Last Week

Last week in Sustainable Agriculture, we started the process of aerating our soil in order to produce good soil structure and create looseness of the soil. We did this by using a spading fork and cultivators, a small version of a spading fork, in order to aerate the soil. At first, it was quite difficult to aerate the soil because it was old soil but as the process moved on it got easier. Finally, on Friday, we began the process of planting. We planted potatoes, garlic, and beans. In order to plant potatoes, we cut the potatoes into multiple pieces with each piece having two eyes at the very least. We used a trowel to dig out a hole in the soil and then we put a piece of potato into the hole as deep as the height of the potato. We then covered the potato with the soil we had dug out and used an 8-inch stick to mark the next hole and we did this in a triangular pattern to maximize bed space. For the garlic, we took the cloves and used the same process to plant them but this time 4-inches apart. For the beans, the same process was repeated and we planted them 6-inches apart in a triangular pattern. On Wednesday of this week, we planted lettuce, kale, and beets. Mr. Stewart bought starters from the garden store so we used a trowel to create small holes in the ground and then we put the starters in the ground and covered them with the excess soil. Every day, we come in to water our plants because it's very important for the plants to be watered in the first 2 weeks after sowing. We are excited to plant more plants in the future weeks and sell them at the market! - Claudia Holland

Water

Water today is an essential ingredient to life and has been for thousands of years. The Earth is made up of 71% water, mainly that being 96.5% of ocean water. Understanding Sustainable Agriculture, you will need to understand how to appropriately use water to help The Farm grow correctly and not accidentally drown the plants with too much water or incorrectly distribute it. The classes that work out on the farm are separated into groups to work on specific functions of The Farm, and one is the water irrigation group that monitors the water being distributed throughout the pipes and lines placed all around The Farm, mainly located on each of the beds. With the help of the water irrigation group they monitor the water distribution and fix any problems, like leaks, with the lines. But there won't always be a prefect distribution of water and it will be required to water your groups whole bed. However long your bed is, there is a way to distribute water evenly with measuring the amount of water you currently have by gallons and the area of the bed with surface feet. Plants within The Farm's beds should be with overall 10 gallons of water per day every 100 square feet. It should take around 2 minutes per day to supply enough water to your bed and also others if you feel like helping out there bed so there plants don't die as well. In this community though, Marin receives around 300 gallons of water, so the water must be disrupted properly so it's not wasted. To safe the limited amount of water supplied, conserving the beds is a great option. Do this by choosing drought resistant plants so you are taking care of plants that won't dry up very easily, and use close spacing to maintain shady microclimates for your plants, so they don't absorb too much sunlight. Following these steps with show you soon enough that it will help your beds properly grow healthy and nutritional plants. 

Kaiden Houghton

My Farm Bed

This week we have seen a significant change to our beds. Most beds have had all the plants previously growing in them removed along with hopefully all weeds. In my groups, bed B7, we had to be particularly thorough removing an invasive grass. More seemed to appear every time we aerated the soil with spading forks. When we were sure we had removed all the weeds, we began planting beet seedlings and potato eyes. Making sure to handle the seedlings gently, we spaced them in a triangular/hexagonal shape to maximize the 60 square feet area of our bed. We have planted about one third of our bed so far and I am looking forward to planting the rest and seeing how each bed grows over the next few months.  

Pictured above is my group's bed, B7, after the planting of the beets and potatoes. - Hobie

Beginning Our One Beds

These past few weeks we have started to cultivate our one beds on the farm. At first, the beds seemed to be very infested with weeds and overall a bit messy. As the first two weeks went by, our beds began to come together as less bermudagrass and catsear covered our soil. Weeding was the main job the first days on the farm because with fewer workers in the summer, a ton of weeds and other unwanted plants had sprung up in and around the beds. With 3 periods of Sustainable Agriculture classes at work, these weeds were eventually eradicated. Recently, we have aerated our one beds to ensure better soil quality for our seedlings we have been growing. We did this extensively using a spading fork to stick into the soil and lift up to break the soil into chunks and therefore aerating the soil. Additionally, we have been adding our 100% organic fertilizer into our beds to keep the nitrogen and potassium levels high in our soil. Soil is a very important part of farming sustainably, so at the Redwood Farm, we ensure to keep our soil nutritious and healthy for our plants. Last week and continuing into this week we have been working on deciding plans for our one beds. This includes deciding which plants to plant together depending on the season, type of nutrients it needs, and space it needs to grow. This season we are hoping to grow lots of crops including potatoes. Hopefully, our planning will lead us to obtain the greatest yields possible! So far Sustainable Agriculture has been a great class and we have done some great work to begin our planting for the fall season! 

