Green Gators

We have noticed that our marigolds and nasturtiums are looking slightly wilted and discolored. To combat this issue with our crops we have decided to add 7 pounds of fertilizer spread across them. This should give our marigolds and nasturtiums a boost of nutrients and a higher growth rate as well.   As our cucumbers grow larger, they have started to need support. Therefore, we decided it would be a great idea to add wooden sticks as trellis for the cucumbers to wrap themselves around. This will provide stability and structure for the cucumbers to grow tall and produce additional flowers and developing cucumbers. Our tomato plants are starting to grow larger as well, so we decided to put our trellis into the ground as well for the tomatoes to be supported. We were able to get help from Youssef to help keep the trellis anchored to the ground.  We completed putting in the metal trellis for our tomato plants. Twine is placed around the metal trellis to keep our tomato plants growi...

  Chris has started to rake the soil next to our plot of crops to disrupt the weeds that has started to grow. We have also started this process to level out the soil and make it easier for the seeds of our cover crops we will plant there to germinate. In this section we planted mustard!  Once the soil plot that we wanted to place our cover crops has been raked, we started to spread our cover crop seeds throughout the soil. The cover crops for this portion of soil we placed were gold mustard and buckwheat. The mustard’s purpose is to see the possibilities of how many pests it can keep away. The buckwheat is for attracting beneficial pests for biological control and pollinators. We choose mustard and buckwheat to attract beneficial pollinators. Ryan is mixing more of the soil together in our plot for the cover crop seeds to mix deeper into the dirt.  A thicker layer of hay is being placed down around our marigold and nasturtium plants. Weeds are blocked from sunlight using ...

  Ryan F. Christopher S. Emily T. Kiara B. Identification of FOUR S.M.A.R.T. holistic management goals: 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. 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 ...