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.

Planting Taro in Dry Land

Well, it is really the rainy season now here in the Philippines but we've been having some sunny days lately for the past week or so and this encouraged me to do some planting in our small backyard garden. My sister bought some taro plants in the market. These are the big one that are ready for cooking and they do not sell any smaller plants that are ready for planting. What we do to get our planting material is to cut off the leaves and the stalks and leave only about 3 inches of the stalk at the base. Then from the 3 inches of stalk that is attached to the tuber, we go down 2 inches then cut off the bottom end. What is now left is what will be used for planting material, a 3 inches of stalk with 2 inches of tuber attached. The rest of the plant goes into the pot for cooking.

We do not sow the planting materials right away. We first dry them out in the sun for at least two days to make the cut portion dry so the worms will not eat them. After two days of drying under the sun, I sowed the plant materials in a prepared plot which is a mixture of soil and composted rice hull that I removed from the chicken coop. Many people here in the Philippines plant Taro in wet land but since I do not have that, so I will have to make do with what I have and plant them in dry land. Having the rice hull mixed in with the soil will make the rain water to drain faster but I figured that with the rainy days being here, it should help the plant to take root faster. We planted some beans and Pechay in this same plot the last time but now I am practicing a crop rotation so I am sowing taro plants in this bed this time.

Tomato Gardening

These tomatoes are our very own produce from the small garden in the backyard. When we first started planting tomatoes in the garden, we were so happy to see the flowers when they came out. We used to count the number of flowers on each vine everyday and we could hardly wait for them to grow up fast enough so we could gather them. The plants grew thick and healthy and they were about 5 feet tall with plenty of fruits on the vine. Then one day, they all got attacked by something that we don't know of and the stems started to turn brown. The fruits were not spared and they got some brown spots on them too until they all died. That was really very very frustrating for us. 

We tried planting again the second time. This time, we planted them in pots and kept them away from the garden thinking that there might be a lot of pests that are affecting them in the garden. Since we didn't want to use any pesticides, so what we did is to place some of them on the stairs away from the garden and some at the back porch. They grew well but not as tall as the ones that we had in the past when we planted them in the garden. We were able to get some small tomatoes but most of them ended up with the same  brown spots on the stems and fruits. So we gave up, said that we're done, no more planting of tomatoes! 

Well, easier said than done, we did try planting tomatoes again the 3rd time. What did we do this time that's different from the previous experiments? Well, we planted them at the right time, just after the rains. Whenever we water the plants, we try and avoid getting the leaves to get wet so they will not get easily attacked by pests. We also planted them apart at some distance from each other so if one should get attacked, it will not transfer to the rest. The plants made it this time and they produced plenty of big beefy tomatoes as shown in the pictures above.  I processed some of the produce into green tomato relish and it has served us for many months. I also gave some bottled green tomato relish to some of our friends who were delighted, knowing that our produce came from an organic garden. We used some in our salads and sandwiches after ripening them on the window sill in the picture window. It was really a very rewarding experience for us.

Converting a Rock Garden into a Vegetable Garden.

This area used to be a small rock garden in the backyard. It was filled with  different kinds of ornamental plants and flowers that we have collected over the years. There were too many plants of different varieties that I could not even name them all. So anyway, one day, my husband and I were talking about the idea of having a small garden in the backyard. The more that we talked about it, the more that we liked the idea of raising our own organic vegetables. The problem is, we did not have the space to make a garden in the backyard but we had a small rock garden. So we talked about the possibility of converting our small rock garden into a vegetable garden. We both agreed that we could put all the flowers that we like into pots so we could move them around the property or wherever we wanted them to be and make use of the space for a vegetable garden.

Well, it's easier said than done.  It took us about two weeks just to clear out the area of small stones and gravel, it was hard work but it was worth it. Because of space constraints, we were able to make three small plots only. Well, three plots is actually better than nothing. We used stones of various shapes and sizes just to make a retaining wall along the sides of the garden plots to contain the soil in the raised beds.  Then my husband made a one-foot walkway in between the two rows of raised beds and he laid some flat stones over this walkway so it will not have to be muddy specially when it rains. We bought a roll of three feet tall 1 x 1 hole wire mesh material and used this as a fence to enclose the perimeter of the garden. Now that we have some native chickens in the backyard, I'm glad that we decided to put up this fence in the garden. This fence keeps the chickens out and deters them from messing with the vegetable garden. There is a runt among the chickens who is an escape artist and we always find her scratching near the garden fence.