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.