Browsing Tag

urban farming

City, Garden Stories

Garden Stories: Suekay of Urban Agriculture

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I enjoy my catch-ups with Suekay, sometimes I pop by her Bishan residence to talk about collaborations, where the garden offers a wonderful backdrop to our discussions. She lives with her in-laws, who have created a lush, pretty garden with the help of a gardener. It has quite a neat, unified, formal appearance, with mainly ornamental plants. There are plans to introduce edible plants in the near future, which is exciting to hear. As you’ll see, I couldn’t resist getting a little snap happy on the garden… It’s such a beautiful, relaxing space, I feel like I’m visiting a resort each time I go there.

I’ve known Suekay for a while now and I love her warm personality and down-to-earth approach to everything she does. She’s very driven with her online gardening supplies business, Urban Agriculture, which retails a range of gardening products including seeds, microgreen kits, fertiliser and soil enhancements. We have a working arrangement where I list seeds and worm tea on her website. On top of running Urban Agriculture, she looks after NONG (by Edible Garden City)’s retail operations.

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She made a transition from the financial sector to go full-time into promoting urban farming, a profession that she finds a lot more joy and meaning in.  Here she shares her motivation on making a career switch, and her journey so far. If you find Suekay familiar, you might have seen her in a previous post on her beekeeper colleague, Thomas Lim.

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City, Garden Stories

Garden Stories: Donald and Rachael Tan

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I had the pleasure of visiting Donald and Rachael Tan’s green haven and corridor farm in Punggol recently, and was bowled over by how space-efficient and creatively laid-out it is. Between the couple, Donald maintains the plants, and Rachael harvests produce for the table.

Even though his corridor gets only two hours of sun each day, he has managed to grow a wide variety of plants. Beyond ornamental plants, he grows microgreens, herbs like purple basil, chocolate mint, thyme, dill, pandan, curry, sawtooth coriander etc, he has fruit plants such as gooseberry, grapes, gac fruit, and vegetables like kang kong, amaranth spinach, curly kale. There are so many different plants that I can’t list them all… in fact, I can’t remember them all!

I got to know Donald better when I caught up with the Edible Gardens team one day for a lunch discussion. We bonded over the subject of Daiso and its small but useful gardening section, and how he, as well as my parents enjoy buying supplies from there to supplement our gardening needs. It was after viewing photos of his green corridor from his phone, that I felt like I had to pop by for a look. The plastic baskets sitting on his verandah are all from Daiso, and he has lined them with geotextile, which provides good drainage while keeping all soil in place when watered.

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City

Experiment: Growing oyster mushrooms in Singapore

Around a week ago, I caught up with Balan, a keen gardener and one who hates seeing things go to waste. He handed me some oyster mushroom kits to try, plus extra to share with friends,  and also gave me a Cuban Oregano seedling. I was so excited, I’ve always wanted to grow mushrooms, but it all seemed a bit complicated.

Grown on a substrate of spent coffee grounds, the mushroom spawn come prepared in paper cups, and all you’ll need to do is add water. It’s all grown naturally, so it’s safe for consumption. When it is launched in the near future, the kits will come in reused paper cups, and he hopes to make it as eco as possible. I’ll announce that when it happens, because I think many people will be keen to try it out! This is what it looks like when I received them.

After 2 days or so…

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City

My new garden bed

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This garden bed has been empty for a long time, the last (and first) time I grew anything in it was a failure because the drainage was so bad, that all my corn and pumpkin plants died. So we left it until my brother bought a spade and we took turns turning and loosening the soil. I then began planning my garden, and decided that this is what it would look like.

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Where I’ve put black specks in the illustration, that’s where I’ve planted seeds like cos lettuce, nasturtium, shungiku (edible chrysanthemum) and mammoth sunflower seeds. I didn’t plant them all at the same time, and am still waiting on them to grow.

I’ve planned the bed using principles of companion planting, so that they will all support and protect each other from pests, and hopefully enhance its neighbouring plant’s flavour.

The beans – Lazy Housewife and Soy – are doing really well, as are the Zucchini and Cucumber plants. I grew all these plants from seed, except for the basil, pandan and ? plant. The Hawaiian Currant plant is an heirloom tomato variety, and I transplanted that, along with an okra plant in the bed.

Here are the photos! Most of the plants are around a week old, give or take a few days.

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I planted a few beneficial plants, like Nasturtium, Calendula and Borage, which produce edible flowers and also have medicinal properties. I am also planning to plant some Viola Tricolour/Heartsease seeds, which are also edible and have medicinal properties.

I hope I’ll have exciting updates to share in weeks to come!