5/7/2019
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During this term we watched a ted talk performed by Ron Finley during which he explained the concept of guerilla gardening. Basically, he used the resources available to him to create a garden, despite the government saying not to. He stated that a good place an individual can practice this is in the patch of grass that is in between the street and the sidewalk in front of most homes. This is where I decided to plan my garden. My idea is to build a raised bed covering that strip of graph. Apart from the wooden box, I would use three different types of containers to plant in. First, I would use drainage pipes with one side cut off and flipped on its side to form a sort of troft. My next idea is to use old paint buckets. My last idea is to use cement buckets. I think that these are all good ideas because these extras containers could be suspended above the first level to make twice the amount of gardening space. The plants I chose to grow were corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, carrots, onions, basil, chives, radishes, and cucumbers. Each of these work well together with at least one of the other ones. I will plant carrots and tomatoes together because they have a mutualistic relationship. At Big Delicious Planet we learned that carrots use a lot of nitrogen and deprive the soil of that nitrogen, and tomato plants thrive on a lack of nitrogen. This is because tomatoes use nitrogen to produce leaves, not fruit, so when there is a nitrogen deficiency, the tomato will put for effort into producing the fruit. Corn, beans and squash also form a mutualistic relationship. Beans have roots that capture microbes that assist with nitrogen fixation, which is helpful to all of the crops. Corn works as a good structure for things to grow up, and squash covers the ground to prevent from weeds spreading. Basil, radishes, chives, and onions serve as pest deterrents. Despite all playing a crucial role in the garden’s ecosystem, they are all good foods with many uses in the kitchen.
This is what the layout would look like from the top and what the structure would look like from the side.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jV5nReBDrwfjzTLmdFWoY5gkC01FHQQwMqdNXvcOISM/edit
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5/7/2019
Untitled document - Google Docs
I would attempt to follow all of Fukuoka’s principles, and I do not think that would be particularly hard considering the small scale of my farm. I would not have to worry much about weeding, as the squash covers that. I would not use any chemicals in fertilizer, herbicide, or pesticides, because I could easily deal with weeding by hand, and basil acts as an insect repellant. I would use organic fertilizer because, although chemical fertilizer is less expensive on an immediate scale and organic fertilizer costs, organic fertilizer builds healthier soil and has long term benefits. In order to find out how much soil I would need to purchase to plant the garden, I broke it up into 4 shapes. I then calculated the volume of each of these shapes and identified how many of each shape I had planned on using in my garden. There is one main bed, 5 small cylinders, and 5 large cylinders. If you multiply each of the volumes by their corresponding amounts and add them together, you get 643.6 cubic feet. These are the calculations I needed to determine the amount of soil required. Overall, I think I learned a lot from this project. While it is unlikely that I will act on this specific garden plan, I do garden a lot during the summer and I will definitely use some of the things I learned during this course, such as companion plants and require soil nutrients. I also think that it would be interesting to apply Fukuoka’s principles to my garden, and I would like to incorporate that into my garden in some way or another.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jV5nReBDrwfjzTLmdFWoY5gkC01FHQQwMqdNXvcOISM/edit
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