Organic mealy bug repellent

In the previous post I identified the Papaya mealy bug - Paracoccus Marginatus on our papaya.

So - I checked out what are the possible organic responses and found some good resources:

PAN Germany: Describes the uses of chili

Golden Harvest Organics: A list of insects and pests, and appropriate organic repellents

Canadian Country Woman: Describes various bug sprays

The Urban Gardener, and A Canadian in King Parakramabahu's Court recommend neem oil, which I haven't tried yet.

So - I decided to use chili, as we have a regularly producing organic chili plant, and garlic (from the market).

This was the harvest


chopped up with garlic - it smelt nice! :)


and put in a jar to steep in the sun (because I was too lazy to boil it, which would probably be more effective)


and then I strained it, and diluted with some water and biodegradable washing up liquid. I used an old surface cleaner spray bottle (WW's idea, instead of buying a new one) to spray it on.


One papaya was too far gone already,


so we pulled it up and burnt the top :( For the other ones, we first sprayed off the bugs with water, then sprayed on the repellent.

James Missier commented on a previous post that some ants can bring mealy bugs onto plants.


I don't know if these ants brought them, but they certainly were found wherever there were mealy bugs


I know that ants are perhaps the only other species, apart from humans, that have 'domesticated' other animals for their own purposes. And it's pretty fascinating. But not on my plants! Argh! :/


Anyway, I'm happy to say that after spraying every two-three days for about a week, there don't seem to be any more bugs (touching wood).

Organic compost harvest

One of the challenges of an organic garden is getting enough nutrients into the soil, given that you can't use chemical fertilisers. A great way to address this problem, and reduce your waste that will otherwise go to clog up a landfill somewhere, is to compost your kitchen waste.

It's very easy: the basic rule is - no animal products (i.e. meat and dairy). This means it doesn't get smelly, and also won't attract rats and such. Basically this means all the vegetable peels, cuttings, rotten vegetables, teabags, tealeaves, coffee grounds, etc. Also use garden waste, and also chuck in some shredded newspaper from time to time. However - unless you're able to grind it up, it's best to leave out woody items because they take ages to decompose.

We use two bins - overturn them, cut out the bottom, and you're ready to rumble. Then you fill one, and leave it for about three months while you fill the other. Empty the first one and start again. The timing will depend I suppose - the high humidity and temperature of the Malaysian sub-tropical climate means that the decomposing is quicker than in Belgium, for example.


Here are some photos from a 'harvest' I did in February. One thing I've noticed is that the space taken up by the compost reduces - so if you stuff it up one day with trimmings from the Morning Glory (for example), wait a week and there will be more space.

This is the result of being left alone for a few months


One surprise here was when I lifted off the bin, there were loads of red wiggler worms! I vaguely remembered chucking in some from our vermicompost bin, and they obviously thrived!


This contributed to the nice quality of the compost - crumbly and moist


but there were also some compacted parts, probably because I didn't turn it up often enough. This helps to oxygenate the parts below.


There were also stuff that decomposes slowly: in particular mango seeds, mangosteen rinds, and various twigs and stuff. I just put them into the other bin (and I also cut mango seeds in half now, before I put them in the compost bin).


In the end, I got one bucket of compost, that was spread around the papaya trees, the jasmine bush, and the frangipani tree.

Harvesting organic papaya

Well - harvesting may be slightly overstating it, when I only got one fruit :) But it's the first one we got off these trees (a previous fruit was taken by someone).

The trees are growing well, although the recent dry weather has not helped particularly, and you can see many fruits in the earlier stages, with couple that should be ready soon


and some flowers too


This was the fruit that was ripe


I was waiting for it all to lose the green colour, but the non-green part was clearly ripe, and if had left it any longer it would have started to rot, or go into someone else's kitchen. I'm not sure why the underside was ripening more, normally I would expect the part exposed to the sun to ripen quicker...


and here it is chopped and ready for breakfast :) I'm not a super fan of papaya, but this one was nice - not too strong a taste and - of course - very fresh. It's called 'honey papaya' - which may be the same as the 'honey dew' variety.

And here is a fact sheet on papaya.

