My Quarantine Project: A Sunflower Garden, Greenhouse, And A Mini Farm
These hobbies were not only a pastime but a source of joy and comfort too.
Eleven months of quarantine has made people discover untapped skills and their creativity. Some opened their very own online businesses while others pursued hobbies like cooking and baking. Many became obsessed with gardening, while some also ventured into backyard farming. That’s correct – quarantine projects ranged from growing ornamental plants and succulent plants, to planting vegetables and fruits, to raising farm animals!
From foliage obsession to plant business
For Luisa May, a Filipina mom in the U.S., being a plantita helped her a lot in dealing with her pandemic anxiety.
“As a new mom I always have the fear of bringing the virus home with me and infecting my loved ones, especially my toddler. I could say that I was a total wreck and in constant fear until I started my plant journey,” she says.
The first plant she bought is a snake plant to decorate their new apartment. It gave her a feeling of such joy that she wanted to take care of more.
“During the quarantine, I looked online for an air-purifying and [low-maintenance] plant to put around the house to help us have a little bit of fresh air as we stay indoors. That’s how I started my obsession with foliage and now I am down to roughly 200 plants in my personal collection,” says the 23-year-old mom.
Due to her large collection, she found it hard to take care of each plant at first, but eventually got the hang of it. Every day, Luisa checks if her plants need watering or an extra boost of humidity. She also installed a humidity meter in her greenhouses for monitoring.
Apart from its benefit to her mental health, caring for plants also opened an opportunity for Luisa to start her own business.
“Selling them helped my family to finance our needs during the lockdown. I started doing pop ups at the restaurant’s parking area near our apartment, until we [were] finally able to make a big decision to get a house we can call home,” she shares.
Now, she feels even more blessed to be able to operate her plant business from home while spending time with her family, since they converted their garage to be her storefront.
Spending quarantine months by raising farm animals
Meanwhile, Alejandro, a TV coordinator at a high school in Bulacan, decided to turn their lot into a mini-farm in July 2020.
“My father cleaned out our lot which is located near a river and bought a couple of chickens and ducks to start our mini farm with,” he shares.
Raising animals is not new to Alejandro since he had cared for dogs, cats, fish, rabbits and birds in the past, as well as tarantulas and snakes.
“Our lifestyle changed, and we can’t hang out with friends and go to malls or travel like before. These farm animals taught me how to become more responsible at home by making my days even more productive through my daily routines,” he added.
Every day, Alejandro goes around the houses in their compound to gather leftover rice for their farm animals. In the afternoon, it’s his brother’s task to feed them with corn and chicken feed.
Aside from nurturing farm animals, they are also making the most of their quarantine days by planting vegetables and fruits like kamatis, kalamansi, sili, kalabasa, rambutan, saging, okra, ampalaya and others in their backyard.
Currently, they have three turkeys with eggs, 15 ducks, and 16 chickens. They are considering selling them and raising other farm animals like goats and native pigs.
A plant collection that turned into a small neighborhood attraction
Letty, a housewife and a sari-sari store owner, began collecting plants in June 2020. From a collection of a few orchids, she now has more than a hundred pieces of flowering, non-flowering and succulent plants altogether.
“I’ve always had orchids at home even before pero hindi naman pumasok sa isip ko na mag-alaga ng ganito karaming mga halaman. Siguro dahil naging trend siya nung nagkaroon ng quarantine kaya na-encourage na rin ako,” she says.
According to Letty, some of her plants are gifts from her sisters and others were bought from local stores near their home. Some of them were propagated by cutting and repotting.
“After kong sumunod sa plantita trend, doon ko na-realize na kaya pala ang daming nahumaling dahil nakakalibang talaga siya, at nakakawala ng stress lalo na ngayong pandemic,” she adds.
In November, she and her husband planted sunflower seeds by their backyard and were surprised to see that after a few months, they bloomed with more than 50 flowers of different sizes.
Since the sunflowers are beautifully lined up in their backyard, they gained much attention from their neighbors and some even took pictures and posted them on their social media accounts.
Letty says, “Nakakatuwa dahil unang beses naming magtanim ng sunflower and halos lahat ng dumadaan nagpapaalam kung pwede ba silang magpa-picture o mag-selfie saglit.”
“If you love your plants, they’d love you right back”
Writer/editor Jing Lejano, on the other hand, has always had plants in their large backyard even before they became a trend. Aside from her bougainvilleas, zinnias, santan, and rosal, she also cultivates fruits and vegetables.
“I'm not into ornamental plants. I am more of an aspiring magsasaka,” she says.
She mentions she was lucky to have met a gardener before the lockdown, who now comes by every week to help maintain and care for them.
Here are some of Jing’s garden care maintenance that might help you in your plantita or plantito journey:
- The secret is in the soil. Take care of the soil and it will take care of your plants.
- Each plant has its own personality: some like to be watered daily and some not too frequently. Thus, you have to get to know each of them.
- You can use eggshells and fruit peels as fertilizers. Put banana peels in a bottle with water for a couple of days and use them as fertilizers.
- Try to visit your plants every day. Take out the dried leaves and loosen up soil.
- Talk to your plants, or sing to them. If you get tired, you can just put some music on.
“My garden is a world onto itself, and I could get lost in it, for hours. It's a good way of running away from the horrors of the pandemic. In my garden, there is peace, there is beauty. In my garden, there is always happening. You just have to be curious enough to see,” Jing added.
