Urban backyard farming

March 16, 2020 Community Billboard

ATOK, Benguet — Antonio Mendoza a Baguio boy encourage residents who have 45 to 100 square meter lot in their backyard to go on “Urban Farming” this to promote chemical-free vegetables and fruits harvest just near in your backyard.
He learned the concept of “urban farming “ in Israel while he stays in a vacation. Mendoza said that you do not need to have a large vast of farm but to utilize small patches of lots, like 45 square meters or up to 100 meters you can have a farm.
Mendoza’s Green Leaf Products is behind the Dielles honey wine the ingredients are honey and strawberry which are grown and harvested from the small patches of lots converted into a green houses.
He said that taking care of the strawberries yield about 120 kilograms a week. Harvest is twice a week. The honey they gathered from their apiary in Baguio Botanical garden is used as base of their wines.
Green Leaf’s small patch of lot within the Botanical Garden serves as home to 18 colonies of European bees larger than those found in our locality.
Mendoza also set up a backyard farming in their house which he converted into a green house compose of 400 small strawberry forbs are planted.
Mendoza said that it takes 45 days for a forb to reach productivity and about 8 months before it withers and dies. The backyard farm is manned by his “roving” farmers from Tublay, Benguet.
The honey are then brought to Manila for fermentation to be mixed with various fruits like strawberry, as well as the Philippine fruit map of Green Leaf where they source fruits from other parts of the country like mangoes from Guimaras, Mindanao’s mangosteen and others.

Gabriel Malaya/ABN