Balikbayan grows vegetables in sacks!

By RIC REYES

December 3, 2010, 6:21pm

 MANILA, Philippines – There’s an enterprising balikbayan in Brgy. San Pedro, Sta. Rosa, Nueva Ecija who grows vegetables in sacks instead of in plots in the ground. She is Thelma Villaroman Zara who used to work for an aviation company in Anaheim, California.

Her duplex house has been attracting a lot of visitors not only from the neighborhood but also from nearby towns. That’s because of the very impressive display of vegetables that are planted in used sacks around the house.

Thelma’s house stands on about 2,000 square meters of land. The big space around the house is mostly cemented and is used for drying palay during the dry season. When the area is not used for drying palay it is not really productive so she decided to do something unusual. She planted different kinds of vegetables in used fertilizer sacks.

It was Noel Lazaro, a technician of the Ease-West Seed Company, who convinced her to make the place productive by planting in containers ampalaya, eggplant, tomato, hot pepper, upo or bottle gourd, squash, okra and sitao or string beans.

Lazaro gave Thelma technical advice on how to go about her gardening project and introduced to her the ready-to-plant Farm Ready seedlings produced by East-West Seed. Farm Ready seedlings made it a lot easier for her to grow the vegetables because it eliminated the tedious process of sowing and growing the seedlings. If one is not proficient in germinating seedlings, it could result in total failure because the young seedlings are susceptible to fungal diseases if they are not protected from disease organisms.

Thelma planted the following seedlings: Two trays of Diamante Max (Dmax) tomato seedlings, two trays of Django and Red Hot pepper, two trays of Morena eggplant, 150 Galaxy ampalaya, and the rest were directly-seeded like the okra, string beans, squash and upo.

The growing medium consisted of garden soil, dried carabao manure and carbonized rice hull with the ratio of 60 parts garden soil, 20 parts carabao manure and 20 parts carbonized rice hull. All materials used were sourced locally. She bought 1,500 empty fertilizer sacks at P2.50 per sack which she says she can use for two crop cycles. She bought the “bugsok” trellis from Bocaue, Bulacan and the blue strings and GI wire from the local store.

Today, her vegetable plants are very productive, giving her substantial income She said she was able to sell to her neighbors and at the local market at very good prices. Her tomatoes sold for P40 per kilo, eggplant at P30 per kilo, chili hot pepper at P150 per kilo, squash at P15 per kilo and sitao at P40 per kilo.

Thelma says that planting vegetables right in her home gives her not just financial reward but also psychic income. Every day she and her family eat clean and healthy vegetables freshly picked from her backyard.

For her, tending the vegetable garden every morning is very therapeutic.

It gives her good exercise and a wonderful feeling of self-satisfaction. Her gardening, she says, is a far cry from her stressful job in the US where she used to work as a technician of Aviation Sundstrand, a company that manufactures airplane parts in Anaheim, California. She also loves entertaining guests and visitors who go to her house every day to see the vegetables, usually asking for some advice on home gardening.

Farming is such an enjoyable experience for her that she decided to stay in the country for good. She plans to develop a two-hectare land she inherited from her parents where she will grow vegetables from East-West Seed.