More Progress on the Farm

During this week on the Sustainable Agriculture farm, all of the students teamed up and worked on some of the E beds, which are located behind the hoop house. With all of our efforts combined, we were able to finish four beds in one day. This included double digging, putting some compost on top, transplanting many different crops, and adding organic fertilizer to the bed.

We added many different plants to the farm that day, including lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, and spinach. All of these plants are classified as heavy feeders, which means the plants need a lot of nutrients from the ground to grow. Onions were already growing in one of the E beds, but it is a light feeder and will be able to grow well with these other plants. Peas were planted in one of the C beds along the fence, and those are classified as legumes, which help rebuild the soil and put nutrients back into the ground. The farmers have accounted for each plant and know that the next rotation for crops should be a light feeder or legume to allow the soil time to revitalize.

At the end of the period, all of the members of the Sustainable Agriculture Farm looked back on what we accomplished in just an hour and 20 minutes. All of them felt proud that together they were trying to create a more sustainable way to live.

Donald Ahn

New Friends (Plants!)

     Exciting week for the Redwood Sustainable Agriculture farm. We have been hard at work preparing our beds. We have gone through the extensive process of double digging our beds, lying down compost as well as organic fertilizer including aerating the soil. We also spent time on our pathways and laid down some mulch to make it functional as well as visually pleasing. With the farm now being in excellent shape it was time for us to select some vegetables to plant. This is not as simple as just choosing some plants that would grow well in the current season but had a lot more depth and planning which was an eye for me, for the reason I previously was unaware of all the delicate intricacies in maximizing plant growth potential that are associated with biointensive agriculture.

   Biointensive agriculture is an organic agricultural system that focuses on achieving maximum yields from a minimum area of land while also increasing biodiversity and sustaining and increasing the fertility of the soil. There were few process we went through in choosing the correct plants for our garden the first step was checking what plants were growing in our beds and making sure to avoid planting the same plants for the reason planting the same type of plants seasonally over time will deplete nutrients. Each plant absorbs different types of nutrients from the soil and having the same plants seasonally will deplete the nutrients specific to those plants in the soil and the soil will become deficient in that nutrient and over time it will make the plants not have enough of that nutrient and it will stunt that plants growth. This also would be against the biointensive agriculture concept which is not only about maximizing growth of crops but is also about maintaining soil fertility. My bed group looked up what was previously planted from last year ago in our bed and beets, potatoes, and squash were the main species.

   We then decided to plant some baby lettuce, onions, leeks as well as bell beans. All these were a nice mix of plants that complemented each other as well as the soil. Lettuce is a relatively moderate feeder, while onions and leeks are light feeders. A reason for us going on the lighter side of types of plants that absorb a lot of nutrients is that we have a large tomato plant that has developed over summer and tomatoes are very heavy feeders on the nutrients of the soil. We felt this combination offered us a nice array of crops but would not put stress on the soil as well as a rotation of the crops previously planted. It's only been a couple days and we have already have seen some solid growth from the baby lettuces. (pictures below)

   We have also been working on crop reports which is the process of selecting a plant and becoming very well informed about all of its traits as well as it is scientific name. My crop is the banana which scientific name is  Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana there are two because there are two different species in the wild. A fun fact is bananas are very radioactive compared to other fruits and are sometimes used as a gauge of radiation exposure. But don't worry bananas are very healthy.

Preston MB

This week on the FARM

This week on the farm we  did lots of planting in our beds. There was lots of weeding done and harvesting for our market day. This market day was a big success by making over 200$. There were pumpkins, squash, celery, artichoke, mint, catnip and so much more. I would say it was a very successful market day. 

Our beds are looking really good compared to how they looked the first day of school. You can see that there are little weeds and lots of open dirt which means lots of planting. This week I saw garlic, beets and lettuce being planted. there was also a great improvement on the pathways in-between the beds. The farm is looking in ship shape condition. 

In class there was lots of time to plan what the groups are going to be planting in there beds. Some groups started to work on there second bed and start seeing that. Groups also worked on management jobs. There was improvement in the irrigation — fixing some holes in a couple tubes. The compost crew started building a new compost pile and did some sifting. The maintenance crew did a great job in keeping the shed clean and making sure that everything was back in its spot. 

