A Spot

I've moved my "spot" around a lot. Having a "spot" is a way of honoring the art of chilling out. It allows you to rest in the middle of a day of hard labor.

When I started gardening in earnest, about ten years ago, the spot was in a clearing in an overgrown empty lot beside my house. I had planted in the back of the lot. I created a path and installed a small found bench, around which a mess of edibles grew. I would sit and admire the wildness of the ipil-ipil puff around me, and how the trees dwarfed my little food production patch. I would hang out with Oakley (now dead), our mongrel friend. Sometimes, in time of intense stress, actually put my forehead against a tree beside my bench, and quietlly share my sentiments.


(Oakley, my late partner.)

The experience of loafing, or eating a snack, in a natural, beautiful environment is a far cry from doing the same in a mediocre setting. The sight of leaves, even in your peripheral vision, massages your soul. You feel calm. We've co-evolved with trees over millenia, taking in their waste oxygen as we give them our waste CO2. We are hard-wired to like them. We could do more to surround ourselves with them, if we were more in touch with our instinct.



My current thinking spot is marked by a table, made of some old marble and scrap wood from a shipping frame. The frame was used to protect a sack of pots that I brought to the pier in Mindanao. The shipping folks built it right there. It is pretty sturdy.



The marble is a piece of scrap that was left over when we built our house. We had previously put a large wooden angel head on it, then left it under some trees. The angel has long decomposed, after a career of looking positively creepy. The marble had been forgotten and covered by vines and leaves until recently. I dug it out, and put cacti on top, because I figured anything else would die in the intense summer heat if they were on a hot marble surface. The pot on the right was from an abandoned house in my old village. I got the cacti from a coastal town in Ilocos.



The rainy season is upon us and I hope to grow my little spot with some non-edibles like akapulko. The seedlings have sprouted wonderfully. I may even put some flowers. I must be getting older.

Garden Update: Lettuce & Friends, Flowering Cashew

Hey now, summer's here again. And it's the first summer since we've colonized the front lot. It's a laughable attempt, honestly, but hey! Our lives are colorful and lots of breaks happen. Above is a pair of anonymous legs, of those who work in the garden.

Below is our lettuce plot (those are still small and far from ready to eat), beside our tomato plot (equally small). The tomato plot is weedy. We can't mulch so much because the chickens tear that apart, and if the plants are small, they break.



A row of lemongrass-- the easiest things, it's funny to even see them in a row.



One of our many kalabasa or squash plants:



And after a few long years, our cashew tree is finally producing cashew nuts! Seriously, yes-- the flowers smell really really good, and have been appearing for a couple of years, but the nuts have finally developed. They look like beans. The nut kernel came out first, and the fruit will develop later on:

Coffee Blossoms

This year the coffee blossoms are angry!!! That's a good thing. After last year's paltry "harvest", this is a welcome process. Coffee blossoms smell so good-- like a rounded-out jasmine. They are also so beautiful-- like pompoms along stems.



This is a robusta variety that loves the heat (making it suitable for my garden). Though less "smooth" than arabica, the freshness should make it all worth it!

Summer Is Here!!

It's summer! We've gotten watermelons, onions, corn, kadyos, etc. in the works. I planted some glutinous white-and-purple corn in a few weeks ago and they are kind of runty, beginning to show heads of corn at a couple of feet. I was pretty late in transferring them, so... Yeah, my fault completely.





The cotton is bolling again. I've already got a lot to sort out.



The Indian mango tree is blooming like never before! Because we have been making siga or burning dried leaves under the tree. This traditional burning (mostly related to agriculture) is the only exception to the Clean Air Act. It keeps the pests away from the fruit, and somehow, stops the falling off of immature mangoes.



We're collecting seed from some denizens, like eggplants:



The garden is on steroids by the way.

After getting together with the fantastic people from my home, we created a common vision for a dynamic urban farm, and we immediately attacked the garden, energized. Now we are utilizing spaces we never touched (the place is 2,500 square meters-- some areas are dead zones), cleaning, preparing soil like never before. I've always been a solitary gardener at home (save for a few common projects and amusements), so this felt... great. It feels strangely exciting to step out of the house everyday with 2 or 3 companions, ready to get our hands dirty, ready to "deserve" lunch after hard work. The progress is astounding. I haven't got the most recent pics, but I'm extremely psyched about the way things are going.

We sort of started by fencing off this idle plot (we needed a goat-proof place), which was eventually vetoed by the padre de pamilia, and moved further down. To date, the area pictured below is covered by a tent, contains a long and convivial table, surrounded by flowering plants. It is the new designated coffee-drinking area.



My "laboratory" is serving as a nursery (I caged the seed beds to prevent the chickens from trampling and scratching). We're doing a lot of lemongrass because we're preparing a massive weed barrier for the front lot.



I hope to post more often. Stay tuned.

2011 & The Garden

Hey you guys, you haven't stopped reading my blog! Nice. I've been remiss in filling up this space. For the first time in my life, it's not because I'm doing "a whole assortment of things", but because I'm running a shop, learning real-life-business-skills, and managing a few more people and "operations" than I am used to. Yes, this is growth. For myself, it's life on steroids. I suppose I won't have the energy for this sort of thing when I get older, so what the heck.

A month and some into 2011, I'd like to share my resolution with you: to garden more, and to feed more people with my garden.


(Above, a normal meal from the garden, assorted greens and flowers with our own coconut milk!)

To Garden is To Live

It is one of the greatest joys in my life to garden. Perhaps, like there are hunting dogs and those meant to become topiaries of hair, there are also people who just like the soil and leaves. I love the soil. I can live in a shack, for so long as around me is a garden (or something that can become one). I am happy when I garden. I daydream about it. I hyperventilate when I meet people who are doing exciting garden things. I am, quite clearly, a garden nerd, and, most probably, a garden bore.

