Benefits of having your own crops!

Vegetables, fruits and root crops, this is one of the foods we usually eat on a daily basis. This is where we get vitamins and minerals that we cannot get from eating meat alone.

Due to inflation, even fruits and vegetables that are common here are increasing in price, so it is very difficult for those living in cities to buy and eat them.

When I was still working in Metro Manila and we lived there for almost ten years, we went to the market every day to buy fruits and vegetables. I'm not the type of person who likes to eat meat because apart from being expensive, I can quickly get tired of eating it. I can't say that I'm a vegetable lover, but I eat all kinds of vegetables.

Before I came home to the province, I worked in a restaurant so it was normal for me to see and eat meat and we know that restaurants rarely serve vegetables, right?

So every time we go to the market with my wife, I always want us to cook vegetables for our dinner but all of them have to be bought and there's no free.

I used to always request my wife to cook a mixture of okra, eggplant, squash, beans, and "malunggay" leaves. I like to cook it by just adding water and mixing it with a little dried fish. This is a type of recipe for cooking vegetables with less oil because it is not sautéed and it is healthier because there are no other spices mixed in it except dried fish and it is called "laswa" here in our dialect. I still remember that this is what my mother used to do often when we had a lot of plants in our yard.

I used to tell my wife that if we had our own crops, we would not buy from the market and we would be able to eat fresh vegetables unlike the ones in the market that have chemicals added to keep them fresh.

The pandemic came when we were still in Metro Manila, and because it was difficult to bring vegetables and fruits from different provinces to Manila, they raised the price. Their only reason is that they have a lot of perishable vegetables because they cannot be sold immediately, so they have no choice but to raise the price so as not to lose business.

So I said when I return to our province I will really plant vegetables so that when I need and want to eat, I can get it right away.

What I said came true because just a few months after I said those words, we returned to the province because the pandemic lasted and my work was also affected. Just two weeks since we came home, I saw a place in our yard where only grass had grown, I asked mom if I could clean it and weed it so I could plant vegetables.

When I went to town, I immediately bought the seeds of what I wanted to plant. The first seeds I bought was bell pepper seeds, pechay and tomatoes. But because I don't have much knowledge about the proper care of crops, the results of what I planted, especially tomatoes and bell peppers, did not turn out well. Except for pechay which I grew because of its beautiful leaves, I harvested well.

At the month of June, the rainy season has arrived. There I felt lazy because the garden I made was flooded with water when it rained heavily and my crops were ruined. That's why when the plants I planted there were gone, I looked for another place to make a garden.

Our current plants at our garden:

If we used to buy even lemon grass and ginger in Metro Manila, now we only plant it behind our house. We get what we want for free.

We also have our own hot pepper plant that our source when we want to eat spicy food. This is what our friends in the market used to say that the price of chili peppers is high because they rot quickly. So even if it's expensive, when you really need it, you have no choice but to buy it.

The vacant lot behind our house is wide and it's our own land, so no matter what plants we want to plant here, no one will be angry.

We have also planted sweet potatoes, which cost Php10 per bundle of young leaves when we bought them and the leaves are almost dry. But now even if we eat it every day it's fine and I know it's fresh.

I said earlier that I love stewed vegetables like okra, beans and squash so this is it, we also have crops of such vegetables.

As they say, If something is planted, something will be reaped.

If there is an empty lot in your area, you can use it and grow any kind of vegetables and fruits. Than only grass is benefiting from it.

My mother likes to use upo or bottle gourd every new year as her "pampalihi" and she mixes it with beef or carabao meat, so we also thought that instead of buying from others, we will plant it ourselves so that it costs less when the new year come. And I know that before December, this upo plant will bear fruit that she can use.

Once again, thank you readers for visiting ang reading this article. Have a nice day to all of us.