Tag: vegetable

April & May, Explore & Play

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in Color Combo & Design, Container Garden, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Herbs, Outdoor Classrooms, Outdoor Classrooms, Raised Beds, School Gardens

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

April and May are wonderful months to plan fun garden activities for upcoming school breaks. If you have summer school students, children, nieces and/or nephews, plan a garden. Or arrange a fieldtrip to child-friendly gardens, parks and/or playgrounds. These landscapes are excellent venues for playtime, nature exploration, and family bonding. Here are some fun ideas to inspire some fun kid-centric adventures in a garden, park, or playground.

  1. SENSORY GARDENS: Build a sensory garden or add sensory plants to an existing garden. Sensory gardens feature plants that stimulate children’s observation skills and imagination. Together, you can choose plants that possess leaves with vibrant colors or leaves with unique shapes. Greenery with notable textures, amazing aromas, delicious fruits, and/or extreme sizes. To stimulate a garden visitor’s auditory senses, choose plants that attract local songbirds or chirping geckos. Some examples are these sensory-stimulating flora are multi-colored San Francisco, 30-meter tall Tipo trees with their unique, lobed leaf shapes, or Ilang-Ilang with fruity fragrance that travels throughout the afternoon. Other examples are native sensory marvels are trees like Bangkal (Nauclea orientalis), Katmon (Dillenia philippinensis), and Almaciga (Agathis philippinensis). For more kid-centric plant combinations and sensory garden design suggestions, check out:
The sensory garden design above features plants like colorful ornamental gingers, duwaw, trellised passionfruit vines, potted native berries, and potted ilang-ilang.

2. EDIBLE APRIL & MAY: With your enthusiastic students and youth gardeners, you can plant herbs, berries and vegetables. They can use my planting calendar to choose what seeds to plant and add to the garden. If you want to learn more about April berries to plant, check out April’s Dessert Garden. During these hot and dry months, use smart water conservation techniques like mulching, drip irrigation, and if you saved water during the rainy season, it’s time to use your rainwater storage tanks. You can also check out your local children’s gardening events through facebook groups, churches, or barangay hall events.

>>>>Download planting calendar
>>>>Download cebu pollinator plants

3. COOL, STARRY NIGHT GARDENS: Plan a garden that you and the kids can enjoy at night. Sometimes summer days can be too hot. Evenings in the garden, under the stars, are much more enjoyable. Add fragrant, night-blooming water lilies, vines and shrubs to your garden. Choose shrubs that emit strong evening fragrances. Night fragrant orchids, cacao flowers and Dama de Noche jasmine are excellent examples. Or plant a raised bed with night-blooming cacti and flowers that attract the often-overlooked nocturnal pollinators. Flowers like night-blooming phlox, angel’s trumpet, Queen of the Night cactus, honeysuckle, and evening primrose invite amazing local bats and moths. These nighttime gardens are great spots for children to run around and explore. They are also beautiful venues for outdoor parties with the whole family.

Enjoy the rest of April and hope you have a blooming start to May!

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Vegetable Combos in November

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in Container Garden, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Raised Beds

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

November is a time to plant an amazing assortment of vegetable seedlings in Cebu. You can start planting seeds or seedlings of kalabasa, repolyo, rabanos, singkamas, leafy greens, atsal, sibuyas bombay, and more. For a complete list of November’s options, download this free planting calendar. For detailed food garden designs, order my new Kitchen Garden design book.

Ever since I was 19, I’ve learned planting techniques from various types of organic gardening. In previous posts, I’ve shared agroforestry combinations and crop rotation techniques I’ve learned from farmers in different regions of Philippines.

I’ve also had teachers practice planting techniques from styles like French Intensive Gardening, Korean Natural Farming, Australian permaculture, and Japanese Companion Planting. With this array of cultivation styles, beginner gardeners can be unsure of which technique to choose.

In my experience, you need to experiment and test what works for your garden. In farming, we call these experiments test plots or plant trials. These experiments help you record and determine which techniques work with your garden conditions (aka soil, pests, wind, water, etc). It’s perfectly fine to apply various techniques from a mix of gardening styles. You may even adapt or innovate a technique along the way.

The following planting techniques emphasize mixed cultivation and intercropping. The methods aim to:

  • prevent fungal growth & plant diseases
  • maximize garden space
  • hasten vegetable growth
  • deter insect pests

This planting season, experiment and see if they work in your garden. Each illustration below shows how much space is between each seed or seedling. This space gives the plants enough room to mature and grow.

