Hold up, wait what? Really?
YES, REALLY!
Tell me more, tell me more!!!
Okay!
We live in one of the most boring new developed areas about 40 Km out of Kuala Lumpur City Centre. You know, those standard suburban areas without public transportation or anything meaningful to do or having shops on walking distance. That kind of suburb.
Somehow we are into this reduce, reuse, recycle (upcycle), repair kind of idea. Meaning, limiting our plastic, having our own shopping bags made out of old clothes and all. Also meaning, we don’t want to waste food and the food we don’t use (scraps from cooking) we try to compost as much as possible. Hence we made a 1 meter diameter fence of about 1 meter high and just put it outside of a window of a room we don’t use anyway. Yes, we don’t want to buy stuff just to fill up the available space we have.
One day, we come home with pumpkin, we made something spectacular from it, I already forgot what but it’s good. Then Hadie wanted to do something with the seeds but she gave up and tossed it in the compost.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, I’ll be darned, that bloody pumpkin is sprouting and giving leaves! Now the vines are growing, crawling over the soil (well “soil” as the “back yard” is filled with construction waste), and they actually are giving….. pumpkins! UNBELIEVABLE!
But those vines are even longer and are giving even more pumpkins!
And even more!!
Lastly, before going in, I was randomly poking the compost as it has been there for some months already. I dug a bit deeper with my hand and we created actual compost! New soil from our food scraps and other natural products. We tossed in some paper, we empty our vacuum bin in there (we don’t have bags), we empty our kitchen scraps daily and we don’t touch it at all. We didn’t mix it up, just let it be and now? The bottom 80% is turned into soil!
The soil still is ‘hot’ (no wonder we live in Malaysia, it is always hot) but a different hot, like the heat that is coming from there and not stored from the sun. I guess the process isn’t finished yet and I also don’t know if we will get that typical dark colour. I guess not due to the woodchips we dispose there (cat litter, wood pallets/woodchip/tofu/whatever else natural and compostable).
I couldn’t not write about this! I’m excited! I guess we are the only ones in the whole bandar who have pumpkins growing from an urban compost heap. Amazing!
Kbai (as my mother in law would say)
Daniel Arendzen 