Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Gardening



I've been attempting to grow vegetables here in Sibulan since August, 2014. Let me be clear, that's more than 1 1/2 years, but there was a bit of a lull during most of that time.

In was in August of that year that I first tried to germinate bell pepper and tomato seeds. As I reported at that time, that attempt was unsuccessful.

Around that same time period, I had gone out to a field in Tubtubon and collected a sack load of carabao manure. I had cleared out a section at the side of the in-law's house as a location for a garden plot. I had some success germinating cantalope seeds and had transplanted the plants to the plot. Half of those cantalope plants were destroyed by some sort of insect, while the other half were killed by an over abundance of rain.

When we moved into the apartment, that put a temporary halt on the gardening plans. It was only recently, when we began working on our property that I decided to try gardening once more. It was in March of this year that I tried to germinate tomato seeds again. Unfortunately, none sprouted. Neither did the okra seeds that I attempted to germinate in April.

The only seeds with which I had any success are  butternut squash seeds (AKA calabaza) which were ultimately destroyed by by workers delivering concrete blocks to the property.

I wasn't about to call it quits yet. I prepared an area on the property far away from the piggery. This morning, I went back out to the property and put out my squash plants. I'm optimistic that these plants will be a success.

It's been nine or ten days since I began my try at germinating an heirloom variety of zucchini. So far, none have sprouted. This surprises me. Obviously, butternut squash and zucchini squash aren't the same plant, but the two are close enough that I was sure that if one germinated easily, then so should the other.

With the success of the calabaza, I'm ready to germinate other seeds. The next project will be an germinating a variety of sweet peppers.

As a final aside: I was afraid that the recent rains would have washed away the manure I had collected. As one can see in the photo, that's not a problem.

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