Munggo (Vigna radiata)

The munggo (pronounced moong-goh, there you have it, I can imagine the awkward attempts at pronunciation otherwise) or mung bean is a fixture in Philippine homes. I would say this is the only bean that remains constant and year-round in the metropolitan savory diet. Wet markets are never without them. They are cheaper and more common than the yellow and red varieties, which are often used for sweets and snacks. Their starch is made into thin noodles called sotanghon. There are documented medicinal properties.

If you have gone through the Philippine school system, you had probably grown some munggo in science class, on a piece of cotton or wet paper. It germinates quickly and demonstrates to children what plants are like and such.



While the mung bean is thought to have been domesticated in India (moong is a Hindi word), where it is commonly used for dhal and other dishes, some research shows that it actually originated from West Asia, or the "Afghanistan-Iran-Iraq area". It may have reached the east via two routes-- the Silk Road (West Asia to India to China to Taiwan) or from India to Southeast Asia.

Our standard munggo stew and our porridge with glutinous rice and coconut milk (f'in yum) seem somewhat common (with variations, of course) throughout Southeast Asian dishes and snacks. The eating of sprouts, (tauge or taugeh in Indonesian and Bahasa Melayu, Hispanized spelling togue for us), seems to have arrived here through East Asia, where its use is much more prevalent.

We grew ours from some market seeds, getting a little more than a dozen green munggo plants beside the okra. These are now bearing flowers and pods. Our companion at home has been extolling the superiority of eating fresh (soft) beans in her province (Bacolod), so we have been harvesting green pods and shelling them. Fresh, soft beans are segregated from the tougher ones from the dried pods which we somehow missed harvesting. When we have enough, we will get a decent dish going. As we are a good number of people at home, this requires patience.



The pods are allowed to dry in commercial production, as it prolongs shelf life, of course, and it is easier to process then. The seeds are extracted by either beating the pods or trampling on them. Here are some dry beans:



Compare the above with the fresh seeds below, which are larger, lighter in color, and tender enough to squeeze and destroy:



Munggo is relatively easy to grow in non-clay soils. The soil needs to be well-drained. They tolerate some amount of drought. A bonus are the little yellow flowers which come in bunches.

Cutsoms in Gardening

Like many people, I talk to my plants. When I pick some leaves from them, I "ask permission" and apologize for the pain. When I am transplanting some, I wish them well out loud, that they will take root properly.



The farmer who gave me the pepper cuttings from the plant in the photo instructed me to do a little ritual while planting. In order for the pepper, which is a vine, to be healthy and begin to crawl on poles or plants, and also for it to send it roots fast into the ground, I had to cling to it with my two hands and say "Kumapit ka! (Cling!)". He demonstrated it very loudly and almost manically, and he looked like he was strangling someone.

Although the cuttings were lost somewhere between there and home, I will surely try to do it next time. These small rituals, if anything, make life more interesting.

Sizzling Time and Lot Notes

Ho ho ho it's summer again, when I sit in the shade and sometimes all the leaves go still. When I eat some aratiles while walking around the garden. When the plants start to have issues and hang their heads low, there is only so much you can do. Well, there is, if you have a lot of time. But if you don't, you take note and make sure you do something more appropriate before the next summer rolls in. My lesson is trees, trees, trees and biomass, biomass, biomass. Often throughout the year I forget how harsh the summer is (I am usually travelling at that season).


(I have supplemented the hard earth with coconut shells in the squash area for moisture and coolth.)

Chickens are still running about free, so this is something to consider along with the heat.

I've started to cover the soil near the compost pile with compost and newspaper, to give me some more plots that are closer to my water source and main area of work. These need to be further covered with palm leaves and large branches to keep the chickens from tearing it apart into a chicken crime scene.



I've already put some chili, coleus, talinum, and corn in. They don't show too properly in the photo, as they are quite small there. Sometimes I hack the coconut leaves off a certain portion of stem to accommodate a plant poking through the newspaper and all. This keeps chickens out and unable to do their dance on the plant.

I'm trying to concentrate on growth around small trees, but I'm not home everyday to water stuff, so...



Just a bit about our soil. I guess I should shed some light on the yet-to-be-cultivated parts of our lots, which are grassy and tough. We have two lots, each approximately 1000 square meters. They are attached to each other but form an S-shape (if you stretch your imagination far enough). Our house is far back, when you walk inwards from the street. There is no back yard.

