We rented one hectare in Bustos to grow talong, and the weather gave us a drought first and a flood right after.

A Late Start at the Worst Time

NutriHydro grows in hydroponic systems, where water and climate are under control. In June 2023 the team took a one-hectare plot in Bustos, Bulacan, and tried open-field farming for the first time. To a lot of farmers a hectare is small. To a hydroponics grower it is a big jump.

The timing looked fine on paper. The Department of Agriculture had said irrigation would be released around June 15, so land preparation started on June 14 and the lease was set for June. PAGASA declared the start of El Niño on June 9, 2023, but the team expected the rainy season to arrive anyway.

It did not. The irrigation canal beside the farm is wide enough for two vehicles, and when the team first visited it was full, with children swimming in it. By July the bottom was dry enough to walk on. The rice paddies on every side of the farm sat unplanted for the same reason, and by mid July the team was a full month behind schedule.

Nathan Miguel Mabini, one of the team members, explained the setup. During El Niño the ocean surface runs warmer than usual, rain becomes rare, and the typhoons that do form tend to hit harder. A farm that depends on canal water has little room to adjust.

Digging a Well and Planting Talong

With no canal water, Catherine Bartolome, the farm’s agricultural and biosystems engineer, proposed a driven well. The crew dug a poso about 40 feet deep and left a provision for a Jetmatic pump, though they did not install one. Water would go to the plants through drip lines to avoid waste, roughly every three days if normal rain showed up, with more if the plants looked thirsty.

The crop was talong, or eggplant. The team compared it with the pinakbet vegetables such as ampalaya, sigarilyas, kalabasa and sitaw, which hold up in heat or rain. Leafy greens are a harder bet in open fields. Lettuce in particular dislikes humidity above 70 percent. Chris Tuason, the Ops Officer, said the plan was to grow a mix of crops over time instead of swapping one for another.

The beds were built with humidity in mind. Each raised tudling carries a single row of talong under plastic mulch, because a double row would trap moist air between the plants. The crew prunes lower leaves and side shoots to keep air moving, and the cuttings go to the compost pile for the next cycle.

Two Weeks of Rain and a Farm on a Slope

The well was barely in when the rain arrived and stayed for two weeks. Typhoon Egay passed through, Manila flooded, and neighboring talong farms went under. Chris saw fields with water at knee, waist and even neck height, and many growers lost the whole crop.

The Bustos farm came through because of its slope. The plot drains downhill toward a rice field that needed the water anyway, and the farm manager, Mark Carreon, dug channels along the walkways between the beds to speed it along. The team admits it was luck that the land tilted the right way. Without it, Chris said, they would have been wiped out too.

The soil was still saturated. A moisture probe read 99 percent, and leaves wilted wherever water pooled. Eggplant wants roughly 20 to 35 percent. The team’s rule was to irrigate below 25 percent and stop above 35. The ampalaya had not been planted yet, which was a relief, since it cannot stand flooded ground.

Pests, Humidity and One Round of Pesticide

Wet weather brings insects. Caterpillars, grasshoppers, thrips and aphids multiply fast, and shoot and fruit borers showed up in the stems. The plan was to control pests with biologicals only, mainly Bacillus thuringiensis and other Bacillus strains, which Chris compared to the good microbes in yogurt.

The rain defeated that plan. Every spray washed off the leaves, and the plants were flowering. The team applied a systemic pesticide once, at that stage, and went back to biologicals and neem oil as soon as the rain eased. No fungicide was used at any point. Chris noted that pesticide is a last resort, and that this was exactly the situation for it.

Flooded roots also have little oxygen, so they stop taking up nutrients. The team sprayed water-soluble fertilizer on the leaves, using NutriHydro’s Fruit Bearing formula at a mild strength to avoid salt burn, along with biostimulants to help the plants cope with stress.

Chris also pointed to humidity, which he called the top enemy of Philippine farmers. It runs high before, during and after rain, and El Niño added more moisture to the air. Poor fruiting in humid weather is often blamed on fertilizer, when the climate is a big part of the cause.

Our First Harvest

The first picking was never going to be big. A healthy hectare should give 40 to 60 kg in a first harvest, and after the rain the team expected only 10 to 20 kg, which went to existing customers. A later picking brought in 140 kg. About 120 kg was packed in 5 kg bags and 20 kg was set aside as rejected.

The fruit came in several sizes, from XL, about as thick as Catherine’s forearm, down to medium. The big ones were left over from the weeks when rain kept the crew out of the rows. Some fruit was pale green because it grew under clouds, while sun-fed fruit had a deeper violet color. Early on the crew packed in oversized plastic bags that were too heavy to lift, so they moved to 16 by 24 inch bags that one person can carry.

The team was careful about how it described the crop. It was grown with no fungicide and one pesticide application weeks before picking, with biologicals the rest of the time. Chris told customers that a hole in a talong is a sign no spray was used.

Pest Pressure Forces a Reset

Of the 140 kg harvested, 20 kg showed holes at first glance. After the fruit sat in plastic bags for a day, more holed and overmature pieces turned up. The team put pest pressure at 30 to 40 percent and decided to stop and reset the farm.

The main culprit is the shoot and fruit borer, Leucinodes orbonalis. Its pink larvae enter the shoots and wilt the stems and leaves. They also bore into the fruit, then leave to cocoon, and the population grows with each cycle.

The reset is a sanitation round. The crew removed wilted leaves and damaged shoots, picked the remaining fruit, and buried the waste in freshly dug soil. A week of pesticide followed to clear what was left. The next harvest was expected about three weeks later.

Chris repeated the point that pesticide is a last option. With pressure at 30 to 40 percent and no sign of it falling, the team judged that this was the point where it was needed.

Trichogramma and the Road Ahead

To get rid of the pesticide for good, the team approached the University of the Philippines National Crop Protection Center. The plan is to release Trichogramma, a parasitic insect that attacks the borer. If it works, pest pressure should drop and the farm can return to biological control without further spraying.

The team credits Jezrel Carreon, a veteran talong grower whose advice shaped the first season, and who sent his son Mark to manage the farm. It also thanks Buddy Gancenia and Mer Layson for the inspiration they give growers through their media work.

A few lessons stand out from the first open-field season that began in drought and ended up underwater. The water supply needs a backup. Slope and drainage matter as much as soil. Rain makes biologicals unreliable, so a fallback plan is needed. And a mix of crops spreads the risk better than a single bet.

The Bustos farm is still finding its footing. A drought, two weeks of flooding and a heavy borer attack all landed in the first season, and the crop held on because of a sloping field, a deep well and a crew that kept adjusting. NutriHydro will keep sharing what works and what does not, so the next grower who takes on a hectare in the middle of El Niño starts with fewer surprises.