A homegrown is a homegrown but a homegrown. It is a homegrown after all. What do I say this? Well, even tho I have met the standard requirement in producing organic veges i.e. without the use of conventional pesticides, artificial fertilizers, human waste (say bye-bye to babies wee-wee), or sewage sludge (say bye-bye to air longkang), something is still missing here. I was told, organic veges have to be grown in a confined environment and not exposed to polluted air. Duhh, do i need to move all my potted vegies into my living hall? So I failed the ISO thingy. I shall not called my produce “organic” but “homegrown”.

You see, I don’t have a big garden at home but some available ample porch space which is filled with lots of Bonsai and Desert Rose (Mandarin – Fu Kui Hua). However, I’ve started my own little herbs garden and vegetable plot-in-the-pot. lol.

This is how I fertilized my vegies (some are ala self-created):

1. Whenever you wash your rice, keep the water for your vegies. Same goes when you wash fresh fishes.
2. Dump any fruits/vegies skin (dragonfruit, papaya, banana, apple skin, carrot skin, potatoes skin, etc) to the soil. Let them decomposed by itself.
3. After you have removed the head from anchovies, buried them in the soil. Let them decomposed by itself.
4. Don’t discard baby’s left over milk. Pour them on your vegies. Now your plants will have lots of protein and calcium. rofl…
5. If you happen to bake or cook lots of egg, soak eggs shell in water for at least a day or two. Water your plants thereafter. Another way to give you plants some protein. rofl….

The above is some example of things that I do. Well, here’s another one. If you are someone who blend your own soya milk, after squeezing the milk, scattered the ‘char’ on the soil. This way, nothing goes to waste. Infact, it is like having a little composite in your own garden.

However, I just learn on trial and error. For example the choy sum. If I throw item no. 2 (above) on the soil, it will attract lots of snail. And these are not big snail. They are so tiny you can hardly notice them and they hide under all the vegies/fruits skin that you thrown. Slowly by days after eating all the vegies/fruits skin, they started to attack your choy sum. By then, the numbers starts to multiply (about 30 snails). This is when i started to get busy again by killing all the tiny snails using a scissor to snip them into half. Then I got impatient cos the snails is really tiny. So I ended up using my fingers to squeeze them. Ok, you can go ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Not only I have green fingers.  Now I have icky fingers!  Aiyah, just wash your hands lor. So now I stop throwing item no. 2 on the soil. Even if the snail is there, I just let it be cos I’m lazy. Eating one or two leaves from my plot won’t die, right?

Other than choy sum, lettuce and bitter gourd, all year round, I have mint leaves, chives (cantonese – kau choy) and basil. All those can be grown easily in a pot.