Weding the Garden

Our garden has been a challenge throughout the year. We though that after planting it will be just easy to go ones in a while to weed and to but water but we were wrong, I think that the hardest part is know because since is rainny season it rains like every other day so the grass around our plants have been growing a lot and it has taken a lot of time to take the grass out and then the next day the grass it back. Also our plants should not receive a lot of water but the rain has not helped much and our alo veras died because they received much water, but the other plants look good and healthy I just hope the dont die.


Our group has gone weeding with the class but only one member of our group went in lunch. I was planning to go the same day but I decided to go next week because if we all go the same day we will think is fine but it will make better for the garden if each of us takes care of in in different days so we make sure its fine and not look at ones and thats it. I think as a group we have worked hard and seeing plants grow is a reward of all the hard work we have done. I also think that if we continue with this project next year it will even look better because we have put our effort over a year now and to continue what you started is a better feeling than just leaving at the side.


I hope that next year we will have more time to work on this and also expand our garden. We have a good amount of food producing but I dont think is enough that will produce enough food for a hall school. I think its a amazing start but there is still a lot to work on. I specially think that if we continue how we did this year by next year our garden will produce look like an actual garden. I also hope that our garden does not get distorted over the summer because coming in next year in august and seeing our our work lost will be very sad and it will not encourage people to do it again because then they will know that over the summer it will get destroyed. I am looking forward to continue my project next year !

Planting Time!

Last class we divided the space where we were going to plant. This class what we did was choose the  plants for each space . We decided that the planting date was going to be the 22 of April (yesterday), as planed. We choseApril 22 because it was Earth Day so planting this day would show our school that we care for it. Our group had several different plants such as: Tomatoes, Aloe Vera, Sweet Peppers, and Oregano, among others. On the planting day, however, we had to change the distribution of the plants because, as a class, we came up to the conclusion that if the plants that needed less water were put together and the ones that needed much water were put together it would be easier to grow them and take care of them. 

Our group decided to take the ones with less water needed first of all because no one wanted them and second because they needed less care so we did not have to go every day down to the garden to take care of them. We ended up with the following plants one rosemary, one thyme, one sure, two oregano, and three aloe vera. Mr Wilkinson, Alieu , and Amadou  helped us plant all our plants in our section.

I think we did a good job as a group because all of us planted, all of us helped and all of us have the chance now to admire the garden. We have been working for 4 months in this garden and every time we go down I can see a big progress and I know that in a couple of years this garden will be bigger and will produce enough food that the hall school can eat from it. I hope that by the end of this year there will be vegetables so we can make sure the plants will be able to survive in the summer. I think as a class we did a great job and I hope it continues like this until the end of the year and next year. We also put a picture of us working in the garden for something called faces of climate change that is a web page where people put there pictures and share in witch way they helped the earth. 

Dividing into Groups

Our next step towards our garden was to divide our class into 3 different groups and each one will get one of the beds. Our first step as a group was to figure a way that the water bottles will stay till with our falling with the wind, our group had the idea to use wire around so the bottles will stay still. We found the best way to do this was that every 15 bottles we will do zig-zag forward and the same the way back, also before starting with another set we will tie the two sets together with more wire.  We as a team worked very well and very fast, our group was the first one to finish and it tock us 1 1/2 classes to do so. It was a very fun task because sometimes the bottles will fall while doing the zig-zag and you had a start over again, but over all we had a lot of fun doing this.


This time as a role was the one that tied the sets of bottles together and to cut and tie all the wires. We started with this idea as first and it worked so great that we did not change it or make any big changes.I think the hardest part was to do the zig-zag because the bottles they were falling sometimes and also the bottles will slip out on the way back and we had to do this all the  way again. I think we will improve this by maybe having more soil and the sides because then the bottles will be more stable and will not fall.

I think the best person that worked in this part of the zig-zag was isabel because she managed that the bottles will not fall at any time and she made a clean and perfect job as this. Since she was in our group we had the benefit of finish first with a good job. I learned  a lot from this experience and the most important think I learned was that working in groups is not that easy but sometimes it has a great benefit specially if all of you work together.

bottles

This past two weeks in our school garden we worked on creating a border for the soil. The idea that we came up was to use water bottles full with water so the soil will not fall. We also put food coloring in our bottles so it will look nice. We dived our class in 4 team, each one with a different color. My team was the blue color. The first week we did not have many water bottles so for each color we did about 60 bottles. In the same week we also went down to start putting the bottles in there place and we finished about have of the first ring of our garden.

The seconde week we had a lot of water bottles but some teams did not have much food coloring so some teams like mine did until 100 water bottles and some like the red time did only 60. we also the same day when down to put our water bottles down. This time when we went down we did a mess because we lost the red bottles and people were not really trying to work, and some others were not good or able to put the bottles in their place so we when up to clean Mr Wilkinson's room.

I think for next week we should use better our time and start planting because we heart that some plants will arrive next week. I also think that next week we will work better because we will have more and different jobs to do so pore people will  be working at a time, because our class is so big that sometimes we need to take turns. I hope next week we will do a big step for our garden.

First Week At the Garden

This week we worked on the garden for 2 hall periods of class to start our garden. We worked very hard even though we did not have enough materials so we worked at at time we tried to work as a group and lent each other the materials that we had. Each one of us got the chance to do a bit of each task and we worked soo hard that in 3 hours of work we could see a big progress. The first task was to make the circles to have a pattern to take the grass away and put fresh soil. we did all this work to have the base of the garden so we can go once's a week to maintain it. We where also plaining to do the borders and finish putting the rest of the soil. I think we worked hard this week and I hope next week we work harder so we have a finished garden as soon as posible and we can eat our food that we made.

PS: I dont like vegetables :)