Tomatoes in the patio

I planted some tomato seedlings in the garden and they were all growing so well with thick and robust stalks until they got attacked by some blight and everything had to be destroyed. Knowing that I would get the same result if I planted tomato seedling in the garden, so decided not to do it. Instead, I bought several big plastic pots at ACE hardware ( SM mall Baguio) and used these to plant the new tomato seedlings that I've sown from seeds. I had them growing in pots at the foot of the garden right in front of the rabbitry until I decided to transfer them to the patio. The sun hits the patio from 9 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon so the plants will get 8 hours of direct sunlight. I tried something different as well by using an old tea kettle with a long spout in watering the plants at the base without getting the leaves wet so they do not get diseased. I also pruned the bottom leaves so they are not touching the soil in the pot and the energy is concentrated in producing more fruits. It worked this time as the tomatoes grew well and were very productive! So from now on, I will plant my tomatoes  in the patio and I will buy more plastic pots for the next planting season.

 

Nothing really beats the taste of freshly picked vine-ripened organically grown tomatoes! Whenever I needed some tomatoes for my cooking or making sandwiches or pasta, I just go out and pick them right from the vine. My hubby and I enjoyed many a scrumptious meals with these tomatoes this summer. I had a good harvest of tomatoes this afternoon for making the sauce of my chicken creole recipe including a piece of bell pepper, some celery stalks and basil tops from the garden and all of these went into the pot together with my tomatoes. The result was wonderful according to my hubby who liked what I served for dinner tonight. There are still some unripened fruits in the vine but I will be gathering them soon before they get damaged by the rain. It is now the onset of the rainy season here in the Philippines so I will not be planting again until the next season. My plan is to start sowing my seeds sometime around the middle of October so I could transplant them in December. I don't have a green house yet so I could not raise tomatoes or other vegetables in the garden during the rainy season. We get a lot of rainfall here in Baguio City during the rainy season so it is best to just let the garden rest during this time. As the saying goes "time fly when you're having fun" and I did have a lot of fun with my gardening this summer.I hope you enjoy the pictures of my tomatoes.

Spring Onions in a Plot

I use a lot of spring onions in my cooking specially when I am making comfort food or even if the recipe does not call for it, I still use it because we like it. The spring onion sometimes takes the place of the onion bulb in my cooking. If I happen to ran out of onion bulbs, I substitute it with spring onions and it still tastes good. We all like to eat comfort food especially when it is raining. This is the rainy season here now so I cook a lot of hot soups and I add spring onions in my recipes. I also use spring onions when I am making arroz caldo which is one of our favorite comfort food. I like the idea of picking up the fresh spring onions straight from the garden whenever I needed some of it in my cooking.  

My DH is usually the one who does the gardening in our backyard but since he is busy right now, so I took over the garden and planted some spring onions in the smallest plot. My sister bought me a kilo of spring onions in the market as my planting material. We first cut off the upper green leaves and used that for cooking. What was left was only 2 inches of the white stalks from the roots. This is what I used as planting material. I planted them just last week and now we could see some green leaves coming out of the white stems. I used to have some spring onions planted in one corner of the garden but I used them all up which is why I wanted to plant some more so I don't run out of it.

The plot of spring onions and on the right side is the outdoor aviary.

This is the smallest plot in the backyard garden planted with spring onions.

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.