Growing vegetables in the city

It has been months since I started my urban gardening journey. We lived inside the subdivision and we’re lucky enough to have good spaces for planting. Although the land is not good for planting, my father add something to the soil so that it would be good for planting. My father knew how to adjust the soil and its efficiency to bear good fruits and vegetables.

Most of our seeds came from the city capitol. It was handed by my aunt who worked there. The Provincial Agriculture Office is distributing free seeds according to what you want and that’s very helpful to those gardeners and farmers who like to start without investing. I am not sure if they are distributing free fertilizers, but I think you can request them in their office.

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The duties and functions

“This office is responsible for the delivery of basic agricultural services to its constituents. It develops plans and strategies, and upon approval thereof of the governor, implements the same, particularly those which the governor is empowered to implement and which the Sanggunian is empowered to provide for under the code; it also coordinates with government agencies and non-government organizations which promote agricultural productivity through appropriate technology compatible with environmental integrity.”

-source

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Tomatoes

We have four columns made by my father. The first and second columns are planted and full of tomatoes. Tomatoes are what we use every day so we make sure we have a lot of tomatoes. I think tomatoes' price per kilo hits PHP40 back then. To have tomatoes in our garden can save us some money. Most of the time, we cooked Saciadong Isda (Sarciadong Fish). It’s so good for us to have these tomatoes because most dishes we cook needs tomatoes.

Here are some of the tomatoes we harvest before. I think this is the first harvest we had and I was so happy looking at them. Why? It was because you felt satisfied and the months of taking care of them were worth it. Although it was not big, I was 100 percent sure that we never add insecticide to our tomatoes. It means 100% natural and organic.

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Radish

The third and fourth columns are radish vegetables. We planted radish because we used it as a side dish in our breakfast every day. We have this habit in the family to eat radish or any vegetable because my father loved it so much. I will cut the white radish into fine pieces and serve it on our table. Sometimes, we add Bagoong (Shrimp Paste) to have a good taste since radish is plain. Thus, we used radish in cooking Sinigang. Sinigang is a famous dish in Filipino cuisine and its sour taste makes it unique.

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Eggplants

Since our land is already occupied by many plants and trees. We used sacks for planting. We have many sacks in our home, and my father thought of filling them with soil mixture and planting eggplant seeds. One problem I encountered in planting eggplants is the snails. I didn’t know where the snails come from so that’s why I have to check them in the morning and the afternoon. As you can see in the picture, one eggplant has many holes because of snails. The total number of sacks we planted is 32.

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Corns

After we finished harvesting the radish and tomatoes. We decided to plant corns and this is experimental. I was not sure if the corns will grow stronger and healthy because corns need a lot of nutrients. Our goal is to produce big corn. We planted 100+ seeds of corn around the area and surprisingly they grew fine. Watering these corns become hard for me because the spaces are small. Thus, there are still insects flying around.

Looking at those corns made me happy. It was my first time planting and raising corns in the city. What made me sad about it was, that during the harvest season, we were hit by a typhoon. Although the typhoon was not directly landfall in our place, the strong winds made some of the corns fall. So what my father did was to tie them to each other for support. At the end of the harvest season, we only get a few corns because some are not really in good condition.

One thing I realized about gardening is that wherever you are, living in the city or not. You still have the chance and opportunity to raise your crops. There are many ways in which you can raise them in a small space. Just like us, we used sacks for planting. The good thing about it is that you can transfer them anytime. Also, my favorite part of gardening is harvest time. There’s nothing better feeling than eating your crops.

Denn Marc Cenizal

_{Hi, welcome to Denn's humble world! He is a bona fide student of Cavite State University taking up a BS in Computer Science. He is a father of 10, 10 rabbits. He is an introvert and extrovert person, meaning is the ambivert? He loves gardening and collecting plants. His hobbies are raising rabbits, watching series, and writing haikus. He’s here to fulfill his dream to read his writings.}

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