Green gators and S.M.A.R.T. management goals

 Ryan F.

Christopher S.

Emily T.

Kiara B.

Identification of FOUR S.M.A.R.T. holistic management goals:

1. Crop yield and quality 

Our group will focus on high quality crops with high yields. We will do this by planting our crops closely and maximizing our vegetable crops in the plastic mulch bed and encouraging beneficial insects and pollinators by planting flowers in the uncovered bed next to the vegetables. We are using hay to suppress the weeds around the uncovered bed and the borders of the plastic mulch bed. We will manually weed nutsedge that comes up in  the plastic bed and any weeds that come through the hay will be removed as well.

2. Agroecological design and environmental sustainability

Our group will focus on integrated pest management by planting beneficial flowers such as Nasturtium, Marigold, Mustard, and Buckwheat. The marigold and Nasturtium will work as a natural pest control, alleviating the need for synthetic pesticides. We will plant buckwheat to attract helpful pollinators and will control pest insect populations. As for soil health, we will plant mustard in order to instigate biofumigation. We will work to establish cover crops to promote organic matter growth and promote soil health.

3. Marketing and economic viability

We plan to sell most of our crops in a way that we can fund our future harvests and make enough profit so that we can financially support ourselves until the next harvest. Firstly, we will sell our vegetables at the farmers market and market them as fresh and organic, to attract the people that value the environment and eat healthy foods. We have a variety of vegetables so that we aren’t too reliant on selling one crop. The vegetables that we currently have growing are tomatoes, cucumber, eggplant, squash, and corn. We also plan to sell our flowers from the nasturtium and marigolds to a local florist, and the seeds/seed pods respectively from our mustard and okra. We believe that with this plan we will be able to support ourselves. Then, we can adjust which cash crop we plant more of next harvest based on which ones sell more than the others.

4. Social and community consideration

Agritourism is very important and our plan is to be well organized in order to be aesthetically pleasing and inviting to the public. In addition, our farm will be integrated into the community’s education of agriculture and show them how to properly grow, organize, and harvest crops. Our farm will also add into the biodiversity of our surrounding area, considering we will be growing at least 8 different crops. Finally, we will provide nutrient dense, well cared for, and affordable produce to the community.