Planting Chili from Seeds: Two lessons every newbie gardener should know.

My very first attempt towards edible gardening was sometime in mid May 2013. Ouh yeah, I’ve planted fruit trees and flower plants before, but never seriously into edible plants.

On that momentous day, I bought myself with a full set of gardening tools, several bags full of topsoil, decorative landscaping tools and plenty of seeds. Chili seeds.

Then, it happpened…

When I took out the soil and my gardening set, my elder sister who lives next door came out with her huge rectangular container plus more seeds. Chili seeds. Since we were, at that time, both blind as a bat (only when it comes to gardening), we decided to combine effort. We placed to place HER chilli seeds, on top of MY topsoil, inside HER plastic, rectangular container.

Then we waited…

A week passed by. Nothing, A month, still nothing.

While waiting, I read and read everything there is to know about planting chili. Ceh, we learned our first three lessons the hard way:

LESSON 1: Any purchased seeds need to soaked into warm water for at least a day or so, to assist them to germinate faster. And,

LESSON 2: That topsoils are not the correct medium to germinate seeds. A planting soil or peatmoss would have been a better choice. Alternatively, there’s also non-soil medium, called cocopeats.

LESSON 3: Chilies, unlike fruit plants, demand lots of TLC and pampering. Something which really aren’t suitable for a Gemini Gardener. No, am not pulling your legs!

Till next time.

– GG

The Cempedak tree I planted turned out to be …

FIFTEEN YEARS ago (give and take a couple of years), my late husband and I went to a nearby nursery and asked for a cempedak tree. 

I love to eat cempedak, so he thought that it would be a good idea for us to plant a cempedak tree on our vacant space. That way, I could have all the cempedaks I ever wanted, without necessitating him to hunt for one, during odd hours of the day.

We purchased cempedak, nangka (jackfruit), mangga (mangoes) and jambu air plants.

When the nursery assistant went around and came back, within seconds later, with four polybags of fruit plants, we looked at each other. Neither one of us was able to verify which plant was which. Instead, we happily drove home. We took the nursery guy for granted after he explicitly pronounced the names of the plants we had bought: “one cempedak, one nangka, one manggis and one healthy jambu air.“

Soon after, I planted my favourite ‘cempedak‘ tree, whereas, my late planted the rest. Several years later, the nangka (see photo below), mangga and jambu air out-lived him. The three trees he planted, had grown marvelously, and bore fruits for us, year after year, without fail. 

In the mean time, the cempedak tree I planted also grew tall (see first photo) and bore funny-looking tiny-minny little buds. It had never occured to me that the buds were just too small to belong to a cempedak tree.

One day, as I was looking out my bedroom garden, I saw several bunches of … deliciously-tempting, mouth-watering rambutans. Immediately, I called out one of my daughters to go over our neighbour’s house to ask if we could have some of those tasty rambutans. 

She went, came back and said: “Ma, the neighbour said that the rambutans are not theirs. The rambutans are ours. In fact, they asked if THEY can have some.”

We all rushed outside. We couldn’t believe our eyes. The tree that was supposed to be cempedak, turned out to be rambutan!

I looked at my children and said to myself: Stop, stop GG. You can’t allow your kids to know that you’re blind as a bat, when it comes to gardening. Ouch!

– GG

Is it true that Geminians suck at gardening?

A 70-something-old couple visited my home recently. They were at awe with my humble garden.

“Really? You really like my garden? Seriously?” I just couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the unexpected compliments.

“Yup, people say that I have hot fingers. Too hot to plant anything. Everything I ever planted in the past, died,” replied the sad old man. “A friend even suggested that I have to soak my fingers in ice, to cool them off.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me! A plant needs only three things, water, air and food. Just like us,” I couldn’t believe that I was actually teaching a person much more senior than myself about basic gardening. I am, after all an amateur gardener myself.

“Perhaps I am a Gemini. A gemini-an can’t plant anything. I get bored easily. I’ll water and feed the plants for a while, before I get terribly bored with the chores. When I stopped, the plants dried off and died,” he explained.

“Gulp…I am a Gemini and I get bored easily too. I didn’t know that a Gemini can’t plant. My greatest feat was this 17-year old bougainvillea tree which I planted when I first moved into this neighborhood,” I replied pointing my thumb towards my pride-and-joy plant, with a touch of skepticism playing my mind. Oh sure, anyone can plant a bougainvillea. Just stick the stem in the ground, and it’ll grow by itself. Was the bougainvillea really a fluke?

As I seep an aromatic nescafe black coffee this morning, standing face-to-face towards my adolescent tree, I couldn’t help but admire it. Find soothing thoughts in it.

And unconsciously I find myself repeating, “Go, go Gemini Gardener. Go and share with the world that Gemini-ans can indeed plant trees and be good at gardening. If and when, we choose to.”

– GG