I still have another plant in progress. The original plant will soon produce a new shoot for another awesome fruit soon.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Mini Farm Up-Date

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Today my mini farm is almost two years old and it is maturing but is still very much an infant. In my first year of planting everything just seems to be easy except for the bout with sciatica which resulted from excessive extreme digging with the hoe which I broke the hoe stem. The mini farm then was like a mini jungle!!
After getting the mini farm back to looking like a farm, I started to get uninvited guest to feast on my produce, yes those damn pest of all kinds. Being a first time farmer, I just tried to cope with manual power to get rid of those pesky varmints. I had to destroy my angled luffa plant because it was infested with some kind of creepy hairy caterpillars …. yucks!!!!
In desperation I started googling for solutions and joined this very friendly and helpful forum web site “Garden Stew”. It is indeed a real nice gardening and social web site with lots of friendly and helpful members. I have benefitted a lot since becoming a member of Garden Stew and is happy to say that I have also contributed some to the www. This really make farming/042 (2)gardening more meaningful. Just last week,  Frank the founder of Garden Stew drop by for a short visit and I was really honoured. I was the first member he visited since he set up the Garden Stew.
Last year towards end December till late February this year the weather was really hot and dry making it very difficult to plant anything. The produce from the mini farm was 004 (2) minimal and it wasn’t really tasty. This phenomena is not normal and some experts have labelled it as El Nino/La Nina. Well I guess if capitalist just keep on raping the earth, then ……… your guess is as good as mine as to which direction we are heading to.
Now the mini farm is aging nicely but have yet to attain a balance. Hmmm!! It is mini I hope it can establish a mini balanced eco-system so that those varmints can become food for the friendly inhabitants of the mini farm. Currently those varmints are more or less under control the very organic way and those delicious veggies are starting to fill up the kitchen and our tummies too!!!