Hello to all the amazing gardeners and farmers in this community! I hope you're all doing well, in good health and maybe a bit of wealth too! (just kidding… but wouldn't that be nice?)
The most rewarding part of gardening or farming is the harvest season because it's like reaping the fruits of your hard work. Only those who farm or garden truly understand the joy and fulfillment that comes from harvesting your own crops, especially when the yield is abundant and high quality.
Today, we’re harvesting our onion leeks because the market price is finally good and acceptable. It’s actually a bit overdue, but as farmers, we often have no choice but to wait for a good price before we can harvest. We’re grateful to my uncle, his wife, and their sons for helping us so we can finish it earlier.
The weather has been good today. We uprooted the leeks and placed them directly into a vegetable plastic, ready to load into the vehicle. Even though this is just a small area, we can gather more than 10 vegetable plastics. We also have a vegetable weighing scale here to label the weight on each plastic, some can go up to 10 kilos depending on how they’re packed. Onion leeks are lighter compared to other vegetables we grow.
Once everything is packed, the leeks will be delivered to the market. The travel usually takes 4 to 5 hours, depending on the vehicle used. It’s such fulfilling to harvest when the market prices are good but there are times when prices drop, and it’s not as rewarding financially. But as a farmer we must readily accept this kind of situation.
Onion leeks is easy to plant because it did not require more process and fertilizers as well as pesticides or insecticide. You just need to cultivate the soil add with fertilizers like chicken manure and maintain the weeds. Spraying chemicals is optional as well as applying artificial fertilizers. It can also grow in any types of soil.
Among all the crops we plant, onion leeks has the shortest growing period. It can only take about 70 days or two and a half months before they’re ready to harvest. When our soil isn't in its best condition, we sometimes rest it for a season. But since growing leeks actually helps improve soil fertility, we still choose to plant them. We usually plant it with carrots after harvesting the Onion leeks, because based from our experience, the soil that previously planted with onion leeks, produces big and smooth carrots something we’ve consistently observed season after season.
Farming may not be easy but we farmers know that agriculture is a bit like gambling, you win some, you lose some. But regardless of the market price, we keep going. This is our life, and we love what we do.
Thank you so much for taking time in reading my blog. I really appreciate it! MABUHAY!
*Photos are mine and edited In canva