This week we took a field trip to the College of Marin Indian Valley Campus Organic Farm and Garden.
This organic farm had olive trees, rows of strawberries, a greenhouse, a lot of cover crops, garden beds, and more. After being introduced to a few of the farmers, we split up to take tours around the large farm. With our journals, we noted all of our learnings and observations. For example, the solar panels are used for 80% of the farm's energy source, and the greenhouses use swamp coolers to protect seedlings from the summer heat.
Then, we split into five groups to work on stations. My group's stations were adding compost below trees, weeding the raised beds, and pruning the olive trees. Our first station consisted of shoveling the compost into wheelbarrows, transferring it to the ground below the trees, and using rakes to make a circle outwards until the branches end. One important step was making sure that the compost was 1-2 feet from the trunk.
Weeding the raised beds during our second station seemed a little unproductive at first, but proved to be successful after seeing the wheelbarrow full of all the weeds at the end. We all dispersed with smaller buckets and pulled out various weeds and white flowers from the strawberry plants. We were taught that even the smallest weeds could crowd the fragile root crops and prevent growth.
On our last station, we pruned olive trees and collected the fallen branches. We were given pruners and the knowledge of cutting branches that were within 1 - 1 1/2 feet above ground, or any branches without leaves. Pruning the olive trees was good preparation for growing olives, which would be later turned into organic olive oil. At the end, we gathered all of the olive branches into wagons.
Overall, this field trip was a good educational opportunity that we can reflect on when improving our own RHS farm, and it gave us lots of hands-on experience.
- Sarah D.
No comments:
Post a Comment