An organic Valentine :)

Worried about being stiffed with overpriced roses, chemically enhanced and flown in from halfway across the world? There is a solution :)

Find a few blooms in your garden


put them on the breakfast table and say


I love you :)

Dedicated to WW - my love for ever xxx :)

PS: Check out the Organic Consumers Association for more ideas.

Cooking organic sweet potato leaf

We harvested our organic sweet potato today (there are a couple of more detailed recipes on that post too). One lesson to be learnt is that it needs a climbing frame - it was crawling all over the ground looking for something to climb up; also, the leaves of one of the plants were all small and not a deep green - I think there was too much shade.

We didn't get a lot out of it...


I separated out the older leaves, those with holes and browned edges, and kept only the tender stalks - about enough for one portion. All the rest went to the vermicomposting box.


It's often cooked with garlic and lard: we don't have any lard so I tried with some chopped chinese sausage, couple of cracked garlic cloves, and a dried chili. Fried that in oil for a while then threw in the leaves


Added some chinese wine and soy sauce. Too much soy sauce! You always have to watch out in stir fries not to overdo the soy sauce...


Well - it was not really a success :( Too oily and too salty - but the basic principle of the recipe was good. But the sweet potato leaf was still good - tender and pleasantly non-bitter (not exactly sweet though, if you see what I mean).

Organic Mint Tea

The organic mint I grew from cuttings has progressed very well :) Though it's the pot that I was expecting to do less well that has done better - this may have something to do with interfering dogs though... :)


It's important to trim the mint so that it gets more bushy, so I took the first opportunity to harvest some to make some tea. It smells wonderful when you cut it, so fresh and invigorating!


How to make organic mint tea (easy):
• Some organic green tea (or black if you prefer)
• Some organic sugar (optional)
• Organic mint

Put it all in a cup and pour in boiling water. Sorted!


It was nice, and had a lovely aftertaste. But, to be honest, it didn't have that 'in your face' mint taste I was looking for; my comparison for good mint tea is Moroccan mint tea, and I wonder whether they use spearmint (Mentha spicata) or peppermint? The plant I have is spearmint (the kind they use in toothpaste normally), and I prefere peppermint sweets to spearmint.

Hmmm... a rapid search via Google (detailed info here) doesn't tell me much apart from that most 'Moroccan mint' teas on the market use one or the other, or a mix.

Growing organic Thai basil

Also known as Vietnamese mint, Vietnamese cilantro, Cambodian mint and hot mint - Persicaria odorata is not a member of the mint family,

*Edit 12/2/2009*: thanks to the anonymous commenter below (Terima kasih!), I now know it is in fact Thai basil, aka Ocimum basilicum var. thyrsiflora.

but you can also grow it from cuttings like mint. It may not be organic when you get it from the market, but I suppose if you plant it with your organic compost, fed with vermicompost, it must qualify as organic after a while! :)

In Malaysia, it's also known as daun laksa (‘laksa leaf’) [I'm not sure of this now...] because it's used in the delicious spicy-sweet laksa dish. It's also very nice with chicken, and WW likes to use it in stuffing for roast chicken.

As usual, I got a bunch at the market – its smell is easy to recognise, something like a spicy tarragon is how I remember it.

It's meant to be able to grow roots in water, but five days after the photo below, that hasn't happened.


There are purplish flowers on a stem which may help it to grow, I'm not sure about that though.


For those which were going in the ground, I stripped off the bottom leaves because the roots are likely to grow out of the interstices, and I buried as much of the stem in the earth as possible. I got the earth from below our compost heap where we piled all the palm branches, bamboo cuttings, etc.


Then into a wide pot they went – so far, they seem to be doing pretty well. So far, we’re doing pretty well with the ‘market to garden’ series :)


I’ll keep you updated!

Here's a recipe for Katong Laksa (Singapore Curry Laksa), and some advice for growing it in an apartment.

Organic sweet potato leaf

Yummy! Another in the 'From market to garden' series - sweet potato leaf is one of my favourite greens, and it never seems to be in the market. It's normally stir fried with garlic, and maybe some lard (sinfully delicious), and the leaves are thicker and smoother than other greens, and not bitter.

