Bioscience Garden

This Monday I had the opportunity to participate in the beginnings of a garden (food production system) at Bioscience High School. We had a strip of land to work with that was filled with yucca plants, and a circle of dirt that had been used for a previous garden. I was with the group working on the section with Yucca plants.

Yucca plant being removed

The first thing we had to do was to pull out the plants occupying the space so we could plant our own food.
We pulled out the Yucca plants using shovels and spades we took from the school garage. We had to preserve the roots of the plants because the maintenance crew was going to plant them elsewhere on the school campus, so we had to dig farther into the ground, but we managed to preserve most of the yuccas. There were also some twig-like plants that we were able to pull out with just our hands.

All the plants we dug out

Unfortunately, during the process of digging out the yuccas with shovels, the head of a water spout was taken out. We didn't manage to find the place it was torn out of, which we will most certainly have to do tomorrow. If we don't replace the head of the spout, when it waters the plants it could potentially flood the ground, leading to over watering which could hinder growth.

Besides the taken out water spout, the rest of the hour and a half was generally a success. After all of the plants had been removed, we turned the dirt and added black dirt that contained more minerals for the future plants.

Black Dirt

We plan to plant tomorrow (12/2). In the meantime, our biochem teacher asked us to think of perennial plants we'd like to include in our food production system. Perennial plants are optimal because they grow back without having to plant them again. I'm currently doing some research on which edible perennials grow well in fall.

*Sorry for the late update, this weeks been busy and the pictures weren't uploading.