In this day and age, when all the fruits and veggies you buy in the store are not only expensive, but adulterated, and pesticide-laden, wouldn’t it be a good idea to avail of the vacant space in your backyard and fill it up with your favorite vegetables and fruits? Not only that, it practically costs nothing to raise a garden especially in the province where rain is a plenty. Unlike here in our place where water rain is scarce and so it costs expensive to water a garden even with drip irrigation installed.

While I was in the province vacationing two months ago, there was a time that I couldn’t figure out what to cook for lunch. There was no fish available because it was the day after typhoon Frank. I looked around in the property and in no time, I knew exactly what to fix for lunch – “Kamote top salad.” That was really good and refreshing dish! And it is such a good feeling to be able to turn to the yard and make a meal from it without spending a dime. Plus, knowing that it is organic makes one feel good.

Before our Philippine trip, when everything was at an all time high, I suggested to my husband that we start a garden again. I don’t know if you remember in one of my old entries, we had gopher invasion in our garden last year and turned our yard into a complete disaster. They attacked from below the ground and cut off the roots of the plants and pulled the dead plants inside a hole and nibble on them. They did it methodically until all plants were gone. Seems like a battle hard to win, huh?

But not for long…

My husband outsmarted the pocket gopher by putting a hardware cloth, which is a wire mesh fabric, and spread it out at the very bottom of the raised bed. He used blocks to make the garden bed. It took him 3 weeks to finish the whole job. That whole process deserves another post and will be posted shortly.

Two weeks later when all the seeds had a chance to sprout up, here’s a sneak peek of my husband’s hard work.

Pechay

Beets

Tomatoes that we planted in the pots before the Philippine trip so gopher will not get them.

Herbs are being eaten off by some insects.


Figs up close

Prolific fig tree

Delicious Johnny Gold apples

Persimmons


And my lovely visitor that frequents my yard.

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