MAKING A SMALL INTEGRATED FARM

Having been invited by RMN DYRI in Iloilo City to become a resource person for its farming-oriented radio segment every night Monday to Saturday has challenged me to put up my own small farm. My design is such that it should contain all the features that I talk about like organic farming, modern urban gardening including hydroponics or the culture of vegetables and plants in a water media. It should also be integrated so that there will be as many  income streams as possible.

Starting the small farm.

I asked by sibling and my mother to allow me the use of our vacant lot at Muyco St. in Brgy. Poblacion in our home town, Dingle, Iloilo. The lot used to have two semi permanent houses put up by previous leasees and only the core structures made of concrete has remained. The whole lot was overgrown with fast growing trees and shrubs and in all, I must have spent more than P60,000.00 just to clear and have enough space for planting as well as places for cages and pens. The main building and other structures cost me another P180,000.00 but by the time I finished I had four rain shelters to grow vegetables year round and a main house for meetings and conferences as well as lecture area in case there would be farmers interested to learn how I am doing things.


After the structures, I decorated the fence lines with discarded soft drink bottles cut in half and filled with garden soil then planted first with pechay (bok choi) then leaf onions on the next round. I ensured constant fertility with regular (weekly) watering of liquid fermented manure and live microorganisms using the Japanese and Korean Natural Farming System Technology.

I established a multi layer bed on the first two rain shelters where the top bed was filled with about 5 inches of rich garden soil and planted with lettuce. On the first rain shelter, I established hydroponics boxes using the UP Los Banos technology where the scientists have formulated a stable set of compounds for passive hydroponics. A solution of ten liters poured into the box would suffice to grow 15 to 20 lettuce plants from seedlings to maturity. I seeded a red type of lettuce because of its famed anti-cancer property. My first harvest in the last week of February 2013 yielded about 700 grams of lettuce. Some of the harvested lettuce were just cut off at the second node to see if they will grow again so that I would not need to replant or establish new seedlings which is the most expensive input.


Next I enriched the soil of the third and fourth rain shelters. I planted lettuce on the center while the sides were planted with a mix of squash, tomatoes and amaranth. Between these plants, I established basil and oregano which will act as repellant for the pests that attack squash and tomatoes. The squash will later grow and reach the top just below the plastic and crawl all over to provide partial shade for the lettuce.

I have pruned the iba tree and it has started to profusely bear fruits which I am now harvesting to use as fermented fruit juice and to add to the compost pile and make it rot or decompose faster. I have also started to harness the manure of my chickens and use this as fertilizer for the garden. Meanwhile, I have shipped about 30 heads of chickens to Sabah before the conflict and my buyers were exceedingly happy with the results of their purchase and could have bought more had the conflict not escalated. But of course, I was happier with the volume of the dung produced before I sent that batch off. (To be Continued).