Papaya Tree

It would be nice if we could grow some papaya fruits in the new garden. I have one papaya tree in the backyard that grew in one of the holes of a concrete hollow block that we used to enclose the perimeter of a flowering shrub. I know I did not plant it there so it must have been dropped by a bird. That got me to thinking that perhaps I could extricate it from this small hole and transfer the papaya fruit in the new garden. It will have enough room there because the place is in full sun whereas the small garden that we have here at the back is partly in shade. I just don't have the space to grow papaya trees in the backyard so if I should grow some fruit trees, it will have to be in the new garden. I don't know anything about planting papaya fruit so I went online and read as much as I could. It's interesting to learn that they only have a productive lifespan of 3 1/2 years. What bothers me is that you could not tell the difference between a male, female, hermaphroditic or bisexual just by looking at the seeds during sowing time. So until the plants has grown and bore some flowers, that is about the only time that you could tell the difference. Anyway, reading about papaya plant has got me interested in buying a fruit in the supermarket tomorrow and save the seeds for planting. It would be nice if I could get some female or hermaphroditic seeds out of one papaya fruit. I am going to save the seeds of the vegetables that I cut from now on and  try to dry them out and use them for sowing.



Temporary Gate

We took a piece of old corrugated GI sheet from the house and used this as a temporary gate in the new garden. Around 12 noontime, we went home to eat lunch and rested for a short while. When we went back to the garden at about 1 PM, the temporary gate was gone! The temporary gate was missing. Right at the front of the entrance to the new garden is a neighbor's small sari-sari store. When we asked the owners of the store if they had seen anyone who might have taken the old GI sheet, they said that they didn't notice anyone because they closed the store around lunch time. How low can some people go to steal an old corrugate GI sheet? To think that we just put it there this morning and a few hours later it goes missing. If some people can steal an old GI sheet, how much more for the plants?  I am wondering if it is just laziness on someones part that caused the person to steal the temporary gate.  With this incidence, it is all the more important that we put a gate in this new garden and lock it up when we leave for the day to protect the plants from thieves. I would not want anyone to go stealing the fruits of our labor when we are not around to watch the garden. So now, it is not just the dogs and chickens that we have to watch out for, that includes bad people as well. Perhaps one of the neighbors surrounding this garden is pissed off because now that we cleaned out the place, they no longer have a place to dump their garbage. Anyway, we'll just have to do the best we can to get along with all of the neighbors so there will be no quarrels between us. God will take care of the rest for us.

Transplanting Coffee Plants

Still raining here today. We do have some transplanting to do if the weather will cooperate tomorrow. There are some coffee plants in our backyard that are ready to be transplanted in the new garden. They are about 18 inches tall already. These will serve as a buffer against the strong winds that comes from the south side of the new garden. Half of the retaining wall on the south side collapsed while the other half is still intact. We will put these coffee plants 3 feet away from the top of the retaining wall that did not collapse. By putting the coffee plants at a distance of 3 feet away from the edge of the stone retaining wall, this will give us some space to work if there should be any repairs to be done without falling off the high wall. 

On the other half of this south wall that collapsed, my plan is to split this into two levels instead of putting it back to its original height which is at the same level as the other half that did not collapse. My plan is to use some bamboo plants at the lower level because these will grow tall and the root system of the bamboo will help to control soil erosion. Once the bamboo plants grow tall, it will also help to buffer the wind coming from this south side so it will help to protect the plants. On the second level, I think I will just put an interlink fence so we do not fall down to the first level and this fence can also serve as a trellis for some vegetables at the same time. Well, these are my plans anyway until I can come up with something better to improve the condition of the south wall.

Net Fence, vs. Wire Mesh Fence

It rained hard the whole day today so I stayed indoors, there wasn't much that I could do outside. I spent the day reading some agricultural magazines and I slept for most of the afternoon until it was time to make supper. I hope the weather will be better tomorrow so we could continue the work in the new garden. I'm thinking of fencing the new garden to ward off the neighbor's free-range chickens and dogs that likes to play there.  The fence that I had in mind is more of a net fencing material actually just like the ones that are used for shade to filter the sun's rays so it doesn't burn the plants. They come in 6 feet high and in two colors, black and green. I could buy them by the meter but I'll have to measure the area that I want to fence off first. I've used this net materials before over my Anthurium flowers some years ago. I had to double the net when I used them to protect the flowers from direct sunlight. I may need some steel posts to hold the nets up in place as these are 6 feet tall, maybe even a bamboo pole will do if I can get some from my friend Mary. My other option is to remove the old wire mesh fence in the backyard garden and transfer this to the new hill garden. The chickens in the backyard are all fenced off in their chicken coop and run anyway so they could not really come into the backyard garden except for the escape artist in the group who still manages to find its way out somehow every once in a while.   Oh well, I suppose I can always put the escape artist in the stew pot when the time comes because we have two roos already and only one is needed to fertilize the eggs of 10 hens. Besides, two roos is a crowd.

