our mini garden

I always wanted to plant. However, we usually live in flats and so there is literally no space for planting. When we come back here in the Philippines, 2019, it was really the first time after gazillion years that I did planting. My daughter had this project of planting tomatoes, and I was the one who’s very eager to do that. It really grew and we harvested a lot.

Now that we moved to our new house, there is a small space where I could plant some vegetables. I do love to cook vegetables and to give my children with healthy foods. So, let me show you some of the vegetables that I planted in our mini vegetable garden.

• 

• Spinach – My mother-in-law told me that spinach can easily grow and so this is one of the first vegetables that I planted. It’s growing fast and amongst the plants in my garden, I harvested a lot of these already. I did cook Garlic Sauteed Spinach with Bacon and my daughters really love it. I added a link in the recipe that I mentioned, you may want to check it out.

• Basil – I love to make pesto and put in in pasta, salmon or chicken. When we were living in Singapore, basil leaves are quite expensive, that’s why I am so thrilled to plant this. I have four of these and this one in the photo is the biggest so far. I can’t wait to harvest the leaves and make some pesto for my kids.

• Onions – These plants are given by our neighbors who are Chinese. They moved to another house and so they gave us some of their plants. Maybe, they saw me, patiently watering the plants twice a day. I love the onion leaves too, I love to put it in steamed fish and some Filipino dishes.

• Papaya – I love papaya and the benefits it gives to people. I planted three papaya trees. The seedlings were given by my father. He knows how excited I am to plant especially papaya trees. I really like to eat this when riped, put in a chicken soup or make papaya shake.

• Calamansi – Some call this “golden lime”. It is a small lime that is so useful for cooking. I mean, I put a lot of these in marinades and in a lot of Filipino dishes. This is so rich in Vitamin C, we usually make calamansi juice whenever we feel sick. I really hope that this tree will give us more fruits.

• Malunggay – I googled the english of malunggay and it say, horseradish. Malunggay leaves are believed to be very nutritious. We are really fond of putting malunggay leaves on our soups. Bean soups, chicken soup and vegetable soups are not complete without malunggay leaves.

• Plant that I don’t know – Haha.. As mentioned earlier, our former Chinese neighbor gave us some plants and one of those is this plant. The Chinese girl cannot speak in English well, but she said this is delicious. Maybe you could help me know what plant is this and how this is cooked. Kindly help me by giving comments. Thank you.

These plants are still young, maybe a month old only. So, I would really love to give you updates on how they grow and how they helped me with my cooking. There are some vegetables that I planted but did not include here, ladyfinger, bell peppers and tomatoes. Hopefully, they will survive.. Haha.