Hello Hive Gardening Community,
While on my scooter ride yesterday to look for a new person to feature as part of #WhoAreTheyPhilippines initiative, I came across several well organized and beautified gardens. They all kind of looked alike.
When I saw the first garden, I thought that somebody did a pretty good job in making sure the place was neat and clean. I appreciated the fact that each row had a board with the name of the plant or vegetable growing.
Then several minutes later, I saw another one, and noticed that it looked similar to the first garden. It's only after finding the 3rd one that I understood that there must be a connection between them all.
During my 2-3 hours ride I saw a few more than 7 but didn't capture them all. It's only once I got home that I was able to research it and figure out what they are about.
Sugbusog Project
It turns out that the Cebu government launched a Vegetable Gardening Project called "Sugbusog" from the words Sugbo which is the ancient Cebuano term for Cebu and busog which is the term in both Tagalog and Bisaya for being full from food. This was started last year in April.
The idea was simply to encourage people to do more gardening at home. In order to get as many as possible to participate, they made it a contest with prizes and awards for the winners. I haven't however found any information about what those are.
The competition was open to households but also to different zones/areas, also called Puroks, of the municipalities. First, the interested people or Puroks had to register as participants. Then the government provided them with seeds and guidelines on how to prepare their gardens, what type of containers were allowed to be used, what plants/herbs were compulsory and which ones were not, etc... Basically the mechanics. At the same time they were given the criteria for evaluation so they could try to maximize the number of points they could receive.
All of the gardens I saw yesterday are part of the round 2 and as per the schedule announcement on the Sugbusog Facebook page they were evaluated early this month. I'm glad to see that this project is successful and has a lot of participants.
I think it's great to also see some success stories come out of this with 2 sisters selling the extra vegetables they grew and making a living from it.
Among the benefits of the Province’s Sugbusog program is that some families who joined did not only secure fresh and healthy food for their tables but were also able to sell their extra harvests for additional income.
Such is the success story of two single moms in barangay San Agustin in the town of Madridejos.
Sisters Elenita and Erna were able to sell 180 kilos of paliya (bitter gourd) since they started their backyard garden. When Gov. Gwen visited their garden today, she saw how they were able to form a system to collect water from a deep well which they used to water their garden. She also learned that they have been saving money to buy a pump for their deep well so they won’t have to do it manually.
Well, happy with their efforts and seeing their sacrifices for their family, the governor told them not to worry and promised to donate a water pump. Elenita and Erna could not hold back their tears of gratitude.
source
I don't always agree with the decisions of the government, but this was definitely a brilliant idea. I hope they keep it going for a long time.
I think it might be time for me to act on my own words and finally make a raised garden bed on the side of the house we are staying in. There's a bit of space for it and it would be cool to grown our own veggies or at least a few.
See you around.