Growing Garlic

This article didn't interest me as much as some if the others. My family eats a lot of garlic so the idea to grow my own appeals to me but the house we live in doesn't have a lot of garden space and what space there is already has flowers so I would like to continue with more flowers. I learned that garlic needs cold weather to from side buds, which later grow into cloves.I also learned that garlic is very strong, it can survive freezes and snowfalls and still survive in the spring. I had no clue but it seems like garlic would be good to grow in our climate. I find it interesting that garlic needs really specific nutrients and special care, there are several manures and composts suggested, when it is strong enough to survive winter. I love some of the names of the garlic and i would love to try some of the more exotic types.

DIRT

I really liked this article, even though it was a little long. I love dirt. I love gardening with my hands, that's why I never wear gloves even if it is a pain to wash my hands later. I found it interesting that people care so much about the dirt under our feet. I love the idea that without dirt we wouldn't be able to survive because all the water would run off into the ocean. That's such an amazing idea, that without dirt we wouldn't survive. Another amazing idea is that dirt is a living organ, almost like the skin of the planet. Something I didn't know before is that healthy soil is one half air. One tablespoon has more life within than all the humans on earth. That's ridiculous but amazing. I love the feel of rich soil and the smell is amazing,I also love that it houses so many creatures. Its so fun to see the earth worms come out in the rain even if its sad that so many get stepped on. I knew that trees stored carbon but I did not know that the dirt also stored carbon. Dirt is so important to our way of life that when we overwork it our civilizations fail. That's some pretty heavy stuff. It asks the question, what will we do when we have no good soil left? Soil erosion is a big problem, we are causing about 80% of erosion and it takes at least 200 years for it to come back. Our top layer of soil is being wiped away, and this is our most important layer. This erosion is also causing water pollution, because pesticides get into the water. We are causing this erosion when we build houses, urban erosion is not watched by any federal system, people are getting away with this. Because farms are now specializing on only one product the soil is now becoming infertile. Or use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers is not helping matters either.I liked this article though it was a little lengthy and I'm not sure that I liked their solutions to these problems, "urbanization needs to be better managed,...poverty,war and desperation need to be addressed". I thought they were all to vague and unlikely to happen anytime soon. The only concrete thing that I picked up was to buy organic, I felt that they could have come up with far better solutions.

Wheat Board Stance

I think that if more than fifty percent of wheat farmers want to keep the wheat board. Lemieux said that if farmers can decide who to sell to and how much to sell for it could be beneficial to farmers. This is not necessarily true, the smaller scale farmers might not be able to sell their wheat and farmers might have to sell their wheat at a lower price than they would have when they were part of the wheat board. Without the assurance of someone buying their wheat many farmers might be in trouble in the coming years.I think that its awful that the government is deciding what freedoms the wheat farmers want and need when they are going against what the farmers themselves are saying. Its ridiculous that the government would be so inflexible when a majority wants to keep the board the way it is. What I want to know is what are the farmers options if down the road they still want to reinstate the wheat board.

Loutet Farm

Today was really exciting, our class was able to go to Loutet Farm and help out a little bit as well as learn a few things. I learned some more about two types of plants being planted together to aid each other. One great example of this is "the three sisters", this is beans corn and squash growing together while helping each other grow. I started off the session by weeding, this was fun even with the rain, but I would really have preferred that it didn't rain, we took out the red alders and the carrots among other things. After we finished a couple of rows we stepped into the housed area where they grow tomatoes and basil, the inside was covered in a fishing net so that the tomatoes have something to grow on, they also use string so that they can grow tall enough to use the net. An interesting thing that I learned today was that you can grow zucchini in the same way, all you have to do is make a sling so that the vegetable does not break the vine. Afterwards it was back into the rain to help with the compost. Somethings I learned include that when stacking the compost it is better to start with a square and then build on top of it like a pyramid,and you have to turn it over about once a month.I filled wheelbarrows with compost so that the others could spread it to create soil. It was hard lifting but at least it had stopped raining. The last thing we did was sample the carrots that we had pulled they were tiny and a little dirty but they tasted really good.