I have placed a pause on growing veggies for over a month now, and just this morning I realized just how badly I needed some vegetables to prepare Jollof rice with them. I love eating vegetable soup with rice. Some nutrient-rich veggies will give me some protein for my rice meal. The next time I get to prepare vegetable soups, I will bring us the process on how to cook nutrient-rich but yet cheap vegetable soup, and it will be my greatest joy if I can harvest those vegetables for free from my garden.

The reason for the delay in planting the veggies isn't far-fetched. The demanding farm work has kept me really busy from day to day. Coming back from the farm and working on the garden again will be a hard task; hence, I have had to pause the veggies and face the farm. As of today, we are done with planting corn and soy beans, which are flourishing really well.

The next line of crops we want to include on the farm will be cassava and guinea corn, even though we have already started the cassava. Guinea corn will be planted in the last week of this month, as we are waiting for our soy beans to germinate first.

This means that I have some 2-3-week free periods now to get some quality rest and work on the garden at home before resuming farm work again.
As I approached my garden space, I was surprised to see that the few sticks of jute mallow I had left on the farm were already producing seeds.

Getting quality seeds for planting is often a challenge.
Some seeds are known to produce poorly, and we don't often know the difference until we have planted the veggies.

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I was lucky to have gotten some quality mallow seeds the last time. I planted them and had sufficient veggies here for myself and my neighbors. While I was still contemplating where to get some more seeds, I was happy to see that these few sticks were already producing seeds for me.

The seeds are all developing in this green pods and I wonder how many of the pods will be needed to produce seeds that will be enough for planting. I have never grown veggies down to the seed-bearing stage. The norm was always to harvest everything and then source for new seeds again.But these have taught me a good lesson.
If only I was sure of how soon these seeds would be maturing.

At this point where the seeds are producing, the leaves are now hard and not edible for eating.

I will be keeping them here and observing the timing required for these seeds to mature. If I can both be growing veggies and harvesting seeds from the same veggies for another season of planting, it will save me the cost of purchasing seeds every now and then, and I will have some quality seeds to always renew my planting with.

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On a side note I am so happy to have some scent leaves here that have been serving purpose in my kitchen. Almost every meal get spiced up. This scent leaf has helped my stomach a lot against diarrhea.
Now I really love and appreciate the benefits of eating quality vegetables especially medicinal ones. Once I am fortunate to get a house of my home with some good space for a backyard you can imagine what I will make of such place already.

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