Growing up, my mother used to have a little garden. I guessed this influence me a little because I’ve always wanted to plant something and watch it grow slowly. Now that we have a house of our own, I’ve always wanted to set up a garden of our own just like my mother have done. Since we don’t have a front yard, we have to set up our garden on our rooftop.
Starting from scratch I have no idea which plant I wanted to plant. My wife always wanted to have a salad garden from which all the plants planted there can be eaten. I don’t have a problem with this, if only growing a vegetable garden was that easy. And there is no way of knowing this unless I tried first. So the first plant I planted in our garden is an Okra. I planted a seed and after a few days, it started to sprout out from the soil. I was happy to see it grow and still growing. This certainly boost my morale.
With the momentum behind me, I ask the family to join me on a road trip to Bulacan to check and buy some plants to start our garden. We drove to Bulacan which is not far from our city. Just a bit of advice, try not to go during rush hour as much as possible to avoid traffic in NLEX. Going on a regular day and during normal hours help us avoid traffic plus getting an Easytrip saved us the long lines at the toll gate.
At NLEX, take Tabang (Guiguinto, Malolos) exit, not long after exiting, you will see rows of plant shops that sells different types of plants. I have been to Manila seedling (when it was still open), Quezon City Circle and Fairview — all of these places have lots of stores that sells plants. What sets Guiguinto apart is, I think, this place sells plants for landscaping and for those who wants to purchase plants that are already fully grown for landscaping . If you want to purchase medicinal and ornamental plants, I suggest you go to Quezon Memorial Circle.
Back to Guiguinto, Purple and I browsed around all of the stores. It was nice to spend time with my daughter just hanging out, walking and looking for plants for our garden. Purple saw some cacti and I ended up paying for 3 of them plus small pots and gravel. But I was very happy purchasing those for her.
I both 2 Hibiscus, 2 Eugenia, 1 rubber tree and 12 hanging plants. We left Guiguinto with our new plants, pockets empty, and bellies hungry. On our way home we decided to eat at an Army Navy on a gas station along NLEX. Everyone was having a good time… Adding this to our family memory bank.
A few days back home and it is time to transfer the plants into their pots. I have an extra bag of soil mixed with chicken manure plus I bought 2 extra bags in Guiguinto. These should be more than enough to fill the pots and help the plants during the transfer.
Look how the plants look like after the transfer.
Look at Purple’s cacti! She already transferred the small one to the small pot she bought and put gravel on top of the soil, she hasn’t had the time to transfer the others.
With some luck and a little bit of caring this plants will be part of our (hopefully) lush rooftop garden someday.
It looks great so far!