or “aren’t there enough social green thumb show-offs? we don’t need another gardening blog…”
Given my previous admission that just a few months ago, I knew next to nothing about growing stuff and had already previously killed off a herb garden, why did I decide to write a blog?
Whilst there are a lot of green thumb influencers already on the internet, I had a number of issues with many of the content they put out on YouTube or in the Internet articles published:
Firstly, some of these were really, really dry and technical. They lost me somewhere in the title “Soil nitrate measurement for determination of plant-available nitrogen”. I am sure this is somehow HUGELY important for the plant or the soil but the discussion really took the fun out of throwing a couple of seeds into a pot of soil and seeing what happens. Besides, what did gardeners do before the Internet came along?
Secondly, so many of these green thumb influencers who had an opinion of when is the best time to start growing tomatoes did not live in the tropics. Er, zone 5 versus zone 10? All these references to zones as a way to determine when to start growing stuff and what stuff you will be able to grow was essentially moot for someone like me who lived in the tropics – we appear to be off the charts and beyond red hot (zone 13 is coloured beyond habanero chilli red).
It seems there is a hardiness zone scale for those who lived in the US, Australia, Europe, Canada and South Africa. But it seems the entire Asia continent was either missed out, or Asians just decided we would just throw seeds in a pot and see what happens…
Thirdly, as we did not have any seasons in Singapore (it just rains a lot and shines a lot alternatively and potentially both happens in the span of the same day). The major temperature variances that drives fashion choices around cardigans versus flip flops is based on whether one is indoor in an air-conditioned building or outdoor under the scorching sun. Much of the guidance around how long seeds take to germinate or how long cuttings needs to root were again off, given that they come from countries with seasons and widely varying temperatures across the year. Annuals versus perennials? Water once every 2 days? Store the carrots over winter to grow next season for flowers and seeds? Different advice was needed for a condition that was hot and humid one moment and soaking wet the next.
Finally, unlike many of the green thumb influencers who seem to have lots of garden space to have raised beds of trellised tomato plants and the occasional blueberry tree (oh how I envy them!), living in the little red dot that is Singapore means small gardens (if at all). Growing a pumpkin in a pot that is smaller than 2 gallons (which also means nothing to me in Singapore)? Try finding advice on that and narrow the search down to tropical conditions and the search goes down to single digits.
So I started this blog because I wanted to just throw a bunch of seeds into a pot of dirt and see what happens, because that is curiosity, learning and fun, which is how gardening ought to be and because I am a seriously obsessively compulsively curious geek at heart (if you don’t believe me, just ask the worms in my worm bin who have had to experience my roll call inspections) who just wants to find a way to talk about “soil nitrate measurement for determination of plant-available nitrogen”* in a more interesting way that human beings who like to play with dirt get. You dig?
*here is an attempt: if your plants don’t look so well and you have watered it quite a bit recently, you probably need to add some fertilizer to help it get it’s “plant sugar level” up.
Garden Geek SG 