The original soil close to the house was generally a bit of clayish topsoil mixed with broken shells. This is because our home was a former capiz mini-factory. We thus had lots of grit in the form of smashed capiz, which is pearlescent and can wound you if you're squeezing the soil. More importantly, as I might have mentioned before, the entire two lots we live on had to be raised due to surrounding flooding, and thus we dumped it over with swimming pool excavate. So we have some shelly soil and LOTS of poor, rocky subsoil.

Our "home lot". The constraints are mainly that trees cannot be grown across the very middle and front of our home for security reasons (Good visibility is desired of any trespassers-- yes I know it sounds paranoid.) Stand in the middle of the garden during noon and you will see how intense the heat is-- like being in a soccer field. There are some ways around this that I will get around to soon.



As you can see, for most results we do things by planting along edges (walls, existing trees). I am trying to create more "edges" to give plants shade and increased moisture instead of being left smack in the middle of grass. It takes time. Papaya is good for this, as it grows fast and can be beside a climbing bean.



The open grassy area on the home lot is regularly grass-cuttered, and this biomass is usually not going back into the soil. I think the chickens have been a help here, as they are running and crapping all over the place.



I have been taking inspiration from the okra (above) growing along the right side of the garden. In spite of the heat, and perhaps because they are in a part of the garden that wasn't bothered by the grass cutter so much (with sugarcane debris and legume compost), they are growing quite vigorously. They do well and protect things like tomatoes and flowers from the intense heat. Our tomatoes among the okra are doing fabulous-- the others in somewhat bare contexts have wilted in surrender.





The mung beans have flourished and are now bearing pods. They are in the same area as okra.





What about the other lot? It has a few trees, and you can see nice things happening without much effort. The grass is allowed to thrive moreso there (it is far and costly to cut the grass all the time). Some are taller than myself. Now there are some leguminous trees sprouting, as well as a few leguminous vines overtaking the grass (not visible in the photos).





It seems a good joy to mulch over the front lot and wait until it rains for some massive rottage, but for now I don't have the time, energy, etc. do to this, and we are enjoying the butterflies on the vine flowers.

Along the wall of the other lot there are "angry" bouganvillas.



Next time I will perhaps profile the trees on the other lot and the home lot to give a better sense, as I am posting just low-level shots now. Trees are the best and easiest things to grow (especially if your garden time is erratic), and they deserve more attention here.

Reptile

Been seeing this reptile around a lot. Him/her and their family of babies. Its neck is reddish. It is fast, hence the crappy photos!

Gabi (Colocasiodeae )

Gabi or taro is something that I've always seen, but never really paid much attention to until last year or so. Being rice-centric, I've only ever considered it as something to eat in sinigang (which I just had last night) and Chinese food, or, on a lucky day, laing. We cultivate it as a food crop here, but not as a staple as in Polynesia and other places in Southeast Asia, where it is the most important food crop. In many places in Asia, it is cultivated in sunken fields, at the volumes that we grow rice. Here we have smaller-scale production, usually in areas of a farm or home where water is accumulating, or at the side of properties. I have also seen them in water-purifying systems outside kitchen waterways.



So it turns out that gabi or taro is actually a general term for a couple of kinds of edible plants from the family Araceae tribe of Colocasiodeae and, without science books and all, they are classified by people according to their cultivation.

One is the wet-cultivated one, the Colocasia esculenta variety, said to be native to India or Bangladesh. It is what we have always grown, currently as the great-grandchild of the one my dad had in his garden growing up in Fort Bonifacio. When they transferred homes, one of my uncles took some to plant. When we transferred to our lot, my dad took some to grow himself:



The wetland variety is in a soft heart shape and has waterproof and velvety leaves. The undersides are light in color and beautiful (see first photo of this post). As far as I know, this is the sort whose leaves we use in Filipino dishes, as I've never seen the upland leaves being dried at all. We use the tubers too, of course, and I'm convinced this is what we've been eating mostly, although I can't be sure if I've been eating the upland ones. Here is another one that I got from Quezon, which is a swampy place:



The upland or dry-cultivation variety has more angular basal lobes (the curved parts of the heart) of the Xanthosoma genus, supposedly a native of South and Central America. They generally grow bigger and have shiny leaves. You need to care for them less than the wet ones, apparently. Here is one that I got from Sagada recently, where the high elevation makes them ideal:



As a note, both varieites can grow out of their classified environments. We have been growing the swamp sort in a very dry environment for a long time, and the larger dryland ones can grow in swamps. I am not sure about the difference in taste of the tubers (this we will find out in maybe a year more), but some say the upland tubers have less sweetness.

