Urban Gardening

By Lola Elyang (The Freeman) Updated August 04, 2011 12:00 AM

CEBU, Philippines - Times are getting tougher and tougher. Prime commodities have ridden on the 18th wave of price hike since January of this year. We again have to raise a level up our resourcefulness in dealing with the need to stretch another inch the ever-devaluating peso.

One of easy solutions to achieving food sufficiency, even in an urban setting, is to plant your own herbs and vegetables on whatever small space you have. Take for example my case:

Suggested place where to start your urban gardening in Cebu

I prepared containers, some seeds and baby plants, potting soil and vermicompost. I bought my vermicompost from a plant fair at SM City Cebu.

If you don’t have the real plastic plant container or clay pots, you are greatly encouraged to utilize cans, softdrink cups, broken basins and pails, or any other recyclables to prevent them from piling up on our dumpsites.

With a dose of help from an online information I gathered, “container gardens can be planted in anything deep enough to support root growth (8-12 inches ideally), as long as you punch in some holes in the bottom for drainage (think pots, buckets, and even recycled kiddie pools).”

For vegetables, l learned that almost everything will grow in a container. But I did start small and simple. I began with spring onions because aside from their ability to adapt quickly to new soil after repotting, they can also stand today’s volume of rain. Another is the baby bell pepper plant which I pulled out from where a number of seeds thrown at a corner of our yard were left to grow.

How to do the planting? Fill your container with lightly packed potting soil to about an inch below the rim and plant the seeds another half inch below the surface, this I was carefully told.

“Water your garden and place it on a rooftop, fire escape, or sunny windowsill,” the online advisory read.

But the advice also came with a warning: “Remember that over-watering is the fastest and most common way to kill a plant – always let the soil dry out and then fill it up.”