Successful "Rojak-Style" Organic Gardening
Insects hate weedy thorny bushiness and they would get confused by“Rojak” scents!!!!

Written by Mrs. Money

During old days when I passed by Texas corn fields, I always wondered why those farmers planting maize seedlings so closely together, this puzzle has been locked in my memory for two decades until I began to pick up gardening again.

I got garden experience from my hard working dad during my childhood, I remember once he asked me to apply fertilizer to the maize seedlings, I simply “sprayed” the fertilizer through the air without obeying his instruction. After returning from work he caught me cheating, you know how? From the fertilizer granules caught in narrow gaps between leaves and stems!

Second half of last year, I first moved a city where I didn’t know the ways around, as it I was trying to figure where’s the head and the tail of a cat thus I would prefer to stay home. I first planted tomatoes inside the pots as I was helpless to look at the long abandoned garden which was once a landscaping show-house. It was quite fruitful for my sweats, just before that Christmas I even brought the ripen Roma tomatoes as far as to Singapore for my sister.

Beginning of this year I happily sowed different kinds of vegetables seeds, though with strong and healthy seedlings I produced but still I harvested worms-filling capsicums and tomatoes. This was a bad learning experience: I learned that first half of the year under Malaysian unpredicted equatorial heavy downpour (rainy season from Dec to May) is not advised to plant tomatoes, capsicum and eggplants. During this unpredicted season of sudden fluctuations in betwen hot and cold temperatures, if ones didn’t protect their immature fruits with covers somehow would result in immature split of skin.

Just before this second round of the year began, came a group of friends visiting me, one of them shared the secret of planting her chillies, she said she would let go the growing weeds grew as tall and bushy together with chilli plants, this camouflaging technique she applied was successful. Her sharing brought my Texas maize field recalls and thus created a new insight of “rojak-style” gardening. What comes on my mind now is my next time round innovation on planting chillies amongst lemon-grass!

This year on second half of Kuching drier and hazy season (Haze is healthy only for your tomato or mango plants blossoms!), my “rojak-style gardening began by sowing basil, dill, tomato and chai sin seeds in between raised rose beds.

Harvest began with chai sin, dills, Thai and Genovese basils, now my rose bed has become a “rojak” bed, at least over a hundred Roma tomatoes soon going to turn red amongst roses in two weeks time!

I planted more vegetables and herbs than I could consume, that’s what the relatives and friends are for ---- invite them over for Starbucks coffee or Bali coffee, a gift from Cousin Ann after her familymoon trip. Imagine your friends’ smiles leaving your house with bags of organic herbs and fresh chai sin.

I plucked more than a kilo of basil shoots last Saturday morning, separated into two plastic bags, one of my friends more than happy to receive the heavier one to make pesto for her daughter but the other bag I took to a doctor surgery, people eyed on it not so keenly --- I should tell them air-flown Genovese basils from Australia could cost RM9.00 (US$2.50) in a small plastic bag!

Moral for sharing: When share thing to a beholder, it becomes a treasure!

P.S. I wrote this article while my girl was crying on my lap fighting with me (for the computer) for her latest favorite Youtube Sesame Street games!