10/27/15

Outside work was cancelled for today due to wonderful RAIN! The plants will appreciate this consistent supply of water, and so will my back.

11/20/15

Today I had a hard time getting everything done, and couldn't leave until 8. Next week we are going to switch to gardening in the beginning, because it started to get dark around 6:30. Thankfully Carlos was okay getting bit by mosquitoes while finished.

We weeded, planted radish & broccoli, applied manure, and watered. This took really long because of the straw in the way. As you can see below, I lost some of the straw to animals or wind:

Below, you can see the lone collar getting quite large, and could even be harvested a bit:

 This Pepper is ripe and ready to harvest. I don't like peppers, but my girlfriend might, and I'm growing four of them.

 Finally, another overview shot. You can see the red lettuce is getting ready to harvest some, too:

-Check back next week-

10/13/15

Welcome back to Week 6!

Today we performed the typical chores of weeding, watering, and fixing up the supports. I can start to see how the weeds become a very serious problem if left for more than a week. You wont see them in any of the pictures, because I don't miss a week!

We also planted sun flowers and applied more pesticide, with the help of Carlos' personal glove stash =)

Finally, I used my extra hour to grab a wheelbarrow and put on plenty of straw. This should help keep the ground moist, as we don't have much use of the overheads. The weather has been good for farming, and I hope some more rain falls over the weekend.

Of course, here's the picture for this week: Look at how big that collar has gotten! And maybe I should've given the eggplant more room. I also replaced the dead collar with a sunflower, even though they get HUGE.

-Check back next week to see how it's going!

10/6/15

  Welcome back!

  We learned more about GMOs in class today, which even included an interesting video about a discredited study against a certain corn GMO. They accused it of causing tumors in rats, but the results could not be duplicated with other species,  did not include a large enough test size, and may have been attributed to insufficient diet variation.

  We did some basic maintenance by weeding, fertilizing, and watering in the plots. I also had to add more support string to my trellis. Today was very easy, and i was done by 6:00. Everything seems to be doing well, as I've only lost one collar and a couple eggplants so far. Everything is cooling down, and making it much easier to work outside. I appreciate what little rain we've gotten recently, since we actually don't get any water from the overheads.

  One of my numerous pepper plants is already producing fruit, which may be a bad sign at such an early age. Here's a picture of the tiny thing:

  We used more granulated organic fertilizer today, which we poured into trenches like before and then watered. We did not add any to the beans for some reason. In the following picture you can see a second layer of string on the trellis which was put up just in time to save a falling tomato plant:

  Everything is looking great from diligent weeding, watering, fertilizing, and composting. I've been taking pride in those activities, often staying later than most, and I'm hoping it will soon show!


--Check back next week and see.