Service Learning - Party at the Campus Community Farm!

My service learning project took place at the Campus Community Farm on March 6th, 2017 for two hours and the project was called "Farm Work Parties", organized by Carla Tjung (carla.tjung@email.edcc.edu). During this project, we learned the basics of how to garden and the roles that each organism played to help the plants grow. 

The first thing we did when we arrived was that we toured the farm. She explained that the green club takes care of the farm during the spring and how they share the farm with the bee club. These pictures below are different aspects of the farm. 

Hand-made Bug Hotel. Each compartment has specific material for each species. These "good bug" population helps keep "bad bug" populations such as parasites in check.  

This is the cob oven in the cultural kitchen. Sometimes, students come and have a cookout and actually use this oven as well as the pit oven. Hopefully, in this next quarter, I will be able to come out and eat some good food!

Unlike a greenhouse, this is a hoop house. The walls/roof is made from plastic and keeps the crops sheltered from the wind, rain, and snow. The plastic covering does keep the plants at a warmer temperature but not by much. During the winter, the white pieces of fabric that are laying next to the beds covered the crops to insulate more heat so that the don't frost and die. 

After the tour, a few of us sorted seeds that were donated or bought into a seed filing cabinet by alphabetical order. Then, we planted a few pea seeds in the back corner of the hoop house and also pulled out unwanted weeds in the hoop house as well. 

The goal of these work parties was to prepare the crops and the land for the spring so that they are ready to grow and later on harvested. 

I personally really like the idea of service learning because it gives me another purpose of learning the subject in school. To be able to grow an eco-friendly and efficient garden, I'm glad that I had the background knowledge on how bugs and organisms such as earthworms live because I came to appreciate them more and see how important they are instead of just knowing that they are somehow important. For example, to build a bug house, we had to know which types of bugs feeds on other bugs as well as what type of habitat they prefer. If we chose random bugs without prior knowledge, it could harm the plants, help the parasites feed and grow in population size. To tell weeds from crops, we will have to recognize them and understand how they would affect the growth of the crops.

Science plays a very big role in the community since the growth of these plants as well as animals is based on science. This is especially important because these plants and animals can end up on your dinner plate. I think where your food is grown and how it was produced is important to your health. On a smaller note, if you wanted to grow your own garden, it would be important to learn about the science behind it so that you can grow your garden in the most efficient and cheapest way with the same quality as store brought produce and veggies. 

Questions:
How do I know which plants need to be put in the hoop house to survive and which ones can survive in the cold?
Can we cook anything in the cob oven? Or are there certain limitations?
How would we clean out the cob oven if it needed to be cleaned out? Or does it need to be cleaned at all?
How can you tell if the soil needs to be fertilized or if crops could be grown on a certain type of dirt? 
Why is it that the grass in my front lawn always dies within weeks of replacing it with new sod every time?  We water it about two to three times a week and try to keep them healthy but weeds start to grow uncontrollably and the grass slowly dies and dries off. We gave up after replacing it a few times because it became expensive.