Even though it was a shorter week there was a lot accomplished.

Morgan G.

Weeds, weeds, and more weeds

Summer left the farm in a jungle of weeds and for the past two and a half weeks, most of our time has been devoted to weeding. In many beds, the coverage was so dense that we were not able pull the irrigation out without hand removing a hefty pile of weeds.

Weeding our beds was a three step process. First, we had to cut down all of the the big stuff with a grass whip, mattock, or some other large tool. Next, we got our hands dirty and pulled out all that we could from the surface of our beds. When it was time to start double digging, I had a hard time getting my shovel to penetrate the soil. My shovel constantly struck patches of grass that held the soil together underground. Finally, after double digging, we had to make one more sweep through the beds and pull up any grasses or roots that we were previously unable to get. 

Although it was a very tedious process, it was worth the while because now everybody¡¯s bed looks nice and ready for planting. However, there is still an enormous amount of weeding to be done on the farm. After a couple hours of work, our class was able to weed and prep a little more than every other A bed, only a small dent in the amount of weeding that needs to happen on the farm.

Al

AFTER:

BEFORE:

Bed Preparation

This week we began our preparation of the plant beds, which will be home to the many interesting and varying plants and animals found in the farm. Our group was quite motivated in preparing our beds, so we set off immediately. However, as soon as we witnessed the overgrown jungle of our bed, we had some doubts. How could we possibly turn this jungle into a neat farm-bed?

Our first task was grasping the process of double digging. I had never double digged(dug?) in my entire life, but I was relatively confident that I understood the method. The next task my group members and I had to do was remove the weeds from our bed. I, after seeing Mr. Stewart courageously hand-remove the dauntingly prickly weeds, decided to give it a try. Bad decision. Gloves, I found out, were more than necessary.

After a while, the work seemed less like work and I began to enjoy preparing my bed. Once I had gotten my hands dirty all of my apprehensions went away. Before we knew it, our group had completed the preparation of our first bed and prepared more than half of our second one. Now we can look forward to planting!
--Noah

Summer Approaches

This Monday, May 22, 2016, Mr. Stewart's 6th period Sustainable Agriculture class was busy at work preparing for the summer months. During the class period we weeded the class beds and did maintenance work like irrigation around the farm. The whole class needed to be focused and engaged if we were going to finish preparing the beds for summer. We have completed most of the work but have a ways to go before we can consider our work to be done.

The next day, our class was allowed to work on our final projects. I worked on a sign showing how to make compost tea. Compost tea requires 1 part compost, 1 part forest dirt and 1 part local dirt in order to make a suitable habitat for bacteria. After acquiring the dirt, place it in a five gallon bucket and fill it up with water. The bucket only really needs one cup of each dirt to do its job. After adding water, I needed to stir periodically for four days.

On Wednesday, May 25, we met in the classroom. We were met in the classroom by a guest speaker. The guest speaker's focus was on making people "rethink plastics". The most memorable part of the speech was her comparison to plastics as a "toxic love story". She highlighted that people love plastics because they make everything convenient, but it is toxic to us, our world and animals

There were three surprising things that I learned Wednesday and would like to put out there. First, when you recycle, the material is predominantly shipped over seas. This just shifts our problem to a different place. Usually, these places are underdeveloped and the people there are working with toxic materials everyday: secondly, 60-80% of the world's plastic ends up in the ocean. This results in massive die offs of birds, mammals and aquatic life. Lastly, there is diminishing land space in the world to store trash.

So what can we do about it? Well, what I took from the guest speakers speech was I can change little things during my day which lead to a cleaner planet. The first thing a person can do to limit waste is replacing plastics while grocery shopping. Using a mesh or cloth bag will suffice. Secondly, replace all plastic wear with glass or reusable material.

Lastly, although recycling is not a closed loop, recycling old bottles and making sure to use an item more than once can make a huge difference.






David Hall

Blog: Start your own garden this summer

Blog for students who want to apply what they've learned in Sustag

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ibf9vXAL-A8IROULryXU2vytqBHC2Va9mJ68X5PnhPU/edit?usp=sharing