Grow Your Own Food Challenge

Plants, especially succulents, are definitely more popular these days. I bet you have one of them sitting somewhere in your home or office right now. Even before COVID-19 happened, I’ve seen a lot of my online friends post pictures of their house plants. Even I didn’t escape the trend. I have always been fascinated by plants but never really started planting and propagating them until I moved here in Santander.

While plants are quite popular, I only know a handful of people who grow vegetables. House plants are nice. I get that. I have a lot of them. They do add color to our lives but let’s be honest; you can’t eat them. These days, I am so thankful that I have a vegetable garden because I can just pick what is available and cook it. If it gets to a point where I lose my job or other sources of income, I will still not go hungry because I have an edible garden to lean on.

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I started getting interested in organic gardening a few years ago while I was still living in the city. The very thought of growing your own food sounds really fascinating. But I was living in an apartment back then that has little to no access to water and even sunlight. I was also constantly traveling so I knew back then that starting an 'edible garden' was impossible. Now that I have all the space I needed, I finally decided to create one. I recently joined a vegetable gardening contest and we just had the 2nd municipal evaluation earlier today. I also harvested all the pechay and kangkong today. Waiting for a few more weeks before I can harvest the cucumbers too. Anyway, just a little update from me. I haven't been posting on IG regularly. 

A post shared by miss bean (@beanintransit) on Jul 8, 2020 at 5:29am PDT

Food tastes better when you grow your own food.”

So I decided to challenge at least one person out there to start growing their own food. It doesn’t even have to be a full-blown vegetable garden just like mine. One of the reasons why I joined a vegetable gardening contest a few months ago is because I wanted to show that a lot of vegetables can actually grow in containers. For the past few months, I was able to grow 15 vegetables and herbs using only recycled containers!

I challenged one of my friends to plant a spring onion from cuttings. I figured that since she has no experience in gardening yet, this vegetable is the perfect choice for her. It’s something we use almost every day. It’s not high-maintenance and doesn’t require a lot of water. You can just plant it and forget about it and it will still grow. And when it’s time to use it for cooking, you can just cut a few stems and leave the rest to grow.

I’m hoping growing at least one vegetable will encourage her to plant more. I believe that no one is born with a black thumb and if you’re just willing to try, you can definitely grow your own food – one container at a time.

Challenge a Friend

I am still in the process of looking for people to challenge. With the coronavirus pandemic going on, I can’t meet people yet so I can’t physically give them seeds or seedlings. But there are vegetables you can buy in the market that you can regrow like alugbati, onions, garlic, and camote tops. By writing this blog, I might convince another reader to also plant. Who knows? One of you reading this may want to try it too.

And when you finally can harvest it, try to challenge another to grow their own.

There’s a quote I read somewhere that I really love and I hope will inspire you to start growing your own food too. “To grow your own food gives you a sort of power and it gives people dignity. You know exactly what you’re eating because you grew it. It’s good, it’s nourishing, and you did this for yourself, your family, and your community.” – Karen Washington

Also read: A Trip to Samar Got Me Into Organic Gardening