April's Garden

Pictures

Intern Profile

I want to work at the garden because:

Gardening is fun!

Two of my personal goals for working at the Dallas Youth Garden this summer are:

Learn more about gardening

Take better care of it then last time

Two things I hope to learn for working at the Dallas Youth Garden are:

How to better take care of my garden

I think my biggest challenge will be:

Weeding...

My favorite vegetable or fruit is:

Broccoli/strawberry

I think a leader is:

Someone who can lead others, but not through force. Someone who listens to the opinions of others.

I hope to contribute this leadership skill to the garden this season:

Motivation

Garden Plan:

Rows of vegetables planted: 11

Number of different kinds of vegetables planted: 6

Optimal Garden Yield:

My garden did or did/not match my plan and why:

It did, until the very end. We ended up adding a row of cabbage and a row of sunflowers. This is because I counted wrong and had a lot of extra space.

Garden Log:

May 3-5: Started work and removed tarps

May 8-12: Worked on plans helped at master gardeners plan sale

May 15-19: Started raking and planting

May 22-26: Planting and watering

May 29-June 2: We were inside doing leadership plans. Watering and planting

June 5-June 9: Loooots of watering and planting! I finished planing on the 7th!!

June 12-June 16: I watered my plants, and weeded my garden. Took forever but finally got my flowers weeded! We also got a lot of mulching done!

June 19-June 23: So far, weeded... And watered. We went on a field trip on Saturday, somehow my allergies didn't get triggered O.o

June 26-June 30: We mulched my garden some, watered as well. I weeded... Still being overtaken though... Sadly....

July 2- July 7: I weeded, and watered. And mulched. Yep...

July 9- July 14: Tuesday I watered and weeded, helped weed Rachael's garden as well. But i was gone for the rest of that week.

July 17- July 21: Been weeding a lot. Also watering. I have harvested a lot too!! Mainly Zucchini.

July 24- July 21: Watering, weeding. I was absent on Saturday because I was in the I with my dojo. Also welcome to the garden Abby!!!

July 30 - August 4: We watered and weeded. Again. But we started talking about fair too!! We filled out cards for it as well

August 7 - August 11. So far we have weeded and watered and picked. But we picked for fair!!!

August 14 - August 18. Weeded. Picked. Watered. Nothing new.

August 21 - August 25. Weeded and watered and picked. Was gone Thursday. But on Friday I raised $60 from selling cookies!!!! Saturday Kaitlyn and her little brother helped me weed after I watered!!! (I stayed half the day

August 28- September 1- watered and weeded and talked some. And also harvested.

September 4 - September 8: harvested watered and weeded some. We got our Evaluations!! SK yay!! I did good!!!

Leadership Project:

Problem: Is it better for squash/zucchini to have more water or more heat?

Solution: I have 1 row of squash/zucchini that is hilled and 1 row of squash/zucchini that is not hilled. I will see which one is producing more, and which one appears healthier.

Test/Activity: As they are growing I will take photos of both of them, and as they grow I will see which one grows healthiest (how big are they? are they green or are they sickly yellow?)

Results: So far the none hilled ones are growing bigger and greener and stronger. They also keep trying to produce more than the hilled ones.

Communication: Showing people the pictures, showing them the numbers of how much they produce. Telling them how they grew.

Leadership Skills: Observation, planning.

Leadership project #2!!

Problem? Me and Kaitlyn have food allergies!!

Test? Cooking food with alterations!!

Recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour

  • 1/2 cup Dutch process cocoa

  • 1 teaspoon baking soda

  • 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

  • 2 large eggs, at room temperature

  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled

  • 1/4 cup canola, vegetable oil, or melted coconut oil

  • 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

  • 1 1/2 cups packed shredded zucchini

  • 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, divided

DIRECTIONS:

  • Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.

  • In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and sea salt. Set aside.

  • In a large bowl, add the eggs, melted butter, oil, vanilla extract, and brown sugar. Stir until smooth. You might have a few small brown sugar clumps and that is fine.

  • Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, don’t overmix. Stir in the shredded zucchini until just combined. Stir in 3/4 cup of the chocolate chips.

  • Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup of chocolate chips over the top of the bread. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out mostly clean, you might have some melted chocolate chips on the toothpick and that is fine. You just don’t want a lot of gooey batter.

  • Remove the pan from the oven and set on a wire cooling rack. Let the bread cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Run a knife around the edges of the bread and carefully remove from the pan. Let the bread cool on the wire cooling rack until slightly warm. Cut into slices and serve.

Note-if you use coconut oil, make sure it is melted and slightly cooled. The bread will keep on the counter, wrapped in plastic wrap, for up to 4 days. This bread also freezes well. To freeze, cool the bread completely and wrap in plastic wrap and aluminum foil. Freeze for up to 1 month. Defrost before slicing.

Special instructions:

Check the flour for barley. Substitute the eggs for 1/2 cup of apple sauce. And instead of butter use coconut oil equal to the amount of butter. Use canola oil for the oil. And use special chocolate chips that are April and Kaitlyn safe!!!

Communication? Sharing it!!!!

Leadership quality? Planning!!

Leadership:

Problem: How to kill nightshade?

Solution: Researching how to kill it.

Results:

There are three ways to kill nightshade. None of them super effective. The first way is yo just pull the roots up completely, typically you dig them up. But that is hard to do when you have other plangs. The next is to use pesticides, which we really don't want to do. So that's out.

The last is to cut it at the roots until it quotes growing. This will go on for years though. So it's the least helpful.

Leadership quality: research.

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/weeds/get-rid-nightshade.htm

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/eradicate-nightshade-75651.html

I also visited other sites but they said the same things.

Leadership:

Problem: not many people have recipes for the foods that we grow.

Action: I have a recipe on here that uses Zucchini, which is one of the main things we grow. People at food assistance can use the recipe that I have above for a really tasty recipie, and I also have notes on how to take out several of the food allergies.

Communication! So yay!!!