Some are grown for cultural reasons. This variety, very wavy and stuff, and with a dark purple petiole or stem, is grown outside homes in the Visayas to ward away bad spirits. I took it from a Quezon City home of a possible migrant. Soon it will be driving away spirits here too (still letting it grow a bit).





Filipinos sometimes grow gabi for animal feed. These large dryland type above was taken from Cavite, where they were grown for feeding as fattening mash to pigs, boiling away at the back of the farmer's home.



And about cooking, you need to do this well, as there are oxalic acids in the leaf and root which can be extremely itchy. Filipino tips would be not to talk while cooking, not ever to stire laing while cooking, and so on. I guess this roughly translates as: pay attention to the food, do not stir it mindlessly while yakking, and don't stir the leaves before the portion touching the pan can cook adequately. For the wetland variety, drying out the leaves is said to help in removing the poison. Here is a good primer on preparing or selecting gabi with the poison and palatability in mind.

Over other staples, gabi is said to be better digestible at 98.8%, with little allergies caused. Lower dental maladies and diseases are present in Hawaiian babes born on taro and sweet potato eating populations than in rice and bread. Something to think about! It also might be good for vegetarians like me, as it contains more vitamin B-complex than whole milk. The cooked leaves are comparable (in nutrition) to spinach. Maybe eating gabi in place of rice for a few days a week can yield interesting results. I am going to pursue some poi making, to add to my list of fermented food.

It is fairly easy to get out of the ground and take home-- I usually take a corm (yes, that is what they call the root) with some leaf attached to it, and put it in water or some soil and nurture a bit-- then transplant. You can plant the corm alone, or even a portion of the peel with a bit of a bump coming out, but I'm not so patient. I have done that unintentionally, though.



Last note: When harvesting and peeling, be careful as your hands will get itchy! I didn't know this as I decided to cook some Cambodian spring rolls out of our gabi once, and my hands burned up. It was painful! I stuck my hands in some grated coconut and pressed the oils out, which provided an almost-immediate kind of relief. I later read that this is how they do it in Hawaii, and that they keep their spent coconut beside the kitchen for such episodes.

Rain Can

As watering cans get messed up pretty quickly (cloggages, you have to twist the rainy part off and find frogs, etc inside), I decided to use an old can for a rain simulator. My dad and his girl tried canned coffee for a bit (didn't last), and I've been keeping the cans since they look nice and sturdy. I need this now especially as we're starting tender seedlings like lettuce up and it can't be the rushing big water from pails and such.

I learned this from my helper, who used it when she was with me in the guerilla gardening of the lot behind us. She also used the same method to make a grater for cassava-- although she flattened out the tin and put holes on the sheet, then used the textured holey side to make snacks.

So you take a nail and drive it through the bottom of a can of whatever size you need (balcony farmers can do with a small cute one). I used a small nail to make tiny holes for gentle "rain".



Keep doing that until you have a good number of holes in.



It works well! I just tipped it over to the side a bit, that's why it looks like the water is bunched up (it's not easy to take photos while watering plants). The method is good if you carry a bucket around the garden watering your plants. Just submerge your can in the bucket and quickly bring it over the bed. It's pretty fun because you feel like a god controlling a cartoon raincloud.


(That's my dad in the background.)

Hot Hot Heat

The coldness has given way to a full-force onslaught of sun and serotonin (see wilting tomato plant above). I've also (today) begun (what is hopefully) a routine of waking before sunrise to tend the vegetables. I am trying to be home more as the cultivated area of the garden is growing in size (more photos of that soon!). This is thanks to our new handydude and garden-helper Jake. No longer do I live in fear that all plants will die when I travel.

There a few firsts now in the garden. First curry flowers and berries!



First mangoes (Indian ones)!



And lots of lovely little mustard and radish seedlings!





And cucumber and lettuce ones too.

Other Cemetery Stuff

Zinnia


Bouganvilla


Peeping out


Leguminous flower thing


Frog at the canal


Alugbati grown for food, behind a mausoleum, by the cemetery folk

Taking Over

Don't you just love seeing nature take structures over? My imagination presses fast-forward and vines envelop churches and buildings and trees grow out of tall walls. The fact that nature doesn't give a hoot whether something is man-made or not, just makes me laugh. A stone wall is just a straight piece of rock ready to be conquered. You can't stop the impulse.



The cemetery is a good place to observe this. People can't keep up with all the seeds falling in all the crevices. This makes it a good place to collect seedlings, which will otherwise be chucked.