Composting: An easy solution to a big problem

When starting adding to the composting bin at the farm I had little idea about the potential that composting has to improve the environment. Humans produce so much garbage, that could be put to better use than just putting in landfills. Worse is that many places (New York included) transport their garbage to landfills to other states, so not only is the methane from these plants hurting the planet, but the emissions from the trains and trucks carrying the waste creates a great impact on the planet. We need better methods of dealing with waste that won't hurt us in the long run.

Compost materials make over 25% of our waste. Taking away all of the compost would reduce a good portion of the emissions. Not only that but the material itself is extremely beneficial to nature. Composting is better than artificial fertilizers, because of its ridiculous amounts of micro-nutrients and macro-nutrients. The compost buffers the soil to neutralize both acidic and base qualities it may have. This allows much easier digestion for plant life. A 5% increase in compost allows plants to quadruple the amount of water that they can hold. The list goes on! Even better is that composting is a topic that is not very well researched compared to other areas of science, so in the classroom, testing is much more purposeful. Not only will it give students a sense of purpose but they develop a much more intimate relationship with nature. A system for composting needs to be instated, perhaps in a similar way to the system for recycling bottles and plastic.

Pests and Diseases

One of the more common diseases in plants that we had to and continue to battle at the farm is most commonly referred to as rust. Rust is a fungal infection that spreads on a plants leaves. It is named rust due to it's brownish coloration. The way to best remove rust from a plant is to remove the leaves infected with rust, or tear off parts of leaves that have the rust on them(that is to say if the leave isn't completely taken yet). We had a bunch of little green bugs with wings that would hang around the tomatoes, so to battle that we planted good bug blooms which are apparently beneficial to good bugs. These bugs are "good" because they eat the bugs that would otherwise be eating our crops.

Companion Planting

My group planted our carrots and chives next to one another because of a very helpful aspect of planting called companion planting. Companion planting is when plants benefit from surrounding plants. For example in the case of our carrots and chives, the chives repel aphids, beetles, cabbage worms, Japanese beetles and slugs from the carrots. Having them both next to one another also confuses carrot flies and onion flies. Growth of carrots and the carrots' flavor improves with chives growing next to them. Carrots definitely benefit more from chives than vice-versa, nonetheless they make wonderful companions!

Origins of the Farm

The farming at battery park was first an idea by millennium high school students who wanted to grow food in the area. After the parks department caught wind of the proposal, they decided to make it a much larger project involving more than just one school. After a large amount of bamboo was donated to the project a designer by the name of Scott Dougan created what he envisioned as the fence of the farm. Inspired by the turkey Zelda who lives and wanders battery park, he shaped the fence of the farm to her shape. The farm was officially launched April 11th and has been incredibly successful since then.

5/24

Today we sprinkled coffee grains over absolutely everything on our berm (not including weeds of course). The lettuce leaves are coming up more, and very evenly. The cucumbers are growing new leaves on the same stalks. Tomatoes started flowering, but unfortunately had some yellowing leaves. There were also a few small green winged bugs found on the tomatoes. The peppers have leaves that are losing color at the tips. The marjoram is strong, so it will be harvested in the near future. The watermelon's leaves grew slightly larger. The carrots are much taller. The chives have some parts yellowing, but it is rather large so it is to be harvested along with the marjoram. We also planted strawberries today and they already had tiny fruits growing on them. We also found 1 skinny little bee today so there is hope. The ambient temperature today was 28 degrees centigrade. And the soil temperature was 36 degrees centigrade. The soil's moisture was at a fairly high 17.4%. For the fertilizer experiment we were doing between the two peppers we have growing, I have set up a table below.
Used Unused
height 3in 2in
number of leaves 6 8
health few brown Disease affecting
spots on leaves the larger leaves

Farming on 5/3

Today we planted a lot of different things. We planted chives, white bulb unions, melons, nasturtium, and marjoram. For the melon patch area of our berm we put up two bamboo sticks and tied them together so that the melons would have something their vines could climb up. The chives and marjoram were both transplants, from elsewhere so they were already doing quite well. We actually split up the chives into two separate plants. The carrots have also made some noticeable progress. But they weren't the only things that grew. We noticed a bunch of weeds popping up(mostly grass). Our teacher said that it was because the soil for the entire area was just tossed up dirt that had grass on top, so now the grass is just trying to peek its way through the soil. It was fairly breezy and cloudy today. It was around 65 degrees. For next class we have to transplant tomatoes, and plant cucumbers, peppers, and possibly strawberries.

Carrot Royal Kuroda

Carrot Royal Kuroda is the name of the type carrot that my group planted. Its Latin name is Zanahoria Kuroda. It is a carrot of oriental background. It has large, sweet, and crisp roots. It grows usually to a maximum of 8". It takes around 75 days to harvest at the full 8", but it can be harvested at any size. The seeds are to be planted 1/2" below soil. As the leaves sprout an inch high, they need to be separated at least 3" apart from neighboring carrots. The carrots of our group's berm are doing very well now.

Review of Food Inc.

This movie disgusted me in just about every way I thought I could be disgusted. I was disgusted with treatment of the environment, treatment of livestock, treatment of workers, treatment of people purchasing the product. The environment is being destroyed by run off from chemicals used to kill weeds that grow in crops. Livestock are being treated as mere objects instead of living creatures, being killed by electric shock on "killfloors", being packed together shoulder to shoulder, forced to stand constantly in their own feces, and without seeing the light of day for their natural existence. This is so similar to people in the holocaust, except most of the people in the holocaust did not experience that treatment coming right out of the womb. Workers are for the most part illegal immigrants that are hired by corporations, are taken away by police that are given information by those same companies. I've been disgusted with the role of the government, and the role of science. As one of the organic natural farmers stated "They consider 'how?' but never 'why?'" We use advances in technology to make operations more efficient, when those operations needn't be happening for a plethora of reasons. Technology is a double edged sword and as the world is getting cut deeply by it, it is getting sharper and sharper.

Farming pt.1

My science class came to Battery Park today to get a scope of what we were going to be working with before we started considering what we wanted to grow. Each of the two ridges were 2 feet wide and around 30 feet long. The class split up into smaller groups, and we divided up the ridges evenly for each of the groups. My group did not finish working out what placement we wanted for plants or all of the plants we wanted to grow. However, we did manage to plant some carrot seeds at the end of our humble patch!
Besides working out the possible plotting of our gardens, we tested out the soil and found that although the nitrogen levels for the soil were adequate, the phosphorus and potassium levels were dismal. This meant that we will most likely have to get some fertilizer to strengthen the garden. Notwithstanding these two nutrient deficiencies in the soil we used, my group's carrot seeds sprouted just a few days ago. I will take this as a good omen.