This project is for my last STEAM term as a freshman at GCE Lab School. In this term we learned how different plants react and collect sun for their benefit, such as the Succulent. This plant moves in the direction of the sun to grow bigger and stronger, it’s called phototropism when a plant does that. That is just one of the things we learned in my Food class. We looked at plants and how they impacted our life and thought. In Food we also grew our own living organisms, my group grew mushrooms. They were huge just in the matter of days, but for this project I will be growing organism that doesn’t involve fungi. “Food is the problem and the solution” this quote is from the Ron Finley Ted Talk. This quote stood out to me in the Ted Talk, for two reasons. The first being there is so many people in the states and out going through a global shortage of food. The second being food when used for good can help so many people around the world, that’s what it’s all about at GCE being a global citizen. Ron Finley is a gardener, he planted gardens all over his community in South Central LA. He helps feed his community for the future. Now that you heard from a famous but local gardener, lets get prepping. I decided to make my garden 20 feet by 10 feet, the area of the garden 200 feet squared. I picked three containers to put in my garden a half barrel, raised bed, and a wooden box. All containers are squared shape. Half Barrel: 20 x 25 x 30 (inches) Area: 20 x 25 = 500 inches² Amount of Soil: 3 buckets Top Layer of Soil: 500 inches² Raised Bed: 10 x 15 x 20 (feet) Area: 10 x 15= 150 feet² Amount of Soil: 1.5 buckets Top Layer of Soil: 150 feet² Wooden Box: 12 x 18 x 22 (inches) Area: 12 x 18= 216 inches² Amount of Soil: 2 buckets Top Layer of Soil: 216 inches²
Soil Fixers: The soil fixers are to help the garden’s soil and make the plants grow big and strong. A lot of gardeners add nutrients to their soil such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. For my garden I need a certain level of each of these nutrients…
Test
Result
Nitrogen (N)
11
Phosphorus (P)
35
Potassium (K) & C.E.C. Level
K-213 C.E.C- 0
Nutrients for my Garden:
Nutrient
Product / Supplement
Quantity per 100ft2
Quantity per Your Amount
Blood meal
5
7.74865
None
None
None
None
None
None
The soil fixers like blood meal help the soil more healthy, it puts more nutrients in the soil for different plants to grow there. It is good to not plant the same herb or flower in the same place, it will ruin the soil around it. Depending on the area you live in your soil might need different nutrients like Nitrogen, Phosphorus or Potassium. For my garden I only needed Nitrogen, for my garden I needed to feed my soil a certain meal. I picked blood meal but you could pick fish meal, cottonseed meal, or feather meal. Depending on what level of nutrients your soil needs.
Fruits and Veggies For My Garden: First Container
Second Container
Third Container
Corn
Onions
Potatoes
Pumpkins
Carrots
Cabbage
Squash
Lettuce
Cucumber
Beans
More About My Nutrients
This is the list of plants in my garden. I made sure in each container the plants had buddies. Also known as companion planting, it is when two or more plants grow really good together and there is too much competition to get nutrients. Three plants that grow very well together are the Three sisters, squash, beans and corn. These three plants grow very well together they would level out the ecosystem around them to benefit themselves. The Native Americans also known as first peoples planted them together because they worked good with each other to gather nutrients in the soil around them.
My Garden For my first container I planted four different plants, squash, pumpkins, cucumbers and corn. Right below is a line showing what crop goes with what color. The brown in the image is open space for the plants to grow so there isn’t a lot of competition between the plants. Charles Darwin mention the competition between living organisms in a ecosystem. In order to evolve more as an organisms you need competition.
In my second container I tried to keep it as natural as possible. I wanted to follow Fukuoka’s four principles for natural gardening/ farming. I wanted to let them grow on their own and help them less and add less blood meal to them. I wanted to watch them close but give them space to grow on their own. Fukuoka’s four principles are do not turn the soil, no chemical or prepared compost, no weeding by tillage or herbicides, and last no dependence on chemicals. For the third container I put four different plants in the container. Lettuce, beans, cabbage, and potatoes. I wanted to combined Fukuoka and Darwin’s ideas and methods of gardening for my last container.
This project was very fun to work on and I learned a lot about plants and different gardeners methods to planting and growing crops. I learned a lot about the history of farming and growing plants. If I were to do this project again I will focus more on putting more fruits in my garden. I wanted to have more diversity in my garden.