What Happened To My First Batch of Kangkong

Lots had transpired since I started on my first adventure. The seeds I planted have all grown – to different extents, teaching me a few things that I’m going to use on my next batch of crops.

I’ve seen for myself how fast kangkong grows. Here’s what happened since we last saw them here:

There’s a story behind that missing chunk off the side of the box. If you look closely, you’ll also notice that the kangkong looks very messy.

One morning, I was awoken by the sounds of a cleaner washing our corridor. I hurried out to move my crops when I heard him fire up the jet hose at my neighbor’s doorstep. If you don’t move your stuff – shoes, plants, anything out in your corridor – everything gets wet (or blasted).

I was glad to make it to my kangkang as he neared our side of the corridor. Just as I grabbed the edges of the styrofoam box to quickly hoist it over to a safe spot, the cleaner called out to me. I stopped mid-action, unable to make out what he was trying to say his foreign accent. “What?” I yelled back to him over the din of his jet hose, my fingers still grabbing on tightly to the edges of the box.

Again, all I heard was jibberish. I was started to feel silly about standing there when I felt the right side of the box give way, and my precious box of kangkong crashed to the floor on my toes with a loud, dull thud.

I was flabbergasted!

I squatted down over the box, staring at my messed up crop with eyes wide in disbelief. I must have been quite a sight, ‘coz the cleaner switched off his jet hose and actually came to squat down next to me. For the first time, I could hear legible English as he tried suggesting that it was alright, that the exposed roots could be reset in the soil. Fiddling with my dislodged kangkong, I answered loudly, obviously very upset, “How to put back?”

I think I must have been there quite awhile. Either that, or he concluded that his presence was very unwelcome, as when I looked up, he was gone and the corridor was silent. I let out the pent-up anger with a loud shout that echoed down the stairwell, followed by a slightly more suppressed volley of swear words.

I was surprised by how affected I was. I guess I had grown more attached to my crop than I had thought, waking up excitedly every morning to check them for pests, and chasing the sun for them to the last possible minute before leaving for work. I really thought the bulk of them was going to die. I know it may look pretty decent in the photo to some people, but it didn’t when I was there. The before and after was quite drastic, with soil spilled all over the floor, roots and gauze showing, and plants lying on their sides. I felt so helpless that I screamed a few more times and had to text a few good friends to share what happened.

As it went, my kangkong did survive, and went on to thrive, save for three or four of the smaller plants that yellowed and died. They’re actually quite hardy. But to a new, first-time noob farmer like me, it was already one plant too many, and one trauma too big.

On the supposed harvest date, the kangkong still didn’t look very mature, as compared to those that I see at the market. In fact, the majority still looked pretty tender. So I decided to let them grow some more, just to see how far they might go:

At this point, the kangkong had been growing for as good as two months. The taller stalks look impressive from here, but they were actually still pretty thin and tender looking. But despite being three weeks past harvest time, it didn’t look to me like they were going to get any thicker or bigger. They did, however, start to twirl:

I’ve never seen this in any kangkong on sale at the market. Just what species of kangkong have I been growing?

Anyway, under the collective wisdom of my mom and myself, we decided that it’s about time I harvest them – which I did in excitement tinged with poignancy.

This was the thickest that the stems ever got:

Looks decent right? However, the majority were much thinner than this.

Later in the evening of Day 57:

Ingredients: home-grown kangkong, chopped garlic, cooking oil. Feeds 1, LOL.

It may have been tiny, but boy, it was the best serving of kangkong I’ve ever tasted Armed with this encouragement and some simple insights I gained from the process, I went on to my second batch really quick. I’ll share about that here very soon.

Advertisement