My big S farm

02/02/2021

Growing Coffee Fruit

It takes at least 3 to 4 years to grow coffee fruit from seeds and I documented more than 5 years growing one coffee plant from a tiny shoot I got from a friend. I only use compost and no fertiliser or chemicals on this plant. Over the years, I have had no issue with plant disease or pest, to my amazement. The coffee plant simply kept growing taller and taller over the years and 3 years onwards, I realised the shoots start to grow tiny little buds which form bunches of beautiful white flowers. The first few months the flowers bloom and simply fall off with no signs of any successful fruits forming. Months on the blooms become more rampant and more robust which eventually form bigger bunches.

I have managed to harvest bunches of matured red fruits weekly for a couple of months. This is the first time I get to enjoy coffee fruit and they are rather sweet and tasty. However the flesh is rather little and thin. The seeds, well that's what the grower wants to be made into a coffee bean. So, I keep the seeds and dried them and you will get dried looking beans.

I don't get enough beans to roast myself with some coffee beans but I really enjoyed the fresh coffee fruit to be honest.

25/01/2021

Growing Chili

Urban city farming, I tried growing red chilli from seeds from one rotten chili bought from the market. I just tossed all the seeds into one growing container and they grew into a small jungle of chillies pretty quick. Only a few dominant ones were selected to be repotted and hopefully get to harvest some.

This takes almost 3 to 4 months to grow more than 1 feet and a few tiny white flowers to form. Many more chilies begin to grow in the next couple of weeks. Aphids is now the biggest issue as the chilies start to grow bigger and they start attacking the plant. Ant colonies also started appearing as they started harvesting the aphids for food.

Over the next 3 months or less, I get a steady flow of chillies on a weekly basis. Most of them aren't as big but they do look really red and nice without any added fertilizer besides the compost I made. I tried fixing the aphid issue with some online guide using baking soda mixture, it kind of killed my plant, lesson learnt.

19/01/2021

19/01/2021

Growing Artichoke Jerusalem

This crop I discovered at the supermarket aisle as a form of root plant and tried to grow some. I found out it was some sort of sunflower but has no seeds but they come from roots which are edible. I assume the roots grew like ginger, started growing a few by sticking it in 80% and it took around 2 weeks for the first shoot to appear.

With little care, the leaves sprout and look nothing like a sunflower plant, more like weeds. This is pretty rare in Southeast Asia, it's from North America after some online research. This went on for months, nothing much, just more leaves and grew taller. 6 months and flower buds start to appear with beautiful yellow flowers, now I see why it's related to sunflowers.

Time to uproot one of the pots to view the tuber growing and nothing much over the past 6 months, you see tiny tubers sprouting all over the roots. So, this little experiment proceeded on till almost 1 year and now, we do see a lot more has grown into edible sizes, like giant thumbs. This root has its own peculiar unfamiliar taste and some said it makes you fart alot, i did not experience that maybe i had too little.

Conclusion
Easy to grow, takes 9 to 12 months to harvest, beautiful flowers

18/01/2021