Now that the transplants and seedlings have had a chance to settle in for a few weeks they have started to put on a lot of growth in a little time! The eggplant leaves are really expanding, and tomatoes are green and lush. Along with desirable plant growth, we also have had an increase in a handful of leaf chewing caterpillars along with sap sucking aphids and whiteflies! We are currently using BT against the caterpillars and neem oil against the sap suckers. It will be an uphill battle.  Thankfully there are some beneficial insects helping us out, including ladybeetles and spiders. We are continuing to add plants to our garden. Beets, lettuce, cabbage, and cauliflower were not planted earlier because of the heat. Lettuce is planted this week, and we expect to break ground with the cabbage and cauliflower next week. Beets need a bit longer because their roots aren't strong enough to transplant yet. Very soon our gardens will be full of MANY colors: bright green lettuce, red beet leaves and lettuce, purple eggplant leaves and kohlrabi, yellow squash and tomato flowers, on and on. One student brought in some borage seeds, an herb which has a blue flower and tastes like cucumber. Of course, the fertilizer also represents the blue on our garden color chart.

Garden Friend eating a Garden Enemy

Lettuce was planted this week! Soon to come is cauliflower, cabbage, and beets!

Peas are emerging after a week.

Goodnight lettuce!

2 Weeks of Planting!

Oh Boy, I am a bit behind with my blog. I doc myself 20 grade points...

We have spent the past two weeks planting our crops in the garden. First we directed everyone to their plots and started the 'fun' weeding session. Students were given transplants of eggplant, 4 pepper varieties, and 2 tomato varieties to plant in addition to the seeds for beans, green onions, carrots, okra, sunflowers, zinnias, basil, cilantro, cucumber, yellow squash, and zucchini.  At planting, every one was given a little cup of fertilizer to place around their plants. Placement of the fertilizer is important: if its too far from the plant it cannot access it until the roots grow, and if its too close then the roots will burn from the intensity of the fertilizer.

Selecting the transplants

Long shadows meant we were out there pretty late planting!

I waited until the second week to break it to everyone that the original tomato and broccoli transplants all DIED. I believe it was due to a the pH of the germination medium being too high. We bought in tomatoes from a local place in town for everyone to plant. It was too late for the broccoli, so instead everyone was welcomed to plant anything they wanted in the extra space. I heavily encouraged eggplant (cause we have like 800 available) and Kohlrabi (because its VERY similar to broccoli in that it is the same genus and species, however it was bred for a beefy bulbous stem instead of florettes).

Sad little broccoli transplant after 4 weeks of struggle.

We brought in some new germination mix and recently seeded lettuce, cauliflower, cabbage, and beets.

Speckled lettuce seedling. Picture taken over a week ago, they are much larger now!

We have been getting a lot of rain this past week. I am thankful for the raised beds helping with drainage. As the season goes on the impact of rain and irrigation water from overhead will continue to erode our beds. For now they are safe.

Several hours after rain and row middles are almost puddles

Student Seed Orders

All of the 'Seed Orders' placed in class last week have been counted out and are ready for distribution in class next week. This job took five hours with four of us hunched over hundreds of tiny seeds. Special 'Thank You' to Rebecca from the Soil and Water Science Department who helped with counting out all of the bean and pea seeds!

Field Preparation

We are avoiding the spilling of a lot of sweat and formation too many of blisters this year because our garden beds were formed before class began by our farm manager! Hours of raking and shoveling have been avoided. We don't even know how lucky we are... Thank you John!!

John is forming beds that are 2 feet wide, with 2 foot walkways between beds.  Each student gets four beds, 15 feet long to plant their crops.

First Day of Class

During this class period students were introduced to the course and we highlighted some important features in a garden including but not limited to soil, fertilization, irrigation, climate, and more. Members of the class are each responsible for their own blogs to track the progress of their garden plots from start to finish (planting to eating). 

The first activity we did was 'order our seeds.' Each student was given a worksheet to plan their gardens. We all get four 15 foot beds to plant the vegetables. The worksheet included the plants we have available to grow along with the recommended spacing from Johnny's Select Seeds and the IFAS EDIS Vegetable Gardening Guide. Everyone calculated how many of each plant they will grow and handed in their 'Seed Ordering Worksheets.' For next week they are to post their garden plot plan to their blogs, similar to the figure I have below.

Unfortunately, Labor Day is next week therefore we don't have a chance to meet as a class. Therefore, our next meeting is in TWO weeks, at which point we will start planting in our gardens.

Germination-Station

The greenhouse is now a Germination Station! All plants are emerging and some are starting to develop their first 'True Leaves.' The cotyledons are not considered to be true leaves because they have already been formed within the seed instead of being formed post-germination. Below are examples from pepper and tomato.

Pepper: 

Tomato:

The First of Many...

And we're off...! The broccoli has sprouted after 3 days. So quick! The rest of the seeds (tomato, eggplant, pepper) are expected to germinate soon. It gets quite hot in the greenhouse, despite the cooling system. Because of the heat and the intense sun, the trays dry out quickly and need to be watered at least once a day.

In just about 2 months these guys will be ready to harvest!

Class Preparation!

This is the area of land where we will be growing our gardens.

The seeds for class have arrived! 

In preparation for class to begin at the end of August, thousands of transplants are being produced for tomato, eggplant, broccoli, and pepper. They are currently growing in a greenhouse cooled by a fan-and-pad system. Having transplants gives these crops a 'jump' on the season so they can be harvested earlier than plants direct seeded at the same planting time. Most other crops will be direct seeded into the garden by students.