Plant Combos

Ampalaya with sitaw. Ampalaya and Sitaw are grown in a row and supported by a trellis.

Cabbage & Lettuce. Varieties of Cabbage and Lettuce are grown in separate rows, next to each other.

Spinach & Onion. Spinach and Onion are grown in short, alternating rows.

Gabi & Camote. Gabi are grown in separate rows next to each other.

Eggplant Complementary Pairs. Eggplant can be grown with a few key companion plants. Eggplant can be planted with rows of garlic, radish and ginger. The illustrations below show suggested layouts and spacing.

Enjoy, experiment with different techniques and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Remember, green thumbs and gardening instincts are born out of practice, observation and hard earned experience. Have fun and happy planting!

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October’s Optimistic Seedlings

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in agroforestry, Container Garden, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Raised Beds

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

Gardening is a constant invitation to observe, experiment, and refine your plant growing techniques. October is an opportune time to learn new skills and sprout a wide range of optimistic seedlings.

In October, Cebu’s weather and rainfall is generally suited to planting squash seedlings, seeds of leafy vegetables, a few root crops, beans and more. Here are a few suggestions of specific vegetables you can plant from seed or seedling:

  • Leafy Vegetables: repolyo (cabbage), cauliflower, pechay, mustasa (mustard)
  • Onions: garlic (ahos), sibuyas bombay (onion)
  • Gourds: sikwa (luffa), calabasa (squash), kalubay (bottle gourd), ampalaya (bitter gourd), sayote (chayote)
  • Sun-loving veggies: kamatis (tomato), okra, taong (eggplant)
  • Roots: gabi (taro)

For a complete monthly planting list, download the free planting calender here.

This list above includes links to previous growing guides. Click on one of bold vegetable categories above to see my specific guides for squashes, leafy vegetables and more.

This past March, I introduced techniques like crop rotation. In that post, I explained how plants are grouped by their similar cultivation needs. Crop rotation is about enhancing plant compatibility. For more details, check out March: Food x Flower Gardens.

Plant Incompatibility occurs when you plant two vegetable groups with drastically different watering, sun, or soil requirements next to each other. Problems can occur. You may see stunted growth, leaf diseases from mineral deficiencies, mold, or pest infestations.

Below are some sample designs that integrate crop rotation groups and outdoor seating areas (Photos 1 to 3). These sample planting arrangements can be applied to home or school gardens. Each design features raised beds and plots with particular vegetable groupings. You’ll also notice pollinator attractants like cosmos and pest repellents like lemongrass.

A combination of Crop Rotation groups, pollinator attractants, and insect repellents ensure:

  • fertile soil (full of minerals and nutrients for healthy vegetables)
  • weed control, and
  • pest control
Photo 1. A terraced vegetable garden with royal blue outdoor lounge


Leafy Vegetables & Onions
Combinations of repolyo (cabbage), cauliflower, pechay, and mustasa (mustard) are featured in all three designs. They all benefit from weekly watering and deep, fertilized soil. Remember you don’t need to grow all types of leafy vegetables in one space. You can combine 2 options like cauliflower and pechay.

Leafy vegetables and onions are commonly grown together (Photo 1 & 2). The members of the Onion family such as garlic and large white onions repel pests (like aphids and beetles) that can harm leafy vegetables.

Gourds
Gourds like sikwa (luffa), calabasa (squash), kalubay (bottle gourd), ampalaya (bitter gourd), sayote (chayote) really thrive in compost-rich soil and mulch. When they grow together, you can easily monitor their leaves. Gourds require ventilation and trellising to prevent mould on the leaves and vegetables. When they are in the same garden section, you can gently tie their long vines to a trellis, net, arbor, pergola (Photo 1 & 3). For instance, in Healing Present’s farm, we’ve grown sayote with ampalaya on the same trellis.

Photo 2. An angular patio path with a series of vegetable raised beds

Sun-loving veggies
Kamatis (tomato), okra, and taong (eggplant) can be grouped together as well (Photos 1 to 3). All three of these vegetables need plenty of water, sun exposure, heat and well-draining soil. They also need lots of nitrogen in their soil.

