COVID-19 has spawned a new generation of planters. Not sugar barons or coconut tycoons, but plantitos and plantitas growing super expensive plants often with weird-looking inedible green-and-white leaves. Spare time while in self-quarantine made me an accidental farmtito. I had tossed overripe grocery store tomatoes to a snake plant pasô and a plant sprouted, flowered, and fruited, yielding me at least one tomato every day for lunch. Happily growing in other pots are what I think is a turmeric plant and monggo seedlings, one already flowering despite a rather aggressive ampalaya vine that hooks on to anything. A durian seedling is already a foot high, although its future is not too bright in its flowerpot.
LET IT GREEN: The Potager Garden of Arya Residences, BGC.
ArthaLand Corporation is more focused. A 400-sqm farm sits on a rooftop of its high-end Arya Residences on BGC’s McKinley Parkway. The brainchild of ArthaLand president Jimmie Gonzalez and his wife Connie, growing in “The Potager Garden” are more than 20 kinds of organic produce—leafy and root vegetables, herbs, spices, and fruits available for sale to condo residents.
Originally a bare concrete roof, Connie Gonzalez brought up and spread 12 inches of rich compost over a cinder stone substrate. Sections were carefully laid out with an eye to cultivation efficiency and aesthetic appeal.
Now it has an extraordinary variety of plants: green onion, lagundî, screwpine (pandán), turmeric (luyang diláw), lemon grass (tanglád), tarragon, butterfly pea (pukingán), dill, ginger (luya), mint, black turmeric, rosemary, mint, sweet basil (balanoy), and Thai basil (sulasi). Many of them perfume the air.
A flowerpot tomato.
At the rooftop’s edges are taller plants like kalamansî; leafy greens such as pechay, mustasa, and arugula; plants with colorful fruits like lady’s fingers, eggplant, and chili pepper; trailing vegetables like ampalaya, cucumber, and alugbati; and flowering plants such as tacoma and caballero. Maize has grown well, intercropped with camote.
An enthusiastic and scientific gardener, Ms. Gonzalez insisted that no artificial fertilizer be used. She made sure that the soil was rich organic vermicompost that she herself produces and uses. The process is a bit smelly but is straightforward: arrange hollow blocks in a one-meter square, one-meter-high area and fill it with layers of grass cuttings, leaves, discarded vegetables and fruit peels, chicken manure (ideally of chicks or free-range chickens, so there is no antibiotics residue) and water periodically to hasten decomposition. Ms. Gonzalez says non-chlorinated water is best, meaning rainwater or faucet water that has been set aside for a few days. African nightcrawler worms will do the rest—their poop is sterile and the resulting soil yields amazing harvests.
With all the TLC, ArthaLand’s Potager Garden is a unique oasis in BGC’s concrete jungle, attracting not only Arya residents who have first crack at the organic produce, but also to birds, bees, and butterflies that enliven the greenery.
Food was scarce during the Japanese Occupation and Manilans were encouraged to grow their own vegetables. Tatay planted our yard in Santa Cruz with bananas that gave us fruits and veggies (the kare-kare ingredient pusò ng saging). Nanay’s sampaguita and rosal made way for beans (bataw), camote, talinum, and alugbati. We even had a small pond for kangkong.
Not that we are now close to starvation but with food so expensive and unemployment so high, it is well to remember the veggies enumerated in a song people my age learned in grade school:
Bahay kubo, kahi’t muntî, Ang halaman doon, ay sari-sarì. Singkamás at talóng, sigarilyas at manî, Sitaw, bataw, patanì.
Kundól, patola, upo’t kalabasa, At saka mayroón pa, labanós, mustasa, Sibuyas, kamatis, bawang, at luya. Sa paligid-ligid ay punô ng liñga.
The Vacant Lot Garden of Vicente Domingo
One of agriculturist Vicente Domingo’s advocacies is urban agriculture. He posted on Facebook that under a Marcos decree, one can plant vegetables on any idle property. He calls attention to the Covid Farming Technique that needs only seeds that can be bought in any market (e.g., monggo and peanuts) and a shovel and that will also provide the urban farmer enough exercise and vitamin D to get COVID immunity.
Domingo prescribes the following: (a) early in the day, start cutting the grass and brush; (b) pile them up in a 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 meter enclosure; (c) let them ferment into via thermal composting (it’s on Google, says Domingo); (d) dig a trench as deep as the shovel in an East-West orientation; (e) channel as much water as is available into the trench; (f) dig another trench and set aside four to six inches of topsoil; (g) after the water in the first trench is absorbed into the ground, mix the topsoil with composted grass into the first trench and top up with subsoil; (h) take a break—by then you should have had two hours of exercise and vitamin D (be sure the sun is out while on steps a to g); and (i) at 3 p.m., return to plant your seeds or seedlings.
Repeat in succeeding days or when energy permits until the whole place is fully planted. At harvest time, it’s only fair to send 10 percent of the harvest to the lot owner if known or to the barangay office for distribution to the needy. Domingo’s final word—pray.
Whether on rooftops, vacant lots, or flower pots, vegetable gardening is the way to go.
Note: (a) Potager is French for kitchen or vegetable garden; and (b) Mr. Vicente Domingo describes himself as A Farmer Rights Activist developing Get Smart Farms to self-employ 1,000 farmers and farm workers. He posted his phone number in case clarification is needed: 0917 317 1074.
Comments are cordially invited, addressed to [email protected].