Rabbit Manure as Fertilizer

Some people use aged chicken manure as fertilizer for the plants but we don't have many of that available. What little chicken manure that we have out of the 6 chickens in the coop are all being used in the big hill garden to fetilize the coffee plants. We do have rabbit manure and since this is considered as a cold manure, so we are going to use this instead of chicken manure. We applied rabbit manure in some of the raised beds but we do not have enough manure yet to use on all the raised rows. What we did was to dig a hole on the raised beds following the plant spacing where the plants are to be planted and dumped a shovel of rabbit manure in it. We then mixed the rabbit manure with the soil and covered the hole up with 3 inches of soil. We will let these raised beds to rest for a month while waiting for the rainy season to subside a little and then we will start planting.  We are also going to make use of rabbit manure as tea fertilizer to water the plants. It should be interesting to see what will happen with the plant's growth once we use rabbit manure as fertilizer.

Raised Beds vs. Raised Row

I have been doing a lot of reading on the Internet about the benefits of using raised beds over a raised row when it comes to making plots in the garden. Raised bed is really good especially with people like me with a back problem and because of ageing ha-ha-ha. As much as I would like to have a raised bed in the new hill garden because of its advantages, it's just not possible at this time. You see, we are currently building the 4th unit in our rental apartment and that is our priority project for now. In the meantime, I will have to contend myself with using raised rows instead of raised beds for now. The raised rows that we made on the higher portion of the garden is not going up and down the hill but rather, it goes across the hill. This should help to prevent soil erosion and the rain water will soak into the soil instead of it running off downhill. In some areas with a gentle slope, we had to make a short terrace just to contain the soil. We made some provisions for the excess rain water that comes from the north which is on higher ground, to drain on the left side where there is a canal instead of it going downhill to the south where it previously eroded the retaining wall. I just hope that we will not be visited by another strong typhoon again so as not to aggravate the problem. It is still the rainy season here and the Weather Bureau people are saying that it could be rainy until the early part of next year. I hope that this will not happen because I am looking forward to doing some vegetable gardening pretty soon.  

Cleaning Out the New Garden

This new hill garden is enclosed on three sides with stone retaining walls and their height varies depending on the contour of the land. There is no retaining wall on the north side which is two feet higher than the next door neighbor's property. There was a lot of hullabaloo about the boundary between us and this neighbor living on the north side of the property and so the lot was put on status qouo for several years. When the matter was finally settled and the boundaries were made, my late younger brother Paul and some hired relatives worked hard on levelling this hill in preparation for a garden but it came to a point where my brother got sick and had to be hospitalized until he passed away.  Because of the painful memories that has happened over this particular lot, we tried to avoid visiting the place until just recently.  Someone told us that the neighbor on the north side of this lot is trying to encroach on the property once again. This was a wake up call for my family which is why I decided to finish the work and make this lot into a new vegetable garden.   

In all of those 13 years that we did not cultivate the land, the neighbors on three sides of the property has made this lot their dumping site for their garbage. Without asking any permission from us, they dug up some holes and burned their trash on the lot. Where they burned their trash, the soil is blackish which is okay as it made fertilizer for the soil but they also threw some broken bottles or glasses with their trash!  Every time that we dig up a shovelful of dirt in the area where they burned their trash, more broken glasses would come up! We had to hand-pick these broken pieces of glass very carefully least we cut our hands in the process of cleaning it out. It was very time consuming but it had to be done. We also had to dig up all the tall weeds and deep-rooted grasses that had grown all over the garden. It took us four and a half days just cleaning up the whole area. Now we could finally say that the lot is free from trash and weeds and most especially broken bottles and glasses.

Stone Retaining Wall

Some parts in this lot where we are making the new garden are high specially on the north side while some are low in other areas. The left side has a gentle slope but we still have to make a low terrace on this side to control soil erosion. The right side is flat while the middle part is low. The south side which is lower and this is where the rain water runs down naturally was eroded during the typhoon. The retaining wall on this south side was 10 feet high. I think that it would be best if we split this retaining wall into two terraces when the time comes for us to do the repairs. Having a two split level terraces should help to reduce the weight of the soil especially when it gets wet during the rainy season. Hopefully, this will correct the problem. Surprisingly, the other half of this south wall, did not cave in. Maybe because it is sitting on a big boulder whereas the other half that caved in was sitting on hard soil. There was a 4-feet wide 3-feet high hard soil at the bottom where it caved in. However, the neighbor who lives on this south side has taken out the 4-feet wide space at the bottom. This portion where it caved in is not actually on his property but rather it is on another neighbor's property but for some reason, he encroached and built a small shack on this side where it caved in. By taking out the soil at the bottom of the retaining wall, I think that this has contributed to the cause of the erosion of the stone retaining wall.  Anyway, we will have to fix and repair this south retaining wall as soon as we could get some new stones to replace the ones that caved in because they're all gone. When we cleaned out the soil that caved in, we did not see the stones. It vanished like it was never there in the first place. Somebody must have stolen the stones but we could not point out a finger as to who took it because we did not really see anybody taking it. Only God knows who stole the stones. We will let our Heavenly Father to take care of these things for us.  

