New hobby: Gardening

As of 21st December 2025, I have officially quit my job as Staff Engineer at MoneyLion. With 2 weeks to spare until my next job, I accidentally fell in love with gardening after helping my wife to water the plants. We recently moved in to our new house – a corner lot terrace house with 20x70 plot of land – so there’s plenty of land to plant stuff.

As with my other hobbies, and thanks to my ADHD and mild-autism (I need to write about this someday), I started going down the rabbit hole of gardening pretty quickly. AI helped a lot here, specifically Gemini 3. In the past, I would have spent hours googling stuff and going down wikipedia rabbit hole, hopping from one link to another. But now I can just have a conversation with Gemini and start discovering new things naturally. Below is what I know about gardening so far.

Gardening: an overview

The goal of gardening is to plant and grow stuff, either to make money by selling the produce, or as ornaments to make your garden look and smell nice. There are probably other positive effects that I’ve yet to discover. The challenge, and also joy, is the fact that each plant has different requirements for it to flourish:

temperature (climate)
soil acidity (pH)
soil humidity
nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium (and others)
pests and diseases (or lack thereof)

Any plant that is not growing well can be attributed to any of these. In essence, gardening is all about making sure these properties are well-balanced for each plant.

Soil acidity

As far as I know, most plants prefer neutral soil, with pH value between 6.5 and 7.5. There are plants that prefer acidic soil, and also plants that prefer alkaline soil. But in general, in Malaysia, pretty much all plants hate acidic soil. In Malaysia, the most common soil type found everywhere are ultisol and oxisol, both of which are acidic [1]. Because of this, if you were to plant anything into your backyard without any soil modification, the plant will most likely die.

Soil acidity can be reduced (i.e. increasing its pH) by adding stuff to it. The most common thing used here in Malaysia is dolomite lime, which is easily available in any nursery, and is pretty cheap. You can also add wood ash, i.e. the white powdery residue found in your charcoal grill after a BBQ session.

Soil acidity also changes over time for several reasons:

plants consuming nutrients
rainfall, which is slightly acidic
fertilizers, which cause chemical reaction, producing stuff that turns the soil acidic
organic matter decomposition

There a few ways you can tell whether a soil is too acidic, such as the kind of weed that grows on it, and the existence of moss. Or if you’re like me, just buy a cheap 4-in-1 soil meter.

Soil humidity

In my opinion, this is the main challenge of gardening in Malaysia weather. Plants fall into 3 different categories: plants that love to drown in water, plants that like water but doesn’t like to drown in it, and plants that don’t like water. Some plants that I know of so far:

love to drown in water: pandan, water jasmine, kangkong (water spinach), apple mint
like water, but doesn’t like to drown in it: most plants that bear fruit, e.g. chili, okra, rock melon
doesn’t like water: rosemary, thyme, any succulent plants like cactus, aloe vera, and lidah mentua (i.e. Sansevieria trifasciata)

The challenge is that because it rains a lot here, you cannot have a simple routine of watering all your plants every day, and you cannot simply place your plants in the same spot. Plants that don’t like water cannot be placed outside where it will be hit by rain, and it cannot be watered everyday. Plants that like water but doesn’t like to drown in it need to be placed outside, but during monsoon season where it rains even more, it need to be sheltered for rain, otherwise it will lead to root rot. Plants that love to drown in water are the only plants that I would consider easy to grow here.

The type of soil also affects soil humidity, so depending on the plant, you would need to use different mix of soil for it to prosper. Plants that don’t like water should be planted in aroid or succelent soil mix, which have things like perlite in them to make it well draining. Plants that like water but doesn’t like to drown in it requires balanced soil mix that is provides draining, and at the same time good at trapping humidity. Plants that love to drown in water (as far as I know) can be planted in any kind of soil.

Similar to soil acidity, you can measure soil humidity by simple observation, or you can use a soil meter, which usually has humidity sensor.

Nutrients

This is the stuff that makes your plant grow, and why fertilizers are needed. To me, this is the most exciting part of gardening, as the balance and imbalance of these nutrients can lead to different kind of growth for the same plant. It’s kind of like balancing stats in an MMORPG game (e.g. high int for magicians, high strength for warriors, etc.). Plants need different kind of nutrients to grow, but the big 3 are:

Nitrogen (N): mainly for growing greens like stems and leaves
Phosphorus (P): roots, flowers, seeds, fruits
Potassium (K): also fruits and flowers?

Most fertilizers that you can buy from anywhere will have an N-P-K ratio written somewhere on its label, which tells you the ratio of these 3 nutrients. There are a lot of different ratios out there, but the basic ones that I know of are:

Balanced (e.g. 8-8-8, 20-20-20): if you have no idea what to use, just use this
High nitrogen (e.g. 5-3-3, 46-0-0): to promote more green, usually used for green vegetables, and also during early stage of fruit plants
High potassium (e.g. 13-13-21): for better fruits and flowers

As mentioned before, fertilizers can lead to acidic soil, so avoid putting too much fertilizer (usually a pinch or two is enough), otherwise it will lead to fertilizer burn, which will definitely kill your plant. I’ve made this mistake a few weeks ago and lost a bunch of basil plants that have been growing for 2-3 months.

[1] https://blog.agrobridge.com.my/en/understanding-soil-ph-factors-and-solutions