TALAVERA, Nueva Ecija – His stint in selling plastic mulching materials and seedling trays inspired Patrick dela Cruz, 28, to venture on vegetable seedling propagation which he thought would be more beneficial in multiple ways.
His gut feeling proved him right. After more than a year, his “Golden Pat Vegetable Seedlings” located along the national highway in Barangay La Torre here, is busy churning out ready-to-plant seedlings by the thousands for farmers as well as for backyard gardening enthusiasts.
He accorded full time jobs to 20 workers and part-time works to elementary and high school students.
“This is a half-hectare greenhouse with about 7,000 trays of robustly growing seedlings at a time,” dela Cruz, a native of Baliuag, Bulacan said.
The land is rented. The greenhouse is covered with a bamboo structure of polyethylene plastic net and UV film. A graduate from an agricultural college in Bulacan, dela Cruz first experimented in growing the tiny seeds in the small holes of the trays filled with potting medium. He tried different combinations of organic materials until he determined the best one for a potting medium.
“I spent around P500,000 for the materials needed for my greenhouse,” he said.
Lined-up inside the structure are stretches of elevated bases for the seedling trays. For watering, a motorized water pump is used.
“I buy the organic matters from different sources for my potting medium. My hybrid seeds are bought from various seed companies,” he added.
Knowing that he is at the midst of communities engaged in large scale growing of vegetables, he opted to concentrate on growing tomato, eggplant, chili, papaya, and amargoso seedlings.
“My biggest single sale was 800 trays of tomato seedling to a farmer in a nearby village who went into large scale planting of tomatoes,” dela Cruz said.
He learned that many farmers enter into sell-out arrangements for their standing crop at the flowering stage with contractors mostly from Batangas. The contract price, for example, for tomatoes is P300,000 to P400,000 per hectare. The contractors then take care of the plants and harvest three to four times that give them earnings of much bigger amount when the ex-farm price turns up high.
He added that aside from those in Nueva Ecija, his buyers come from other provinces like Pangasinan, Nueva Vizcaya, and Quirino.
Each of the trays has 128 holes. Except for amargoso, he sells the seedlings at P180 per tray. The amargoso is sold at P200 per tray.
Growing time from sowing is for 25 days, he said.
“The farmers are now aware that the transplanting of seedlings raised in greenhouses off er many advantages than those propagated in the traditional way. They need almost two months to grow the seedlings. They then uproot the seedlings at planting time, transplant them in the prepared field, and cover the plants for a few days to protect from excessive sunlight. This traditional way takes time for the stressed plants to develop their growing vigor,” dela Cruz said.
He said the seedlings grown in greenhouses, once transplanted, is assured of almost 100 percent survival rate.
“In the long run, buying seedlings grown in greenhouses is more economical for the farmers. In the traditional way, they incur losses in terms of seeds filched by the ants, attacked by diseases and by the replacements of dead seedlings,” he said.
Dela Cruz thought it wise to teach the school children to dabble in sowing seeds in the seedling trays. The children, he said, loved it as they seemed to be just playing “sungka” in sowing the seeds during weekends or holidays.
“I pay them P3 per tray. Many of them can each submit one hundred trays with properly sown seeds in a day,” he said. “That’s a cool P300 for each of them,” he added.
He said he also give the students the bruised but still good seedlings for transplanting in their backyard. This way, they are in a way encouraged to dabble in backyard gardening.
His wife, Clarriza, helps by taking care of the sales aspect of their enterprise.
“Financially, this is much, much better than when I was selling mulching materials and seedlings trays,” dela Cruz said. “I also feel fulfillment as I see that I am helping farmers improve in their ventures,” he added.