Given the world is obviously ending in 2012-- I'll probably be watching Paranaque from the top of a coconut tree whilst slowly sinking with the trunk into water and/or lava-- I should do it while I can. Simple. The truth is, I want to do what I enjoy most, not save enough money and retire on some leisure farm, only to find out my back can't take wielding a pickaxe, and that I am to die running amongst the tomatoes a la Vito Corleone.



Can it be simple? I enjoy doing it and it teaches me about life and the universe. And I will do it as much as I can, screw what everyone says.

The Urban Farm Project

I live in a lot that is 2500 square meters large and within a "mega-city". 1/8 of it is a house (a converted handicrafts factory), 1/4 is my chaotic garden, and the rest is wild grass, trees, and patches of leisure. I've been feeding myself (and the familia) with wild food plants and cultivated vegetables for quite sometime, recently more than ever. I can feed more people. I just have to think about scale. I've even got a name for the farm. If it's got a name, it's happening.

I'm quite used to doing small garden projects. Growing enough cotton to make a few small dolls, growing all sorts of gingers and all sorts of cemetery trees, but I haven't been able to maximize the yield. It's been about amusement and meeting a very limited food demand. I can make cheap, low-carbon organic food for people. Closer even than Cavite farms, cleaner than the urban ones fed with sewage. Yes, be a farmer most of the time! See point A, above.







(Just wanted to show off my ginger assortment, above).

I was wondering if I should keep this goal of mine secret, but I decided to put good pressure on myself by telling other people. Besides trying to get people to eat "weird" crops (we eat a variety of plants that modern Filipinos have never heard of), I want to feed their brains by creating a farm that is more organized chaos. Fieldtrips within the city, etc. Teaching them to compost, showing them that chicken eggs don't all have white shells. Stuff like that. Sounds like fun? It's hard work and fun. The good kind of hard work.

(Pause)

I have been pretty busy with the shop. I've not stopped gardening, but I don't have a lot of time to take photos or write. I tend to get intense when I write this blog, or spend hours poring over plant history and research. In time, I'll get my schedules sorted out and wallow in my delightful mud that is plant love.

Goat Updates, Flowers, and Rain!

The rain was strong today! It was frightening. It's around the same time of the year as Ondoy, and I'm getting anxious because things can grind to a standstill again, a whole metropolis paralyzed, cold, and relatively hungry. Cross fingers, catch the water that you can, stock reserves, plant.



But I have to say that the garden looks great! It gets so lush around this time. In particular, a clump of cogon grass that we have not been touching is huge! About three times taller than me and flowering. It is a source of amusement outside.

Our goat is pregnant, and her stomach is moving. She is really about to extrude a baby, and I'm really excited. The rain is complicating things, because they hate getting wet, and their shed cannot protect them from side sprays. We were thinking inside the house, but what a mess that would be.



This is the dude and he loves katuray:



And things are flowering! I don't remember so much color during rainy season.

Rain

It's that time of the year-- mushrooms are starting to crop up and tadpoles are in my rainwater catchment.

In the Philippines, we only have two distinct seasons-- a dry one and a wet one. Things aren't very confusing that way. I heard on the radio that our weather bureau defines rainy season as one in which "it rains everyday for five consecutive days". We are squarely in that department now, bring out your rain boots.



The very pronounced feelings of the citizenry is that rainy season has been, so far, a repose from the almost biblically apocalyptic summer heat. However, there is also widespread fear after last year's disaster-- this one conforming more to the universal archetype of how the earth tends to swallow us all every ones in while-- Ondoy, internationally known as Ketsana.



So what have we learned since last year? How can we be welcome the season with open arms? I've been ruminating on this the past few days, as rainfall has become more constant and a little bit scarier everytime. The trick is to think calmly, as nature puts water where it thinks it should be, as we see where we can store and allow water to flow.

First Kadyos Pod of the Year Yo

It's the first kadyos pod of the year from this new plant (seed from Sagada? don't remember), and the pods are mottled! Yes, they are. Very pretty.



Kadyos stands up very well to the heat. Should have put more in before summer started!

Tapilan and Some Corn

Hey hey, what do you know, the tapilan or rice bean have finally popped out. I planted them in somewhere and forgot about them and overhead, some cute yellow flowers started to poke out. I thought they were munggo, but when I grabbed some and opened up, found they were actually rice beans.



Since I only planted one in, I got a paltry harvest, but pretty good for no effort. They came out stubbier than the usual tapilan, and I definitely will be planting these in again more seriously.

I'm pretty busy now and have been trying to keep a decent nursery for less busy times. The chickens are still a challenge-- when you don't want to feed them, you can't cage them in (as they forage for food), but the payoff is really that they scratch the floor endlessly and eat stuff. These corn seedlings were nipped always by the chickens.



I tried to cover them with a badminton racket, but that didn't really work out properly enough.

General Overview Thing

It's good when your garden is resilient against manager-busy-ness. Things are still growing, and fast. Some parts of the garden are now more chaotic ("organized chaos") than ever, but hey, look at the false roselle:



It is not the "real" roselle, but a good substitute with sour leaves. I nicked this one from seeds in Nueva Ecija.



The evil-spirit-protection tuber (gabi-like) is finally peeking out of the betel leaves.



The patch of kamantigue came up nicely after the rains:



My collection of gingers is growing. Here's a langkawas I am about to transfer to a better place:



Large mushrooms from the rains:



And the most excellent bit of news: my achuete tree-ling, though barely up to my knee, is flowering and fruiting!





Some beans growing beside: