EARLY morning, we walked leisurely to the beach to see if there were mangalat on the shore. On our way we saw other folks half-running towards the beach, little pails swinging empty. Everyone was in a haste. Thick clouds were hiding the sun so the breeze appeared colder at around [...]
WE are still discovering what plants grow well on sandy soil and on warm temperatures. The first two years seem not enough to decide and we keep on planting any seed that comes our way, noting how these grow and adapt to the soil and climatic conditions. Rather than trying [...]
THE dry season has started and it caught us figuratively with our pants down. We were trying to transplant tree seedlings a week before the rains stopped coming in September. It was just one full week after the last young sampaloc tree got its place on the ground when the [...]
THE Happy Scion is a slice of paradise. We declared this space a happy place at the outset. When little garden hands would compete on who would do things or who would be first in the list, we would ask them to play Pik Pak Bom (Jack En Poy). The [...]
ANOTHER round of lockdown started today, September 8, 2021, in the whole province where we tend to a piece of sandy beach land, which we are slowly transforming into a green space to grow food. On more counts than we could possibly think of, we are glad we are here [...]
IT has been raining for the longest time and the plots are mostly drenched to the neck. We used to water one portion of the garden in the morning and the other half in the late afternoon when the temperature gets cooler. Despite our plunge into what has been said [...]
ACTUALLY, we have been discussing lengthily on building the soil. The past two episodes dealt extensively on how to enrich the soil, the base on which any farming or gardening endeavor rests upon. We talked about how marapait fertilizes the land that sustains our plants. That shrub that people consider [...]
FARMERS, especially those who plant rice, welcome the ten-day rain without letup. Plants grow tremendously with daily rainwater that carries some trace elements that plants need. Water also tends to gather into low farms and form shallow ponds for in-land fish varieties and some snails. This is the type of [...]
TWO weeks ago, I carried a bunch of marapait trunk cuttings to the lowlands hoping to grow some wild sunflowers where the sun meets the sun on an almost 1.0 masl piece of land. Where I have planned to grow these is very sunny, some of my kin were wondering [...]
LAST time we were talking about some basic requirements to be able to grow our own food in our growing space, however little it may be. In a nutshell, we have to have superior seeds, a healthy soil mix, enough sunshine and an ample amount of water. Seeds, our planting [...]