Tropical Goodness

This post is written on 2018 and transferred here.   Last week I went to my small backyard garden to spray my homemade pesticide to my plants. There are a big colony of ants and white aphid in my garden which I always fight with... They stay in the soil and on the plants, behind the leaves and on the stems. I mixed 1/4 teaspoon of dish soap, a few drops of cooking oil and 2 cups of pipe water. Then I spray to the area  where the ants and aphids are. Of course there are still half of them left but the damage they cause to my garden can be reduced. Some people spray them daily to ensure they did not disturb the plants, especially on chili plants. After spraying the plants with pesticide, I noticed that my lemon basil has turned from one small plant to a small bush which is about 1.2 feet height. I then trimmed it to less 1 feet height to promote more leaves growth. I then regrow some of the stem into my cherry tomato, mulberry, chili and lemongrass pots. The remaini...

Hi. I am CK. I am a plant lover and I love gardening. Because by gardening we can be calm, and fresh. Gardening may be a beneficial hobby both for your health and pocket. By gardening we get to exercise and get fresh foods. We also can save money.   I love fresh herbs and vegetables. The green view is refreshing and distressing. Watching the plants grow give me a kind of satisfaction. Plus if it is in the morning or after the rain. It is a refreshing experience.  However,gardening in a limited space is sure a challenging activity. Especially when you just feel like growing every plants around your house. I need to consider what plant to grow and their number , and how much space they will take along their lifetime . This depends on some factors such as the purpose of growing them , the maintenance , types of plants and the amount of water and sun they need , the airflow and humidity .  I also have to plan prior to growing to ensure the optimum use of space...

Compost is an important ingredient in a garden. Applying and feeding compost to the plants really helps them grow and produce well, God willing. Compost can be bought from nearby nursery or sometimes hypermarket and it also can be made at home.  I read many  articles about composting before, comprising on how to compost and what to put in the compost mix. To me, it is basically mixing the waste comprising carbon and waste comprising nitrogen. Nitrogen containing waste usually comes from wet kitchen waste and carbon containing waste come from browned materials such as dried leaves, paper and burnt materials.  Too much one of the waste type results in bad smell and longer composting time. Temperature, humidity and aeration also play important role in composting as it help and affect the composting process. Good compost does not smell, I think.  However I did not have enough space to make compost. What I did just, I put 1/2 pot of potting soil into an empty pot...

Face mask and beauty are synonymous. Face mask and me are also now synonymous =). I hope beauty and me are also synonymous =P. I've been wearing various types of face mask. Since I read an article on how easy we can use kitchen ingredients to make face mask, I have been applying it on my face. Save money and also effective... There are egg white mask from remaining egg in the eggshell used for frying eggs, cucumber juice mask  obtained after peeling cucumber , tomato mask after slicing tomatoes . And my favorite is turmeric and rice mask and tamarind and rice mask . And I just use rice flour as the mask base. There is one traditional face mask that is effective to me which is cooling rice mask. Our ancestors no, including my late grandmothers wore this mask, a cooling mask made of rice. I really wonder how they came to the recipe and this method of making rice mask or they call it cooling powder ( bedak sejuk ). My late grandmother always applied this  bedak seju...

I went out this morning, and found some hibiscus flowers in my mini garden. So I planned to make hibiscus hair mask for today. And walking beside a pandan container reminded me of the idea that I just thought yesterday, which is making a pandan-hibiscus hair mask.  Hibiscus and Pandan Mask So I prepared my  hibiscus hair mask . I blended 3 pandan leaves with a little water and strained the pandan juice. I then took the strained juice and and mix it with hibiscus hair mask. The remaining pandan leaves paste/particles on the strainer I added in the body scrub. (I used 3 hibiscus flowers and 3 pandan leaves of 20 cm length). You can also blend hibiscus flower and pandan leaves together with some water (enough to cover your hair). Applying the hair mask on my scalp, I feel a very cooling experience. My hair also smells of pandan. It is so refreshing, and cooling especially during hot weather. I am keeping it for a few hours and will update when I washed my hai...

