My organic garden

In my “Food” course, we are learning how to create a garden and the different ways that soil is living or dead. For this project, we designed our own virtual organic garden. Creating my raised bed took a long time to figure out the dimensions. I am planting 10 different plants which are tomatoes, potatoes, peas, peppers, alfalfa, onions, carrots, lettuce, strawberries and radishes. These plants will be planted in my backyard garden where there are also other plants and plenty of soil to grow these beautiful plants.

The length for my bed is 48 inches which I converted to 4 feet. The width is exactly the same as the length. The height is 24 inches which I then converted to 2 feet by dividing my inches by 12. The volume is 55,296 cubic inches. This is how much soil I need in my garden. I have also recorded the process of plants pH levels in order to know my plant will develop complete and be healthy. Also, I learned that plants have to have 5.5-7.0 of pH level to keep itself in good condition.The soil that I collected from my backyard has  pH level of 7.0. Nitrogen is N3 sufficient, Phosphorus is P2 adequate and Potassium is K4 surplus. The reason why I conducted a soil sample test was to know if the quality of my soil was good enough for my plants. I learned that I needed to add 0.32 pounds of soft rock phosphate and I don’t need to add potassium and nitrogen fertilizers to my soil. From my soil observation that I collected from my backyard the soil had compost, insects and was very moist and that’s how I knew that my soil was living because worms like to live in good soil.

The 10 plants that I will plant are tomatoes, carrots, onions, lettuce, radishes, peas, peppers, potatoes, strawberries, alfalfa. some are companion plants like lettuce and onion, because onions has a very strong smell and insects don’t like to eat it. By growing lettuce next to onions, onions will be helping lettuce from getting eaten by insects underground. Companion plants are plants that grow well together because they have a mutual relationship that help each other grow. Tomatoes helps carrots by providing them with good flavor. Alfalfa is a nitrogen fixer, which means that it collects nitrogen from the atmosphere and converts it to nitrates, nitrites and ammonia. This adds nitrogen in the soil. Companion planting is very helpful to plenty of plants here in the U.S and many other countries. Plants help each other from getting damage, by providing sunlight, shade, or repelling insects from getting eaten.

In conclusion I learned that not all gardens need fertilizers. I would be interested into planting this garden in my backyard.

By:  J.R (2014)  My Raising Bed