Creating a New Garden

We are in the process of creating a new vegetable garden which is located about 100 meters away from our house. The location of this new garden is more convenient for us because it is much closer to home as compared to the one in the big hill garden. We will make a water connection from our house to supply this new garden with sufficient water especially during the summer time. This new garden lot is also located on top of a hill but it is smaller in size as compared to the bigger garden on the hillside.  Our plan is to use this garden for some root crops such as potatoes and carrots. We will also be planting some sweet corn, gabi, snap beans and space hugging plants such as squash because it can have the space to grow in this lot. The advantage of this new garden is that it is in full sun so we will take advantage of that and we would plant some tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers etc. The possibilities are endless in this new garden.    

Raised Row Gardening

We build raised rows when making our garden beds. The beds are created above the flat surface of the terraces that my late mom built many years ago. These garden beds are only about 2 feet wide and 10-12 feet long with a narrow path in between the rows. Some beds are short depending on the contour of the hill and the width of the space above the terraced hill. Sometimes, one terrace could only accomodate 3 or 4 garden beds. At the edge of the stone terraces are some guava trees or coffee trees. We do not have a source of water in this hill garden other than the rain water that gets impounded on some shallow ponds during the rainy season. This is what we use for watering the newly planted coffee trees during summer but the water doesn't last long because of evaporation. So during the onset of the rainy season, that is when we plant sweet potatoes so we do not have to worry about watering them. We use sweet potato vines as planting materials. By the time that the rainy season is over, the sweet potatoes would have grown some roots. We use rabbit manure as fertilizer for the plants and we use the vines and leaves of the sweet potatoes to feed our rabbits. Never mind the root crops because the rats in the field always beats us to it, we're mostly interested in the vines and leaves anyway.   

On Sunlight and Rain Water

That is my DH Brad trying to pull a dead coffee tree because it was eaten by some insects, borers perhaps. My late mom planted many coffee trees on this left side of the hill garden and they were all growing nicely until some insects ate all the top leaves and finally the plants died. Anyway, the fruits of the coffee plants that were planted under the shade of the tall pine trees are said to be more flavourful as compared to those planted under the sun. In fact, many of the Barangays surrounding the former American base have planted coffee trees under tall pine trees. My late mom has planted most of her 10 feet tall coffee trees some 50 years ago. We have gathered many bean fruits from our coffee trees and used them for our own personal consumption. She never used insecticide or spray on the coffee trees so we could say that these are organic coffee trees. The month of January to February is when we gather the bean fruits and we process them manually. Nothing beats the aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans and then grinding them manually to make a pot of coffee.

Filtered sun hits this left side of the hill garden but only for about 2-3 hours in the morning. During noontime, the branches of the tall pine trees and the contour of the hill blocks the sun out so this side of the garden is mostly in shade. The lower part of this left side however, gets about 2-3 hours of sunlight when the sun goes down.  About 30 feet in front of where my DH is standing, there is a steep drop of about 15 feet below. The rain water coming from above the hill eroded this part of the garden some 30 years ago and it took a big chunk of the soil away. If you look closely in the picture above, just behind my DH is where the rain water has washed out the soil from under the pine tree. We had to make several ditches on some portions of the upper hill just to control the flow of water and to redirect it so as to reduce soil erosion. Behind my DH is a low stone terrace that my late mom built to conserve the top soil from being washed downhill. She built several stone terraces all by herself using some rocks that she found around the garden. These terraces are of various heights, the tallest is about 4 feet and some are 1-2 feet high depending on the contour of the hill.

On the right side of the hill garden is a gentle slope specially in the middle. The lower and upper portion is somewhat steep so my late mom made some stone terraces on these areas. The flat surface at the top of the terraces were used for planting vegetables and this part gets about 5-6 hours of sun from noon time until sunset. There is no source of water supply in this hill garden so we rely mostly on rain water. There is a creek at the bottom of the hill but it is too laborious to go downhill and haul a heavy bucket or pail of water going uphill. This is why we use this hill garden mostly for planting coffee trees.  

  

Location of Hill Garden

This is a picture of my DH Brad and my younger sister Julie playing games while we were on our way to the big hill garden to do some planting. The hill garden is located some 300 meters away from our place. To go to this garden, we follow the end of the road in our village. In the picture above, just behind my DH is the roof of the waiting shed which is the end of the road and this is also the turning point for all private and public utility vehicles including taxis. We turn left from this waiting shed and follow a walkway that goes downhill passing by some of our neighbor's houses. Then we cross a small foot bridge and some neighbor's gardens which is on a flat area and then we go uphill to reach the hill garden.  At the top of the hill garden is the national road. Fifty meters from the the top of the garden is the new main gate of Camp John Hay. There is actually a short cut that leads to the main gate of the former American base by using the trail from the foot bridge going past the flat gardens below and then going uphill and one would come up to the main gate in about 8 minutes. Anyway, my late mother has been tending and tilling this hill garden since Peace Time or since after WW2. There are a lot of tall pine trees in this hill garden which makes it too shady for vegetable planting.