growing veggies in silang

Our property in Silang, Cavite, is officially classified as “agricultural land,” and the development, Ponderosa Leisure Farms, imposes a restriction that you cannot build on more than 25% of your lot – the rest of the lot has to be garden – ornamentals or vegetables. This restriction and land classification makes sure that your neighbors are not too close [unlike some subdivisions] and helps lower real estate taxes significantly.

Most of our garden is planted in ornamentals but a certain portion is reserved for ‘veggies.’ So far we’ve harvested tomatoes, cucumber, eggplant, ampalaya, okra, pechay [Chinese cabbage], bell pepper and chili pepper.

Some of them mature over time and you can harvest more or less when you want. Others, like tomato, seem to ripen all at once. In the next week or so, we’ll be harvesting lots of tomatoes and the idea is to use some of the harvest to make pasta sauce and freeze that for future use.

It’s sort of ironic that the main source of our vegetable seeds is the East West Seed Company, a company founded more than 25 years ago by a cousin of mine from Enkhuizen, Netherlands; our fathers used to be partners in a major seed company there.

…East West began in 1982 with the goal of blending European style seedsmanship with Asian tropical vegetables. We were convinced that by introducing intensive breeding programs to developing vegetable seed markets we could improve the lives of farmers while building a successful business. Our first commercial success, a hybrid bitter gourd, came after several years of research investment. But our hard work has paid off by significantly raising industry standards for all vegetable seeds.

…Our strategy is based on breeding appropriate varieties by living and working in the markets we serve. From our early work in the Philippines, we have expanded to include breeding programs in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

In 2007, I contacted the company office here in the Philippines, explained who I was, and indicating that I would be interested in visiting them to view their Philippine operation. Perfect timing as my email got to them just before the 25^th anniversary of the company – of course, Noel and I attended. Now we grow and eat their vegetables.

Lately, we’ve also added hydroponics trials – on the suggestion of friends from the agricultural college at U.P. Los Baños. Lettuce and stuff like Chinese pechay seem to do very well.

Given the cost of real estate in this area, growing your own vegetables might not make much economic sense --- but it’s fun and you can’t get them any fresher.

The rainy season is starting and everything is growing like crazy -- and so are the weeds.