Anyway, WW got some sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) and planted them.

It grows fast! It took about a week to get to this stage


but then, three days later it shot up!


There was another one (not photographed) that was in the kitchen - where there's plenty of light but not much direct sun, it grew considerably slower.

And today she planted it in the ground. It's classified as a vine, so I'm not sure if that means we have to watch out for it growing all over the fence?


Look at those leaves... thick and purplish. I'm not sure when to cut them off though, they are quite bushy and soon there'll be enough for a dish, I think...

Here are some recipes online:
Piggy's Cooking Journal (this one looks more like what you usually get in Malaysia)
Mental Masala

Harvesting organic vermicompost

I just harvested the organic vermicompost from my worm bin after leaving it for about eight weeks.

There’s a lot I have still to learn, but I’m not displeased with my first harvest – perhaps a kilo of vermicompost. It’s not all dry and in little pellets as it would be if you bought it (e.g. Worm Castings - 30lb), but that’s because they usually sieve it, and so on. I will spread it under my jasmine bush, the Rangoon creeper and use some to mix into the soil for some new plants.

Here’s a short film (three minutes) showing the process of removing the compost and restarting the worm bin.


There’s lots of information by more knowledgeable people out there of course. Virginia Cooperative Extension has a useful short guide here; and a PowerPoint here.

You can also locate vermicomposters near you at vermicomposters.com.

I’ve seen this book recommended as well:

Goa beans first harvest

Our latest kacang botol (goa beans, winged beans, Psophocarpus tetragonolobus) plant has started to produce (for photos of growth stages see this earlier post).

This was seven days ago


This was today


and this is what we got out of it


It's enough for one dish, and would sell in the local market for RM1-2 (USD 0.25-0.5), so it's not like we're saving loads of money, but... it's organic, it will taste better, it cost us nothing (the seeds are from previous plants) and it hasn't had to be grown elsewhere and transported here using fuel, etc. So overall, it's a net benefit to us and to our wonderful planet :)

Grow your own! :D If you want to buy Goa bean seeds, you can get them on Amazon.

Vermicomposting for organic compost

WW has kindly allowed me to take over one of her worm bins, and I fed them for the first time a couple of days ago. Vermicomposting is an easy way to turn your kitchen scraps into great organic compost. We made our own worm bins but, if you want a more fancy setup, the cheapest 'Worm factory' on Amazonis US$66.95, and they also sell wormsby the pound.

Another option is to check out vermicomposters.com to see if there's anyone in your area who will share some advice and worms with you.

This is how it looked at first - to the left mostly paper, and to the right the older section where the worms have been at work for some weeks


the worms are all hiding below the surface, as they don't like the light, but if you turn over the soil a bit you can see lots of them

You can feed worms any *vegetable* (no animal products - i.e. meat or dairy) waste, but onions, garlic, citrus and melon skins are to be avoided (the latter because of the high water content; also no oily, salty or cooked foods. We normally store up appropriate stuff in the freezer and add it in every few weeks or something - otherwise, the rest of the vegetable waste goes into the garden compost bin.


Layer it on the newer section, the worms will slowly migrate to that side as they finish up on the other side


On top, a layer of dry leafs (bamboo, in this case), and a little soil to help them digest. Covering it up well also prevents fruit flies and the like from becoming a nuisance.


Then, the bin goes back under the sink and the worms left alone to do their work :)


I'll be posting updates every two weeks or so, to see the changes.

Growing organic okra

Okra, also known as lady finger or bhindi is officially called Abelmoschus esculentus. The name 'okra' comes from West Africa, as someone told me when I worked in Nigeria, and it's popular for thickening the stew that goes with garri.
Anyway, we planted some and found that they grew easily. In the full sun with not a lot of care or attention needed. The only problem is that each plant does not produce a lot of fruits at a time, and they are relatively large.
The flowers appear at the interstice, with the first one at about 20-40 cm off the ground. The plant keeps growing, so you have to harvest them as it grows, to avoid them becoming too hard. In the end, the plants grew to about 1.5-2m, over a cycle of about three months.

They are very tasty when cooked straight from the plant :p

Information on okra from Purdue University.