For the past month and a half, the class has been focusing on keeping our soil healthy and maintaining our plants. Along with taking care of our beds, our management jobs have been keeping us busy with making pathways, weeding, and making more compost. The farm has been having some issues with puddles forming due to the fresh water from Mount Tam coming into the marsh. Fresh water is less dense than salt water and that makes the fresh water lay on top of the salt water, thus creating the puddles. It is mainly affecting the beds in the back near the hoop house.
Since the farm was built near and on part of what once was the marsh, what is our soil made of? That was the question we began trying to answer on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday, we went over in class the components of soil: sand, silt, and clay. Sand creates pores in soil to help hold water and nutrients. Silt provides structure and clay provides nutrient bonding sites. LOAM is kinda like a really good mix of all three.
There are various types of soil in the world. At the farm, we have entisol, which basically is just bad soil and this takes up 30% of California's soil. Near the farm, we also have histosol, which is wetland soil. The best soil to have mollisol, which can be found in grasslands.
Anyways, to find what really makes up our soil, we conducted a Squeeze Test on Wednesday in the farm. There are three steps to the squeeze test. The first step was to get some soil from our bed and add a little water. We then tried to role it into a ball. If it didn't make a ball, it would be made of sand. The next step was to see if our soil would make a "ribbon". We pressed the soil out of our hand with our thumb to make a ribbon. If it made a long ribbon, it was made of clay. If it had small ribbons, it was loamy. And if it made no ribbons, it was sand. I was able to make a ball but wasn't really able to make any ribbons. And the last step was to wet the soil a lot and feel the texture. If it was gritty, it was sandy. If it was smooth, it was clay. Mine felt very gritty so I concluded my soil was a sandy loam.
Also on Wednesday, after we did the Squeeze Test, Mr. Stewart announced we were having a "pop quiz". This pop quiz would be on Double Digging. Our groups were assigned either a C bed, B bed or a P bed. The B beds were filled with a lot of tall weeds and old squash plants. My group was assigned to the B2 bed and we were able to harvest some squash before taking out the old plant and putting it in our compost pile off to the side (we still need to weigh it before putting it in the compost pile). We used pruners, hand weeders, and even a grass whip to take out the weeds. Once we finally cleared the bed, we took off the irrigation and started to break up to the soil with a mattock and began to double dig. Many groups were able to finish their bed or close to finishing. Those who didn't would be able to finish next week, like my group. Some ideas for playing were carrots and some lettuce.
On Friday, we went out to the farm and started to harvest for another Market Day. Some groups could sell some lettuce or kale that was planted back in August. There was a huge onion in the B1 bed that was ripe for the picking. Overall, everyone had a good time this week in SustAg and looking forward to finishing our beds next week.
Morgen C.
The "Squeeze Test":
Looks like loam!
No comments:
Post a Comment