Photo 3. Backyard vegetable gardens integrated into outdoor kitchen and children’s play areas

Roots
Different cultivars of gabi/taro (Colocasia esculenta) can grown near edges of ponds or swampy areas. If you include these root crops in shallow ponds make sure the roots are planted in soil (Photos 1 to 3). They do not have floating roots. In some parts of the Philippines, gabi is combined with other species of taros like Xanthosoma sagittifolium, giant taro (Alocasia macrorrhiza), and swamp taro (Cyrtosperma chamissonis).

I hope this intro to plant compatibility and crop rotation inspires you to explore new gardening techniques. Be that new seedling…so full of potential and optimism. Who knows? This month you may find a technique that boosts your garden’s growth. Green fingers crossed.

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Lola’s Bam-i Garden

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in Container Garden, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

Last week was my grandma’s birthday. She passed away more than a decade ago but my family still celebrates her birthday every year. We mark her birthday with small blessings to maintain our connection and to ensure her afterlife is peaceful.

My mom and her sisters call a priest and request grandma’s name is included in the mass petitions. I usually take a nature hike and quietly recall fond memories with her. Or I watch one of grandma’s favorite movies.

Families in Cebu practice many beautiful and creative traditions to honor those who passed. Another way to commemorate or celebrate a loved one is to build a garden.

A memorial garden can be an extension of those joyful rituals. It can be a small, intimate space to remember and reflect by yourself. Or it can be an outdoor room to gather, honor and celebrate loved ones together with family and friends.

I would build a Bam-i Garden (Photo 1) to remember Lola. Bam-i is a dish with two types of noodles, vegetables, and chicken. In Cebu, it’s commonly served on birthdays and a delicious symbol for long life. My grandma’s recipe was especially delectable. For detailed recipe garden designs, order my new Kitchen Garden design book.

Lola’s memorial garden would feature her signature Bam-i ingredients. I’d add garden beds of carrots and celery with potted napa cabbage and sweet peas. Limonsito (calamondin) and wood ear mushrooms are also essential to Bam-i. In a cooler dark shed, I would install an indoor mushroom bed. Finally, in sunny spots of the garden, I would add clusters of limonsito trees. Since Lola was a movie buff, I might add some seating and a white wall so we could project her favorite comedy films.

Photo 1. A sketch of Lola’s memorial garden

On All Soul’s Day, in Cebu, I see many families honor the dead in joyful and beautiful ways. Some families visit the graves of deceased relatives and set up picnics. They eat the deceased one’s favorite snacks, offer flowers, conduct mass, and recite prayers.

If you feel inspired to build your own memorial garden, you can plant it with loved one’s favorite flowers or fruits. Or maybe fill it with ingredients from a favorite dish. Hope you have a peaceful and creative time celebrating loved ones!

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June’s Easy Leafy Greens

Featured by Healing Present Nature & Wellness Center, posted in Container Garden, Food Garden, Gardening and Landscape Design, Raised Beds

By Michelle Domocol @inflourish_
Back to Inflourish: Cebu Blog

June is a great time to plant fool-proof leafy greens like mustasa, petsay, and spinach. In Cebu, these are leafy greens are essential ingredients in delicious stir-fries, pickled side dishes, adobos, fish entrees, chicken stews, and more.

Luckily, mustasa (mustard greens), petsay (pechay) and spinach have similar growing requirements. In Healing Present, we like to plant rows of these veggies in the same area. Here are some quick reminders to help you start your own leafy green garden plot:

  • PREPARE a raised bed or pot of well-draining soil. Amend your soil with vermicast, compost, or rice hulls to increase the nutrient content. Some gardeners make a special mix with all three of these amendments. Spread a layer of leafy green seeds over the soil. Then, cover the seeds with a thin layer of soil.
  • WATER the seeds thoroughly. As they grow, increase the frequency of watering to 3 times a week.
  • CHECK the garden regularly for any hungry insect pests or invasive weeds. Be sure to remove them. For added protection, you can make a permeable, rectangular tent to protect the seeds. The tent can be made of shade netting to repel any pests. It can also shade young seedlings. As the seedlings grow, you can remove the tent to increase light exposure.

  • MAKE a rectangular netting frame or netting tent to protect young greens from hungry pests. All sides except the bottom of the frame are covered in green or white shade netting. The frame is simply made of dried reeds, bamboo, or wood.

Happy June gardening! Remember to stay on schedule and get your own Cebu planting calendar here.

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