Rachel's Garden
Pictures
Intern Profile
I want to work at the garden because: I want to improve my gardening skills.
Two of my personal goals for working at the Dallas Youth Garden this summer are: Improve weeding skills and have fun.
Two things I hope to learn for working at the Dallas Youth Garden are: How to improve my gardening skills and more recipes to make with my produce.
I think my biggest challenge will be: Keeping control of the weeds.
My favorite vegetable or fruit is: Potato
I think a leader is: Someone who can problem solve and help others.
I hope to contribute this leadership skill to the garden this season: Problem solving.
Garden Plan:
Rows of vegetables planted: 18 rows planted
Number of different kinds of vegetables planted: 12 or 13
Planned Garden Yield: 288 lbs
My garden did or did/not match my plan and why: My garden did match my plan because I wrote out the measurements between each row to know how far apart they needed to be. I was able to fit all my rows because of this.
Garden Log:
May 4: Started work and removed tarps
May 7-11: We measured out each garden.
May 14-18: Started planting
May 21- 25: I did more planting and I'm almost done.
May 28- June 1: I finished planting and I watered and weeded.
June 4- 8: I watered and weeded. My basil are starting to sprout and I have some other sprouts as well.
June 11- 15: I watered and weeded. I also replanted my basil, water melon, and lettuce since they weren't sprouting.
June 18- 22: I watered and weeded. My radishes are getting big and sadly so are the weeds.
June 25- 29: I watered and weeded. I also harvested most of my radishes and I got about 1.4 lbs.
June 30- July 6: On Vacation.
July 8- 13: I watered and I weeded. I also picked some radishes but they had worms in them.
July 16-20: I watered and weeded and I also picked zucchini and squash. I had over 21 pounds total on Saturday.
July 23- 27: I watered and weeded. We also had our open house on Tuesday and I gave my mom and sister a tour of my garden. I also picked more zucchini and squash and some flowers to take home.
July 30- August 3: I watered and weeded, picked some zucchinis, and made a summer squash spice cake. I also filled out papers for the Polk County Fair. I also picked the first cucumbers of the season.
August 6- 10: I prepared my vegetables and flowers for fair. I helped sell peaches for our fundraiser and I am going to fair Friday to see my produce in fair.
August 13- 17: I picked cabbages, peppers, and tomatoes. I also watered and weeded as usual.
August 20- 24: I picked more tomatoes, cabbages, peppers, and carrots. I had a lot of tomatoes but some of them had blossom rot. I also had vegetables and flowers picked for fair.
August 27- 31: I picked some carrots, peppers, a squash, zucchinis, tomatoes, and all of my basil was picked. We're going to the Wilamette Food Association Wednesday to learn what we're donating our produce for. It was hot Tuesday and I won't be here Thursday or Saturday.
Leadership Project:
1. Problem: pests are eating my plants
Solution: Find out more about ladybugs.
Test/Activity: Do research on ladybugs.
Results: They eat bugs. Specifically aphids. They are attracted to sunflowers, zinnias, marigolds, and other flowers.
Communication: I don't know when I'll communicate the project.
Leadership Skills: I would say that problem solving would be a leadership skill used in this situation because I need to figure out how to get rid of the pests eating my plants.
2. Problem: I have a squash that I want to bake with but I don't know what recipe to use
Solution: Look for a recipe.
Test/activity: Make Summer Squash Spice Cake
Recipe: 1 1/2 cups flour
1 tps baking powder
1/2 tps baking soda
1 1/2 tps. cinnamon
1/2 tps. nutmeg
1/4 tps ground cloves
1/4 tps ground ginger
1/2 tps. salt
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup veggetable oil
2 tps vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups grated summer squash
Sift together dry ingredients
Beat eggs, sugar, oil, and vanilla
beat in dry ingredients
Stir in grated squash
Pour into greased 8x8 in. pan
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 min.
Note: I did not use cloves or ginger and I only used a cup of squash instead of 1 1/2 cups.
Result: Summer Squash Spice Cake
Communication: I'll give this cake to the group on August 3rd Saturday.
Leadership Skills: I think that maybe planning would be a leadership skill that would help me with this project. This is because you have to plan when you're going to make to recipe, and what you need in order to make it.
3.Problem: I want to talk about my experiment with watermelons for my project but I need one that's communication
Solution: Post it on Facebook.
Test/activity: Write description and email it to Dean so he can post it on our Facebook page.
Communication: I don't know when I'll tell the group. Possibly next week?
Leadership Skills: I would say that effective communication is the leadership skill I used for this project. This is because I need to be able to get my point across in a way that people can understand and so that they can learn from it too.
4. Problem: My weeds went out of control and my tomatoes gained blossom rot. Solution: use the hazel hoe and tie and trim the branches of the tomato plant.
Test/activity: wack weeds and fix branches.
Communication: I learned some new things while I worked here. My tomatoes were getting blossom rot and so I had to tie the limbs up and have them trimmed. This caused them to get less blossom rot. Also my weeds were getting out of control and had I had the hazel at the beginning I would have had more control over them. I wish I had known these things sooner but now someone else can use these techniques next year. I'll communicate this on Sept. 7 Saturday.
Leadership skills: I think problem solving would be a leadership skill I used for this because I needed to fix these problems in order to have a better garden.