Starting My "Bahay Kubo"

We had just moved to a new apartment when the first lockdown in SG started. We got lucky then because the day after we moved everything was restricted. One of the difficulties we experienced was getting groceries. Getting a delivery schedule was really hard since that was the time a lot of people shifted to buying supplies online. 

I realized we had to be more resilient and that's why I started to plant veggies in our balcony. I'm starting to do the same now in our new home. Getting groceries is easier now, but I noticed there are some veggies that are hard to get, i.e. lettuce. My Mom had  a lot of it when Kuya set up a hydroponic garden, but it's been replaced with ornamental plants now, haha. I've been trying to read on setting up a small hydroponic garden for green leafy veggies. This way we can have the needed ingredients to prepare salads. 

What's easy to grow: mustasa, spring onions and leek. For spring onions and leek, just use what you buy from the store. After a day of soaking the stem in water with a drop of honey, I just planted it in soil. Now I get it anytime I need it (nice to top sinangag!). Mustasa was the first veggie I was able to grow successfully. If I was going to have a farm, I'll probably have a mustasa farm hahaha. 

What takes time but fulfilling to grow: tomatoes and bell pepper. I prefer to grow stuff from seed. I had a good run of growing tomatoes and bell peppers in SG. I hope I can do better here since the soil is richer. Ahh, will have good use for our rice wash again. 

What I'm wary to grow: calamansi. I used to have calamansi in one of our previous homes, but it attracted caterpillars and I had a hard time controlling it. We had to transfer it to my Mom because it got crazy. It is very useful though to have one or two calamansi plants, so will think about it. 

What I want to grow: onions, lettuce, eggplant, cucumber and maybe carrots and kangkong. I thought about growing garlic, but apparently it takes a long time before you can harvest (six months). I already planted two red onions, but I made a mistake and will have to pull it out to fix the error. 

We don't really need a lot, so I hope planting veggies can help us have access to what we just need. Also this will help us prevent wasting supplies. I haven't thought about what herbs to plant. It's Sweetie who has been interested in planting herbs. I hope he'll plant basil, rosemary and oregano since I use those for pasta hehe. 

My Mom has been upset that I don't have any flowers in my garden. She's already started to give me plants. I don't want to have too many plants because I want to make sure we're able to take care of them. Watering our current garden already takes up an hour to finish. Good thing Miggy's been able to help me since there are days when my energy is MIA. I have to think of a way to keep Mom's garden from overflowing into mine, hahaha. 

I'm also grateful that I'm able to do some gardening now. I had to give it up when things got hairy health-wise. So need to make sure it's manageable for all of us. 

#BeKind #StayHome