MANILA, Philippines — We often hear that when you go into farming, you should devote your full time to it to make sure that your project will be successful.

Well, that might be true. But there are people who are employed but who would like to do their own brand of farming for their own good reasons. They might want to make additional income to meet the increasing needs of the family. Some may be interested in hobby farming to break the monotony of office work. There may be some other good reasons.

Anyway, there are strategies one can take in order to succeed even if one cannot devote his full time to his farming or gardening project. After all, there are a wide variety of agricultural projects that one can engage in. Some very doable, some not so.

Of course, one favorite project is growing high-value vegetables. Just like what Rose Imperial is doing while she is employed with the Department of Agriculture as the Regional Coordinator of the High Value Crops Development Project in Bicol region.

For the last three years, she said, she has been growing selected vegetables not just for home use but for sale to the commercial market. Her most recent crops were ampalaya, eggplant and tomato which she grew on 1,500 square meters near where she lives in Naga City.

She is a member of a group of about 20 similarly inclined farmers who grow vegetables and who sell their produce as a group to SM supermarket as well as to the traditional markets in town. She has been planting hybrid seeds from East-West Seed Company like the Casino eggplant, D-Max tomato and Galaxy ampalaya. However, she will be trying soon the new varieties she saw at the Ramgo Field Derby in Polomolok, South Cotabato. She was one of the invitees to the Ramgo Research Station where the seed company’s latest varieties are showcased with their excellent performance.

The beauty about growing vegetables in hobby farming is that they have a short gestation period. For instance, the new cucumber varieties could be harvested in just 30 to 35 days from planting the seeds. Cucumber is increasingly in demand because it is claimed to be good for the health, and the price is not bad.

One objective of not a few hobby farmers is to produce vegetables for their own consumption. That’s one way of ensuring that the vegetables they eat are not sprayed with poison.

Many hobby farmers are now learning to grow their vegetables the organic way. They themselves can produce the organic fertilizer they use by culturing earthworms. Or they can use fermented plant or fruit juices to promote the growth of their plants as well as to protect them from insect pests.

Some hobby farmers don’t only enjoy growing their plants. They also enjoy selling their harvest in weekend markets. We used to see a couple, a Belgian and his Filipino wife, selling their organic vegetables at the AANI weekend market at the FTI. Their vegetables were usually sold before noontime because they had developed their faithful buyers who regularly buy their needs from them.

Of course, the hobby farmer does not have to do all the dirty work in the farm or garden. There are available help who could do the planting, cultivating, harvesting and the like. At any rate, the hobby farmer would also like to do some of the chores as a form of exercise, and so he can brag to his friends that he or she is a hands-on hobby farmer.

The good thing about this business of hobby farming is that there are many inputs that are available. If you are not keen on germinating your own seeds, you can buy the ready-to-plant seedlings from companies like the East-West Seed Company.

There are different strategies in hobby farming. Instead of growing the new hybrids, one can specialize in the indigenous vegetables. These include the Bago tree whose young leaves are used in cooking fish pinangat. Or the Batuan for cooking a soupy dishcalled kansi that is a specialty in western Visayas.

One can also produce something not usually available. One fellow was telling us that someone in Bulacan is making money by planting several dwarf tamarind trees where he harvests the young leaves for sale in the market. The young leaves are used in “sinampalokang manok” and other dishes.

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