By: Max Ross

Deep Soil Preparation

On Wednesday in Sustag we aerated our soil with a U Bar, sprinkled fertilizer, shoveled on compost and added soil in order to prepare our beds for planting. The aerating was hard work especially on the drier parts of our bed but the final product was better quality soil. Additionally, the final step of adding soil and raking our bed allowed our bed to finally look somewhat ready for planting. During this process, we also had to continue weeding and made sure to remove invasion plants, such as Bermuda grass which we removed with clippers. We also decided to take out some unnecessary flowers to make room for our new plants. On Thursday, we finished preparing our bed and began planting potatoes. To do this we cut the potatoes into pieces that had at least two eyes, placed it underneath the soil, covered it up without compacting the soil, and finally watered the area. We then used an 8-inch stick to mark the next spot for the potato and planted in a triangular shape in order to make our bed more efficient. Next week we are excited to finish planning and planting our bed. --Grace

If Seen: Immediately Prune!

On the Redwood Farm there are a variety of invasive species that are unwanted and should be removed to keep the class farm beds, paths, and edges clean. If found, report these plants to the companions group or they can be clipped or hand weeded by yourself. There are three specific invasives and they all need to be disposed into the weed pile. Spotted Catsear can be found almost anywhere in the farm and in my opinion will be the most common invasive plant you will see. They are long, spiky, and resemble dandelions and I recommend to remove these with gloves on. Willow Weed A.K.A. Willowherb is more rare to stumble upon and can grow long with red stems and white flowers. These are common in most wild California habitats but are not desired in our agricultural site and can be easily clipped down. The last common invasive you will find is called Bermudagrass, a spiky-grass ground cover mostly found surrounding the hoop house and is short with thick stems that can regrow roots back into the ground so it's vital these are immediately disposed of! I recommend just pulling these out with your hands.

- Hudson Hitchcock

WANTED: WILLOW WEED 

WANTED: SPOTTED CATSEAR

WANTED: BERMUDAGRASS

Seedlings

Jordan Price 9/12/2019

Today, we planted our first seedlings of the 2019-2020 school year. Our garden has been mainly comprised of plants from last year's students, so these are the first of our very own. The first step we took in restoring our garden bed, was removing any dead plants from last year's crop, and harvesting the vegetables from those plants. We had one small pumpkin, one cabbage, fava beans, and tomatoes. The, we used a U-Bar to aerate our soil. Following the aeration process, we added fertilizer and compost, then watered the soil to prepare for digging. We then used a Trowel to dig 6 inch deep holes for our new potatoes and Garlic. Tomorrow, we plan to plant our Fava Beans and Basil. I'm looking forward to witnessing our seeds grow into delicious vegetables!!

New Planting

Nick Welch 9/11/19

This past week we had our first harvest of the 2019-2020 school year. It turned out to be a huge success! These weren't planted by our class of students but rather the ones from last year. The crops grew over the summer break so there was plenty to harvest. Now that our first market is over we have started aerating and fertilizing our beds. We first pulled out of the plants that had just been harvested that couldn't produce any more product. We pulled most of the plants from my bed A10. We left a big celery plant and a few mint leaves here and there. Our bed alone harvested 5.5 pounds of tomatoes for the last market so we are starting with a relatively clean bed. Today, we started aerating the soil with broadforks. The soil was very hard to mix around but after a good effort, we got the job done. My group and I then sprinkled fertilizer and compost across the bed. Tomorrow is the day we are planting our potatoes, onions, beets and fava beans seeds. We also are planting a basil plant. All of the groups can choose something different to plant but those five seem to be the most common ones. Overall I am very excited to go through the full process of planting and harvesting our crops. The picture shows the crops before they are about to be sold at the market.

Welcome to the 2019-2020 school year!

We hope you will enjoy our blog.  Expect a couple posts each week about what we are doing and learning in class and more.  Hopefully it can inform your own growing and/or eating.  If you sign up to receive emails, expect no more than about 1 email/week.  Thanks.

Mr. Stewart