Problems are Opportunities (2): Urban Gardening can be easy

Food particularly vegetables and meat had become scarce right after Typhoon Yolanda. Now that we are gradually recovering, another question cropped up: everything has become expensive. While once you can buy a slice of squash for P10.00, the smallest slice is now P20.00. A small bunch of leaf onions with 3 pcs., would now sell for P10.00, easily translating to P150 or more per kilogram of this necessary kitchen spice for Ilonggos.

Even indigenous nutritious vegetables like alugbati, tagabang, kulitis and lupo suddenly became scarce and when they reappeared, they cost like imported vegetables, leaving consumers with limited choices and getting into the habit of eating without vegetables in their diets.

But this should not be so. Even urban dwellers can have their fill of these health-giving vegetables right in the confines of their homes, albeit on a limited space. Every nook and cranny with ample sunlight can become growing areas for table essentials. One simply has to have the basic requirements for a good crop vegetables right at home.

Planting areas: the urban gardener's first hurdle is the place to plant or where to situate the planting area. Most vegetables need sunlight so the obvious place is where there is sunlight for most part of the day. So a place with at least 6 hours sunlight would offer the best location for the planting area.

Containers: Any container would do but for aesthetics, use uniform containers. For vegetables harvested within 30-60 days, a 3 to 5 liters container would be ideal. After harvest, one can simply pull out the vegetable and replace soil or at the very least add more organic fertilizers. For longer growing or frequently harvested vegetables, one can use larger vessels like the 10 liters to 20 liters pet bottles. Eggplants and tomatoes would grow best in 20 liters containers.

Soil media: Vegetables need the best soil for balanced growth which results to nutritious food. Chemically fertilized vegetables at most offer limited nutrients, mostly those that can be processed from the main or macro fertilizers like Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium and some bits of micro nutrients that results to large leaved plants but poor on nutritional value.

When organic fertilizers are used, plants grow slowly but its nutrition is complete, it would also offer large amounts of nutrients to the eater because of the complete nutrient profile it contains. This had been substantiated by many researches from past to present.

One basic mix that I often do is the 1:1 mix of organic matter and garden soil. If coconut husks are available, I chop them up and add them as the added 1:1:1 mix which makes the soil in the pot last longer and has much less compaction resulting to lesser frequency of soil replacement. With frequent watering with a weak solution of liquid fertilizers, the pot can hold several planting of vegetables.

To make one's own organic matter or fertilizer, one need not look far. He can start with organic kitchen waste and some other materials that can be composted like waste paper, cartons and similar materials, The easiest and fastest way to decompose organic matter would be to use the ubiquitous garbage bag, the black one since black absorbs the sun's heat better. Gather all the bio-degradable waste, wet with a solution of probiotics or the Indigenous Microorganisms (IMO) concentrate at the rate of 1 glass per 1 liters and water the waste matter. Seal tightly for two to three weeks and when you open it, it will smell a bit sweetish but the entire batch should already be black and decomposed. You can now expose this to open air so that the aerobic bacteria and fungus can now work on them for total decomposition. By the second month, it should be ready for use. By decomposing the biodegradable wastes that we generate, we accomplish two major triumphs: helping out the city government's waste disposal problem and make nutrient rich fertilizer at the same time.

One can also make his own foliar and liquid fertilizer from kitchen waste. Save the rice, fish and meat washings in a large pail. Measure a proportion of 2:1 of fish or meat washings to rice washings. The rice washing is good food for the lactobacilli which also feeds on the complex protein of the fish/meat washings to modify them into simple amino acids which also become nitrates that can be absorbed and utilized by the plants. One can add IMO to give more food for the bacteria for faster decomposition. Fish solutions are good sources of nitrogen to accelerate the growth of potted vegetables. To use, dissolve about a cup of the fish solution in 2-3 liters of water and water every week at the rate of 2-3 cups of the weak solution.

The use of earthworm manure or casting, popularly called vermi-cast as organic fertilizer is also recommended. One can get his seed stocks of the African Night Crawlers from any known source and start on a small area or even in pails. One feeds earthworms with semi decomposing vegetables and weed trimmings. They are relatively easy to grow but one has to watch for ants and pests that attack earthworms.

Vegetables to grow: Where there is an area where roots can penetrate deep into the soil, one can establish one or two malunggay (moringa) trees for a constant supply of fresh leaves. For potted vegetables, one rule of thumb that I discovered is that generally, one liter of rich soil can supply the requirements of vegetables for a month. So for lettuce, pechay and similar vegetables, a 1.5 liter pet bottle of cola is enough to produce a rich harvest within 30-40 days from planting. As soon as they are harvested, change the soil and plant another crop of these sub-tropical vegetables.

Kangkong, alugbati and kamote should be given a large container since they grow fast but exhaust soil nutrients fast. Alugbati is the heaviest consumer of soil nutrients. They are not good for container gardening unless you regularly water them and provide frequent fertilization either directly to the soil or through liquid application. Kangkong and camote leaves can be harvested every 7-10 days as they grow fast when right after harvest, they are dosed with liquid fertilizers. They can be productive for as long as six months before they are again repotted.

Eggplants and tomatoes are good pot-grown vegetables provided they are planted in a large pot, like 20-30 liters capacity. The used cement bag is good enough to grow an eggplant for as long as 6 months. They would fruit well especially when they are regularly fertilized. We had some eggplants that bore up to eight fruits simultaneously on a cement bag and was regularly fertilized with liquid manure tea.

Onions and chives which are grown for their leaves are among the popular vegetables to grow in small containers and pots. We usually grow them in 5x8 plastic bags or ½ the 1.5 liters pet bottles and in 60 days or so, we harvest 5-7 pcs per bottle or pot. We also regularly water them with a weak solution of manure tea or fish solution which hastens their growth and gets them to branch faster.

Yes, urban gardening is easy and one can get both physical and emotional satisfaction from growing one's food.