The Backyard Gartner's 50th Post

Assalamualaikum.

This is my 50th post for this blog! Yeay! 

Thanks to all of you for the supports and participation. I'm not a blog writer by nature but sharing my experiences on backyard gardening with all other wonderful blog writer just pushes me to do even better, learn even more and try different things on the pursuit of knowledge. Along the way, hopefully what I've shared here inspires you and the knowledge enriches you.

The Wife - my biggest supporter - for letting me spending so much hour on my own playing with dirt day and night while she wrestles with her chores and The Baby - Mariani Basiran, I love you dearly.

How this all started and what triggers it?

One night, I was watching Bersamamu on TV3 with The Wife and looking at our unfortunate brothers and sisters, I can't help but to ask, these people are living in the kampung, they have a lot of land around them, so many resources, but yet they are starving with no food and malnourished by the lack of nutrients. Why is this even happening? Growing your own food should be really easy - that's my thought at that time.

The thought remained with me for a few days and on one fateful weekend, I cleared my backyard, dug some holes, put in some what I thought as good soils and planted some okra seeds in it. Afer a few days, the seedlings emerges. A few days after that - all of it perishes. Probably due to lack of watering. My bad.

A few days after, I planted some new seeds, and after a few days the seedlings emerges. After a few weeks, the okras are more like twigs than plants. All of it have to be removed.

Only my third trial I've got to see some okras. I still remember the excitement that follows.

 

My First Okras

This brought me into realization - a guy with Bachelor's Degree in Biological & Agriculture Engineering took three trials to get his hands on some home-grown okras. How about those people I saw on Bersamamu?

That's when I started to snap photos of what I have planted and hopefully one day I've got to share it with those who cares. And I waited for almost a year until this blog finally materializes.

After that, with guidance from my course-mate, Amiruddin from Kelantan, I started to grow chillies, and understood how hard it is to get plants to set fruit and why they are somewhat expensive by the kilos. 

My First Chillies.

Thus, I started to snap what I've harvested from the 20' x 5' of land I have on my backyard although it gets very cumbersome at times - you want to eat that tomatoes, but you can't because belum ambil gambar lagi - and it's kinda poyo but I keep doing it - because the photo of other's harvest inspires me, and I hope my photos inspire others.

The Wife once told me that I'm showing off with what I've got - but I just told her that I strongly believe I'm not. 

I want to inspire others.

I want to share the knowledge, the experience and the journey - because the knowledge that we have determines whether it's a fair harvest or a total failure.

This is just a start. Maybe I'm not very good it at but I'm going to be damn good if I keep doing it.

Those people on Bersamamu - they are still struggling. I might not be able to help them directly, but I know I'm contributing to something indirectly.

Thanks to all those senior gardening blog writers who's my constant source of knowledge and inspiration. You know who you are and you are the most wonderful people I've known thus far. *If I can tag you here, I'll tag all of you.

Lastly, this is just a start.

Thank You.

The Gartner
Tariq Syahman