Companion Planting

This summer, I tried to practice companion planting by inter planting flowers and herbs in the vegetable garden. The bugs/insects will get attracted to the flowers and will leave the vegetables alone, that is the idea in companion planting. Notice how I sowed my plants in the raised bed on the right side of the walkway in the picture above. French Marigold flowers were first planted around the edge of this raised bed and this was followed by two rows of Arugula greens and then two rows of  Pak Choi, a leafy green vegetables with a thick white bottom. I often use Pak Choi in my cooking whenever I make stir-frys or in making soups. It's really delicious without the bitter taste that one usually gets in Pechay, another green leafy vegetable.   

Even the small holes of the hollow blocks that were used in making the raised beds were planted with small grasses. The root system of these plants goes down deeply and it helps to hold the hollow blocks in place.  In the photo above, you see the French Marigold flowers at the end of this raised bed. That brown triangle structure in the forefront is a home-made welded re-bar tomato cage with one tomato plant inside. In front of the tomato cages are Pack-Choi or Chinese cabbage. Behind this tomato cage is the Sweet Pea trellis. Anyway, to maximize the space and get more produce, I sowed Sweet Peas on both sides of this trellis. Planted next to the front and the back side of the Sweet Peas were lettuce of Lollo Rosso variety. Next to the lettuce facing the walkway, I sowed two rows of  Carrots.

Notice the plants in the small plot under the Green Bean trellis? Those are the Lollo Rosso variety of lettuce that we often use when making a sandwich. I made a walkway around this small plot so I could go around it when I do some weeding on the raised beds. On the left side of the Green Bean trellis is a Zucchini plant.

This is the edge of the garden where I placed the arched trellis for the Green Beans. When I removed the wire mesh fence around the old garden, I left the wire mesh on this side only so I could grow some cucumbers and sweet peas on it. Since these two plants grow in a vertical position, they could use the fence to climb onto as they grow and they could be planted next to each other as well. I also added some Pak-Choi and Petunia flowers in between the Cucumbers and the Sweet Peas.   

 

   

Sweet Pea Trellis

I often use Sweet Peas or Sugar Snap Peas in my stir-fry cooking so I thought about growing my own in the garden instead of buying them in the market. How difficult could it be to raise my own Sweet Peas right? So I looked for whatever materials that I could salvage to use in making my trellis but I could not find anything suitable for my purpose in mind. Then I had this "B-R-I-G-H-T" idea of using an old clothes stand that we have in the house! It is actually the perfect size because it may only be 4 feet wide but it's also 5 feet tall. This is made of 1-inch metal pipe materials with two welded stands and a pipe that goes across the top which holds the stands together. We only use this stand to hang the wet  clothes on hangers or for laundry during the rainy season anyway. So I thought I might as well put it to good use while it is still summer instead of it just laying around in the corner. All I had to do now is to find something that I could put across the width and the height of this structure so the Sweet Peas will have something to climb onto as they grow. Then I thought about the excess 1 x 1 inch wire mesh material that was left over after we built the chicken run and that solved my problem. So, I measured the length and width of the structure and cut the wire mesh according to size and attached this to the stand and Ta-da!  I got a Sweet Pea trellis. That picture below with the square structure is the Sweet Pea trellis and on both sides of it are the tomato cages. Well I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed making the trellis.

Sweet Pea Trellis

Sweet Peas ready for harvest.

Sweet Peas taller than the trellis.

Home-Made Tomato Cages

When I removed the wire fencing on three sides of the backyard garden, I also removed several steel rebars that were used as stakes to hold the wire fence in place. The size of these corrugated rebars are 10 mm and these were cut into 5-feet tall each. I am going to transfer these wire fencing in the new hill garden to ward off the chickens and the dogs from that area. The backyard garden does not really need a fence now because the chickens are already fenced in and we don't have a dog or a cat ( except for the neighbor's cat) so if I should ever decide to make a fence in this backyard garden, I would like to use a picket fence someday.  Anyway, I thought about how best to use these old rebars that I took from the fence. So after my brother finished making the beans and peas trellis, I asked him if he could make me a tomato cage using these old rebars. Since these rebars were already cut at 5-feet tall, they're just the perfect height for a tomato cage. Besides, we have 2 extra pieces of 8 mm corrugated rebars that were not used when they made the outdoor aviary. So with these materials, my brother made 2 pieces of tomato cages that are 5-feet tall. I asked him to make the tomato cages into a triangle design with two sides having rebars going across them at a 1-foot distance from the top while one side is to be left open. I wanted this open side as my access to the plants and I can always use a string on this side to hold the plants as needed.

My DH used to tie the tomatoes on a stick that was placed near the plants using the green garden ties. Sometimes, he would used jute ropes to encircle the plants around the sticks so it looks like a round tomato cage. It's just that we have to take out the ropes once the tomatoes have been gathered and that's too laborious. So now that we have this two pieces of steel tomato cages, it should make the clean up much easier with no hassle. Just pull up the cages once the season is over and it can be stored inside for safe keeping until the next planting season is here.

