A Year and Nine Months of Gardening: Our First Harvest!

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"Patience is a virtue," they say.

Well, that's true!

We've started planting some vegetables in our backyard one year and nine months ago, about two months before cities went on lockdown. I still remember planting tomato plants and it only bore one fruit which also didn't look healthy, by the way.

Fast forward to November 2021, there has been some changes in our backyard and plants were reorganized. Some plants we first planted back in January 2020 still remains while most were discontinued. We, however, replaced them with other plants like chili, eggplant, moringa oleifera, oregano, etc.


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Well, thank God because our efforts have paid off when our eggplant grew and surprisingly bore fruits. The first time it bore fruit, it only bore one, but still we're happy. Then on the second time, it bore more!



My mother constantly took care of it by adding fertilizers, watering it with tap water soaked with random plant cuttings and putting it on direct sunlight.


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The fruit was clean, no signs of insect bite. Most of all, it tastes delicious. My mother fried them and I drizzled it with some sesame seeds and paired it with rice. Thought I wasn't able to take a photo of it but I scrolled on my phone gallery and found this. Lucky! 😃




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Can you see the green chilis on the photo? How many do you see?

I remember one morning, my mother told me too see the chili plant. When I stood in front of the plant, I was confused because I can't see any chili. I thought they were all just leaves. It took me a couple of seconds before I was able to recognize the green chilis. Lol. But they were easier to spot when they began turning red. I was excited to taste them!


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Don't they look adorable? This was our first time to grow chilis this many. One of our neighbors told that one chili is sometimes sold for Php 10 ($0.20 USD) at the wet market. Maybe it's time to start a chili farm. Lol.

Our chili plant is currently infested with huge red ants. We already placed an anti ant solution in a container and placed it on top the plant's soil but they seem to be not bothered by it anymore. At first it worked but guess they've learned it's lethal for them so they began covering the container's hole with soil. We were surprised how intelligent the ants are.

Anyway, it makes me happy that we have our own chili plant now. I sometimes like our foods to be a bit spicy and it's convenient to be able to have one right away.




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We also have some lemongrass which began with only one stalk. They're such a happy addition in our tiny garden. We haven't tried using them yet on our food but we know this herb has lots of usage.




Our neighbor's cat and her kitten. I forgot to take a photo of the aloe vera, glad it was captured when I took photo of the cats.


Our aloe vera plants have also grown and sprouted babies. We transferred the smaller ones on a wider and shallow basin for it to have more space to grow. But I'm kind of worried if they would survive because the kitten of our neighbor's cat loves to play in our garden and yesterday, I just saw it stepped on the baby aloe vera as it trailed on the plants like it was a jungle. 😂

We also now have sugar apple and cherimoya plants but both still haven't bore fruit. The sugar apple seeds were given by my mother's cousin while the cherimoya seeds were given by my aunt from US when they sent some goods months ago. We weren't sure at first if the cherimoya would grow in our climate but thankfully it is surviving. :)



What plants have you started planting during the pandemic?






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11 comments
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I'm happy about your successful harvest . Ants are mostly our garden problems and I experienced that most of the time on gardening but glad you've been able to solve your problem with red ants.

Wishing for more harvest in the future🙂

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Thank you! :) There are still ants in the garden and hopefully we can ward them off completely someday.

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Congrats on harvesting results.

You should try fried eggplants with soy sauces :)

Lemongrass stalks will grow fast and easily :) Making a lemongrass drink with lemon is a nice choice for hot tea :)

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Thank you! This isn't a lot of harvest but for us it feels a lot and a huge accomplishment in our garden. <3

Yes! I love dipping it in soy sauce! Have you tried adding some lime juice in the soy sauce? I also love to dip it in fish sauce with lime juice. :)

We'll try lemongrass tea for sure! Thank you! ^_^

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Wow.. very nice harvest.. it is definitely not easy to grow the chilli and other vegetables.. takes a lot of patience and skill... I tried growing chilli a lot of time but unsuccessful. 😉😉

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That's right! I can't remember how many times we attempted to plant chili. We've been trying since last year. 😅 Just have patience and try to use different fertilizers suited for growing chili. Good luck! :)

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Hi hi.. yea it is definitely a challenge to grow chilli. Thanks for the tip. Really appreaciate it.. =) Have a great day.

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