I just want to share some photos of our backyard vegetable garden. It all started with online research and finding inspiration from global urban and backyard farmers, especially mothers like me. Since leaving full time work, I had more free time in my hands to create and grow. Starting a small, manageable backyard farm proved worthwhile.
Here’s a photo of the first few vegetable plots. I use my bare hands to weed, cultivate, and form the rows to plant in. This was back November 2014, only a few months from today.
We also added backyard chickens, Ana and Elsa lay eggs every day. Victor, our young rooster was added soon. The eggs are not yet fertilized so all of them become breakfast.
Here are some of our harvests. We feel blessed every day with God’s providence and have become closer to nature.
Romaine lettuce from hydroponics, tomato, chicken eggs, and ampalaya. Our sitaws are also hardworking giving us beans every so often:
They grow and fruit so fast, in our experience – you will get what you give in backyard farming. Below is a photo of our Pechay harvest also:
Another type of lettuce I grew and harvested via hydroponics together with other vegetables:
Planting and harvesting are not complete without simple cooking. I highly advocate not wasting any of your produce by being diligent in monitoring and cooking. Sharing some simple recipes to go with your harvest (in photos):
Raw ampalaya salad: just mix your harvested tomatoes and ampalaya together. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Backyard egg sandwich with backyard tomatoes and lettuce
Omelet with string beans aka sitaw, you can also use ampalaya for when produce are not ready at the same time.
My favorite part in backyard farming aside from harvesting, is when my family helps me in gardening and we bond while taking care of our plants and animals. My husband accompanies me every morning in hand watering. I also hope to teach my son Ashton where food comes from, how to grow his own food, the importance of soil, and living simply.
Here is my son harvesting kadios, a type of bean famous in Cavite.
Happy planting!
