My Garden

In the first unit of the course, Food, we studied the ecology of plants. Two philosophers that helped us understand the concept were Charles Darwin and Fukuoka. Fukuoka advocated for organic gardens because he believed that our ecosystem is balanced and resistant, and do not human interference. For our project, we made a drawing of a garden that we might want to plant outside our house. Our raised bed had to have 10 different vegetables and fruits. We had to show which plants are good to be grown next to each other. It can be a bad thing if you don't know that the plants don't get along with each other because some plants can take nutrients away from the other plant. It can be a good thing because the plants can help each other grow, give shelter, or even share nutrients. This is called companion planting.

KIS. Garden Picture. 2014

The dimentions of my gardens are 4.2 ft.in length, 16.7 ft. in width and 1.3 ft. in height.  My garden bed is pretty big, maybe even too big, but I want my plants to have enough space to grow. Also if certain plants don't get along with each other, there will be enough space to separate them. Once I got the measurement of my bed garden, I conducted a soil test. I did this because I wanted to know the quality of the soil. Then, I grabbed a handful of soil from the front garden of my house. I tested my soil for nitrogen, potassium, pH and phosphorus. The first thing I did was grab a cup, get two spoonfuls of my dirt and dump it in the cup. Then I added ten spoonful of water to make the dirt really wet. After that I mixed it, I left it alone for 3-5 minutes. I grabbed the sample, gave it a quick stir and put it in the pH test box. I added a pill that makes the water turn color and tells me the pH. My soil pH was 7.0 which is neutral. I put water into the other three containers and put a pill too. My soil’s phosphorus level was deficient, the potassium was adequate (just right) and the nitrogen was sufficient.

I already knew that my soil was alive, because there has been and still is a flower garden. There is also earthworms and microorganisms in the soil. The color of the soil is dark and the leaves of the plants are green. The plants were healthy and beautiful. The only thing that I now need to add is nitrogen and phosphorus because in parts per million these two were low. I will need to add 4.9 pounds of fish meal for nitrogen and 2.1 pounds of soft rocks phosphate for phosphorus. The reason why nitrogen and phosphorus is low is because of the weather. There aren't enough plants to participate in the nitrogen cycle and add nitrogen to the soil.

Now that I checked my soil and added fertilizers, I now need to choose 10 plants for my garden. For my garden, I will place my plants with their companions. I chose the following: Hopi Red dye (an Amaranth), Jade (beans), Early green (broccoli), Scarlet nantes (carrots), True gold (corn), Claremont (lettuce), Hale’s best (melon), Super sioux (tomatoes), Akito and Saber (both are cucumbers). The reason I chose these plants is that I like to eat most of them and others are good for my garden. Mostly all of my plants are companions. Corn is companion with beans because corn provides support beans to grow tall. Beans are nitrogen fixers, which means that they add nitrogen to the soil. Cucumbers are great next to corn and beans because they like the same conditions and they also rely on corn for support. Broccoli can share calcium with beans, cucumber, and lettuce.

In conclusion I believe that having an organic garden is better than one that has inorganic fertilizers. I learned about the four principles of natural farming from Fukuoka and they make sense because you need a little bit of everything to make your garden beautiful. I also learned about companion plants, some plants benefit each other and some don't. An example of companionship is the three sisters: corn, beans and squash. I might implement my garden because my family plants food so it would be a good way to grow food that we like. At the same time we will be eating healthy food since they don’t have any chemicals.

“Golden Harvest Organics”. Go Grow Organic! N.p. 1996. Web. 17 April.2014

“Seed And Supply Catalog”. Seed of Change.N.p. Web. 17 April.2014