Exfoliation Exfoliation is an essential process to get a smooth and healthy looking skin. I found the exfoliating process has become more famous in the past few years. It has become a weekly beauty ritual for some women. There are lots of ready made beauty products for exfoliating dead skin cells in the stores, as well as homemade scrub recipes which we can make at home.  I also like doing it. Exfoliating dead cells from my skin makes me feel refreshed and clean. I usually make my own body scrub using available ingredients I have in the kitchen. I have tried tea leaves scrub, coffee scrub and some other types of scrubs.  Rice Turmeric Scrub But lately I have been using this rice-turmeric scrub once a week and I like the result. Rice and turmeric are well known ingredients in health and beauty industry. The benefits of rice to the skin and hair is widely known. The same goes for turmeric which is believed can brighten the skin and promote better blood flow....

Last week I went to my mini garden at the backyard. I was going to water my Brazilian spinach with rice water that I got from my rice face mask residue. It is like fermented rice water with sweet and sour smell. I think the plant will love it.  When I went outside I noticed that two pumpkin plants had gone wild, out from their pots. According to my mom the pumpkin wont yield fruit because it lacked of space and nutrients. Pumpkin needs big space and lots of soil to bear fruits. It does flower, but all it has are male flowers only. Not only pumpkin, the sweet potato plant also gone wild. This made my mini garden looked terrible. Today I aimed to trim and clean my mini garden at the backyard. Pumpkin plants have been turned into compost pile and wild Brazilian spinach also got trimmed. I then trimmed the basil, pandan, sweet leaf and chives.  One of my my sweet leaf plant is not doing well. It looks like having a kind of disease. The other one i...

Last two weeks I went to see my small garden, after I've been lying sick for about two weeks. My cherry tomato plant seems sick, but the tomatoes start to ripen. Lemongrass grow larger, and pandan also. Basil plants start to flower and I noticed my bird eye chili plant has some young chilies on it. Actually I want to clear the water spinach container that has deceased water spinach in it. After doing so I decided to visit butterfly pea plant and to my surprise there are lots of flower even though I plant it in container.  For that day I had a cup of butterfly pea tea, very dark blue in color. = ) Garden produces. Chives, a cherry tomato, Brazilian spinach from trimmings, some chilies and butterfly pea flowers.  My butterfly pea plant. The spots on the leaves are caused by an unknown insect. It sprinkles a kind of liquid from its body and when the liquid touch the leaves it bleached the color and produce spots.  This is a picture from two years ago. The...

I have a cousin. He is older than me. When I was small, he is already working, and he is a tailor. One thing my aunt always tells me about him is how he did not use shampoo on his hair. Well it is hard for us to do it because we usually worry if we don't apply shampoo, our hair will be in mess. But this cousin of mine doesn't feel the same. He takes good care of his hair by shampooing with the liquid produced by hibiscus leaves and flowers. I call it hibiscus juice. He took a few leaves and flowers, and when he about to apply shampoo he crushed the leaves and flowers by using hand and applied the liquid onto his hair. Until today his hair is shiny and not yet graying. Influenced by my aunt's story I also apply those hibiscus juice onto my hair. As hair mask. Because at that time I have yet to find a shampoo to prevent my hair loss problem. Recently I think I found one, but I already liking the hibiscus hair mask. Hibiscus flower I picked with some Chinese ch...

Me and Self Care Recently I have been really into self care. Fatigue and other problems like dull skin, coarse and frizzy hair really made my mom and aunt nag at me. I thought it was normal until I felt my body became heavy and uncomfortable. I think I have too much toxic residing happily in my body. Maybe, it is also the cause for my dull skin and fatigue problem.  Taking supplements So, I started to think about what I should do and available choices that I have. First I tried to eat prune extract. It worked great but I have to continuously buy and consume it, and in that time my income is really in a sad situation. Then I tried green tea with herbs. And it works also, for my digestive system that is. While consuming the herb tea I also consume vitamin C and glucosamine for a month. It gave good result but the prune extract is the best. However my nurse cousin warned me not to take excessive vitamin C. She said that we only need less than 100 mg a day. I read if ...