The Reasons.

Every day is a rainy day this week. First thing I did when I reached home is to check out the progress of my crops. Last Sunday I sowed cucumber, long beans, marigold, broccoli and Chinese celery. So far, my sweet corns, cabbages, chilies and kangkung seem to show tolerable progress. However but the wait is unbearable. It seems like forever. The seedlings seem to be very fragile. I hope they survive until the end and bestow me a great deal of yield.

One of the main reasons I decided to grow food is to trim down our expenses on food. Our household consists of two adults and a toddler. Normally we buy food especially vegetable for a week supply. A week supply that fit for a family of three with none of it goes to waste. That only happens if we had home cook meal every day. The reality is, quite a few of times we had to skip all the cooking process. Once again, my freezer turns to a compost bin. What a waste. Having a vegetable garden gives me the opportunity to provide fresh home cook meal for my family.

I guess I inherited the passion of gardening from my father and mother. My father loves to grow something profitable such as vegetables and fruits where as my mother loves flower and ornamental plants. Yet the choices of vegetables planted by father are little. He only planted kale, cucumber, long beans, brinjal, okra, kangkung and a few others. Fair enough to feed a family of two. My other siblings are not staying with my parents. Quite often I bring back some and there will be no vegetable shopping for the week. Even so, I wanted for more variety.

It is going to be one of my New Year resolutions to gradually reduce the amount of vegetable bought. For sure, I could never stop buying vegetable since some variety cannot be grown here. Quite ambitious isn’t it? Well I guess we should aim high to reach high. You aim lower you might end up reaching below par. So, this is my New Year wish list pertaining to vegetable gardening:

1. Yellow onion
2. Red onion
3. Celery
4. Garlic
5. Radish
6. Lemon
7. Butter head lettuce
8. Water crest
9. Pumpkin
10. Watermelon
11. Roselle
12. Pandan (fragrant leaves) – tried to plant a few time. Died every time and that has made me seems like a “Pandan Serial Killer”.
13. Brussels’ sprouts
14. Capsicums
15. Coriander

And more to come.