   

The New Terraced Garden

This is what the garden looks like after I completely overhauled the old garden.  I made use of the sloping terrain to create a terraced garden with raised garden beds. This backyard garden maybe small in size but I like it much better now. By using vertical structures such as the Sweet Peas and Green Beans trellises, these increases the planting space even in a small area. Someday, I would like to put up a white picket fence gate at the entrance to the garden. The smaller potted flowers are Delphiniums while the bigger potted plants are tomato seedlings which were transferred later on in the patio near the entrance to our place. I planted Pak-Choi and Mustard greens in this new raised bed and we enjoyed many delicious fresh organic vegetables out of this garden.

The pictures below were taken from another angle just to show you the relationship between the garden and the rabbitry in the background. The first picture below was taken while standing near the Green Bean trellis while the last picture at the bottom was taken from the doorway of the rabbitry. The sitting area for the guests could be seen in the background from the rabbitry. My 4 nephews and a niece often brings home their friends because they like to show off the rabbitry and the garden. Sometimes, even the elementary or grade school pupils who have heard about our rabbitry would drop by the house after school just to admire the flowers and the gardens including the rabbits. It's a small space really but it is a delight to see other people enjoying the simple scenery. Well, I hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I enjoyed writing about my adventures in the garden for the summer.Don't forget to visit my other blogs as well by checking out my profile.

Green Beans Trellis

I went through all the hardware and construction shops in town looking for a cattle panel or a hog panel that I could use for a trellis. Not one of the shops here in city carries this kind of panel. All they had are the 2-inch-hole welded concrete wire. I would have bought two of these to make a trellis but the cost was expensive at 1,500.00 pesos per piece so that would have cost me a total of 3K to make one trellis. One piece of this welded wire is only 4 feet wide and 8 feet long but what I did not like about it is the small holes, just 2 inches square. I could not find any cattle or hog panel so I asked my brother if he could make me one since we already have a welding machine. My DH bought a welding machine last year and this is what my brother and my carpenter used when they made the rabbitry. I asked my brother to make the hole dimensions to be 6 inches wide by 8 inches high. This size of the hole dimension will allow us to reach out for the plants during harvest time. So we bought 5 pieces of gauge # 10 wires and it only costs us 70.00 pesos per piece so that all came to 350.00 pesos all in all.

This summer, I was able to grow 2 crops of green beans in this wire trellis. The first batch of green beans were planted behind the outdoor aviary using the home-made welded wire trellis that my brother made for me. What I like about this trellis is that I could plant on both sides of it and I get to have more produce. This arched trellis is 4-feet wide and 6 feet high on its apex. Since I am short at only 5'2" tall, I could easily walk under the arch whenever I gather the green beans and it's easy to pick them as they would just be hanging over my head. Vertical gardening is really a good way to go in maximizing a small space.I placed both ends of the wire trellis in the center of a 2-feet wide raised bed which is in the corner of the garden where it doesn't make a shadow on the other plants. This corner gets the full afternoon sun from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. I made this raised bed only 2 feet wide because it is near the fence and this allows me to reach out at the back of the trellis to get the beans without stepping into the raised bed.

 

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?

The garden is partly in shade from the Cherry tree and the Rabbitry.

The trellis for the green beans is located at the far end of the garden.

The newly constructed raised bed at the foot of the garden.

Typhoons Pedring and Quiel

Today is Sunday, October 02, 2011. Baguio City was on signal number 3 since yesterday and once again, we've lost our electricity but everything is OK now. Well, not quite normal yet because typhoon Pedring and Quiel left 53 people dead in the whole country and many more are still missing and unaccounted for not to mention those who sustained some physical injuries. These two typhoons that came one after the other has devastated the northern part of the country especially the agricultural sector. Prices of vegetables have gone up and almost doubled as a result of these typhoons because it damaged millions of crops not only in the highlands but also in the lowlands as well. In fact, many people especially in the lowlands have lost their homes and personal belongings because of the floods and many barangays are still submerged under water up to this time.

In my own backyard, part of the fence that separates our property to the public walkway at the back caved in because of the strong force of the  winds. We started fixing the fence this afternoon as soon as the rain stopped and hopefully, the work will be finished tomorrow. It's a good thing that we had an extra bag of cement and some river sand and gravel that are available so we were able to start the work this afternoon. Otherwise, we would have to wait for another month to be able to bring in some construction materials because part of the street in our village has been washed out and it is not passable for any type of vehicle. Another damage in our property is the leak in the roof in our 3-bedroom transient house, that has got to be fixed too. Other than these, thank God that we are safe and sound and that is more important than any material things. I pray for those people who have lost a loved one because of the floods that they may find the strength to start all over again once everything goes back to normal.  

It is at a time like this when I realize the importance of having a backyard garden because even if there will be a shortage of vegetables in the market because of these typhoons, at least there is hope that we will not go hungry as long as we have vegetables in the backyard and some backyard animals such as chickens that provides us with eggs and domesticated rabbits for meat. As soon as the immediate things are taken cared of, then I will start planning my vegetable garden in the backyard.