Backyard Gardening: Overhauling the Backyard Garden

There is really nothing much that anyone could do as far as gardening is concerned during the rainy season here in Baguio City. The gardens gets flooded, the strong winds and rain damages the plants and worst, if there is a typhoon because everyone has to stay inside the house for safety purposes. Now that the rain has stopped today, I was able to transfer the worm bins to the back of the chicken run where it is shaded by the Cherry tree because the worms are not supposed to be exposed to direct sunlight which is why I had the worm bins under the shade of the tall ferns and flowers. Once the worm bins were out of the way, I set out to remove the wire mesh fencing material that enclosed the perimeter of the garden. I cut off all the ferns and the flowers that were growing in between the stone rip-rap that was behind the worm bins. Now I could clearly see what I have to work on with what I have. There is a 2 feet drop from the garden level above to the ground level from where the worm bins used to be so I had to lower this down to 1 foot high. The ground dirt is also filled with gravel and so I had to clear them out as well. I also had to factor in the walkways and I could only come up with an 16 inches wide walkway above this new raised bed. This is really just fine for me as I could still get around on both sides of this raised garden bed to do my work.


Salvia flowers at the edge of the garden with the stone rip-rap walls removed.

The worm bins under the shade of ferns and flowers.

Then once everything was cleared out, using a garden fork, I dug up the dirt to about 8 inches low using the cut and back fill method. Then I enclosed this new raised bed with one layer of 4-inch wide concrete hollow blocks which is 8 inches tall. I then put some composted leaves at the bottom and then layered this with rabbit manure and covered it up with the top soil that was set aside when I dug up the bottom. I bought some Okra seeds and planted them directly in the ground. I sowed some seeds of tomatoes and peppers in a box and when these were ready to be transplanted in the ground, I planted them next to the Okra plants. I then thought of buying some flowers to brighten up the garden so I went to visit the Baguio City Orchidarium and bought some French Marigolds and Petunias. The pictures below will show you the outcome of my work in overhauling the entire garden. It's really just a small backyard garden but it took me a couple of months working intermittently to finish the work due to the rainy season at that time. I put in a lot of hard work in this garden but it was all worth, don't you think so?