Our first set of vegetable crops

Here are some pictures of Crusor's first crops which were mostly fed to the pigs as their snacks. We prepared home-made concoctions for the plant nutrients such as Effective Microorganisms (EM), Fermented Plant Juice (FPJ), Organic Herb Nutrients (OHN), and the likes. We didn't use any chemical fertilizers and insecticides for the plants. This was our first time growing vegetables so we encountered errors and challenges in the process. Yes, our first grow didn't quite turn out perfect but we eventually learned from it. I'll post results from our second grow in the succeeding entries :)

Pole Sitao trellising on Mahogany trees

We planted Gotukula and Lemon Grass in the herb area. There's not much to see here, yet.:)

The future fodder for the livestock. Rensonii, Flemengia, Indigofera, Malunggay, and Cassava were planted at an estimated area of 700sqm. The intense heat during last summer made it hard for the newly transplanted plants to retain water. We made sure that we water them everyday to keep the moisture of the ground constant during those summer months. We used rice hulls with processed chicken manure as mulch. It retained moisture and made weeding very minimal.

 

Kangkong bed. Notice that in between the beds is a very small walkway. Well, we changed it now. The stacking of the rubble was not that uniform (unlike with our most recent raised bed)... we're still learning :)

This was our first design for the trellising vegetables like Ampalaya and Bottle Gourd. The sack didn't last long - it became brittle. We also used bamboo poles overhead for the crawling vines. We eventually abolished this design because it didn't work.

Okra growing in sacks. The sacks were good for the first fruiting of the plants. It then got brittle and soil was coming out.

Radish harvesting was amusing. Since it's our first time to grow a root vegetable, we were unsure of the exact harvest time for the radish so we kept on estimating the harvest date. They were grown in 14 inches of raised bed on concrete. Each row of bed was 1x3 meters in size with limited harvesting area. We modified it to 1x20 meters now and allocated a meter of walkway as harvesting area.  The pigs in the farm love the radish - they even play with it before munching on it.

We had no problems growing this Pechay. The substrate is rich in nutrients. We used compost and CRH (carbonized rice hull) and sprayed/innoculated it with beneficial microorganisms.  We gave half of the harvest to the pigs as their meriendas.