Seeing Green

This is Ewan.

Waiting to go for an excursion to a hydroponics farm this morning. Errr, mama has to go along too. Bo pian, LoL.

The first stop is a "tour" of the Herbs & Spices garden.
Not really tour lah. The kids sat down and the guide (background) passed out herbs for the kids to sniff and explained the properties. The teachers seemed more enthu because they asked questions and took down notes even ;-)

Cotton wool. Really.
Okay lah, give you scientific name - Gossypium hirsutum.
Or Upland Cotton.

Daffodils.

Always appear in ang mo storybooks
and that song... Raindrops on daffodils, things of the sun

Actually, the guide showed many more herbs lah. But it will be silly of me to put them all in my blog. Might as well you go here. According to the guide who told us adults, this is the biggest hydroponics farm in S'pore but hyrdoponics veg only account for 20% of its revenue. 80% comes from other activities like tours (which is why herbs in this garden are not labelled lah, so u need a guide mah) and importing stuff like potatoes and repacking them for sale.

The part of the farm opened to tours.
The kids learnt about the entire process -
sowing, transplanting, germination, nursery, packing, selling.

Ready for harvesting - spinach

Ewan with shorty kangkongs

The guide also told us that hydroponics veg is as good as organic ones since pesticides are not used. The nets keep pests out. I'm sold, LoL.

In a greenhouse. Can't remember what plants.
Oh, got bittergourd. Somewhere. There....

The workers at the background are packing the veg for sale. You can buy the veg in NTUC and Cold Storage supermarkets. Guide told us that veg go to the supermarkets EVERYDAY. Revenue is $4000 per day. Multiply by 30 and you'll see they don't earn that much since got to factor in rental, salary, utilities, etc. So need to have other related business activities.

With the "goodies" bag at the end of the tour. 2 packets of veg and a potted plant in each bag. I also got. So that makes 4 packets of veg and 3 potted plants. Why 3? Because i don't know got goodies bag, so bought a potted balsam plant at the gift shop, LoL