CONNOR’S GARDEN
PROFILE
I want to work at the garden because:
Two of my personal goals for working at the Dallas Youth Garden this summer are:
1. Explore the magic of friendship
2 Get better with plants make them like me
Two things I hope to learn from working at the Dallas Youth Garden are:
1.the magic of friendship duh
2. Specific requirements for maintaining certain plants
I think my biggest challenge will be: weeding…
My favorite vegetable or fruit is: pepper tee hee
I hope to contribute this to the garden this year:
My knowledge of the magic of friendship.
GARDEN PLAN
Vegetables and Flowers Planted (list in order):
Zinnia
Tomato
Pepper
Onion
Zucchini
Butternut squash
Pole beans
Crookneck
Patty pan
Rows of vegetables planted: 16
Number of different kinds of vegetables planted: 9
Planned Garden Yield: 324 lb + patty pan
Planned Biggest Producer: zucchini or squash
GARDEN LOG:
May 2-7: Just started. Met in the garden and then garden planning using Zoom.
May 9-15: Helped Clean up Plant Sale. Garden planning zoom meetings. Cleaned up tools
May 16-22: Began the planting process.
May 23-20 : I dug holes in the sun, it wasn’t fun, watered planted vegetables.
May 30-June 4: Yay! Finished planting and did some light weeding as well as watered my plants.
June 8-12: Started straw, I think we were pretty efficient. Watered my plants and weeded, alternating starting side each day.
June 14-20: More straw! Kinda? I lovingly drenched my plants in water, lightly weeded, and gently plucked the premature flowers off my tomatoes and squash. Had an optional day on Thursday which I didn’t go to cause I didn’t make my mind up until I had already forgotten about it. Tee hee.
June 23-28 Yay we finished straw! I drowned my plants with water to ensure they wouldn’t die on hot days. Saw a zucchini coming in so that’s good. I weeded my onions and did a bit of weeding around my squash. Guided my bean plants onto the fence to ensure they grow neatly and efficiently. We talked about projects a bit but I didn’t really decide on anything specific, a few ideas floating around though.
June 30 - July 4 I got three moderately sized Zucchini plucked once they were ripe for the taking. Did a bit of weeding randomly around my garden. I tried watering a little less because I was worried about over watering but then I ended up watering even more because I spent a while on each plant. I decided to take pictures of a bunch of my plants and label them for one project and I hope to bake Zucchini bread for another, but we’ll see how it goes. Oh and I missed the optional day on July 4th because of ride issues. It’s fine though.
July 7 - 11 I got a bunch more zucchini a couple very big ones. We started minions (group weeding) on Saturday, it went fine I guess. I drowned all my plants in water but Jori says I need to give my beans more water but all the weeds keep sucking it all up so I started super weeding them. I’ve mostly been weeding my onions, peppers, and beans. I’ve seen a few little patty pans coming in and one of my zucchini plants is growing like 4 zucchinis at once. We had the party thing on Saturday which was fine but we had to do work before and after the party so it was just a break in between. There’s so much nightshade in my garden especially among my beans and peppers but it’s fine cause I got most of it out on Saturday.
July 14 - 18 My zucchini’s are still going strong, easily my biggest producer. Mostly because I give them so much water and they love it. I have noticed a sunflower growing in one of my bean rows, it’s cute and I have hope for it despite its hindrance on my beans. I weeded my back row of zinnias fully.
July 21 - 25 I got some good patty pans and zucchinis of course. My special sunflower is radiating with potential and I’ve continued giving her generous amounts of water. Sadly I had to weed my front row zinnias more to make my garden prettier and I got like 9/10 of the way there. Which is fine cause I was doing a bunch of other stuff.
July 28 - Aug 1 YAY OPEN HOUSE!! The open house was pretty good, there was food which I had none of cause I feel weird eating it. Not that it’s bad or anything it just feels like awkward to me. There was a good amount of people including Marianne (I don’t know how to spell her name) she was incredibly social and requested garden tours from multiple interns and I love her for that. Overall really friendly and very pretty and amazing. In preparation for the open house we weeded our rows closest to the paths and we laid down bark chips. AND I CAN SAY WE CAUSE I DID IT TOO.
Aug 4 - 8 Air quality was a little wonky this week, it was the worst in Tuesday but got better the later days so we still worked the whole week (I didn’t work on Tuesday cause it became an optional day). Other than that nothing special happened. Well turns out I was drenching my plants a little too generously, so on Thursday I only watered my rows and not my transplants.
GARDEN PROJECTS
Social media thing
I basically just took a bunch of pictures of my plants and posted them on instagram labeling each plant and tagging the Dallas youth garden instagram account. But that’s about all I can do cause the account doesn’t seem to me accessible at the moment. Here are the pictures:
2. Resipe
Name:
Ingredients:
Steps to Make it:
3. Another Project
Topic: BEES
Types and what they each do:
Bumble: Very voluptuous little cutie pies, they are soft and fluffy with mostly black and a bit of yellow. They can pollinate flowers including flowering plants like summer squash, tomatoes, peppers, and beans, and while most of those are self-pollinating, bees still help them!
Honey: Honey bees are more petite and the iconic black and yellow striped bee, most famous for you guessed it HONEY! Like most bees, honeybees help plants by pollinating them which helps them produce more seeds and fruit yield!
Wasps: Wasps always get a bad rep but they aren’t as hateful as most believe. Well of course they aren’t hateful, I’m not sure bees can experience hatred. But they are still good for plants because they can pollinate duh! And they are good for garden pests like caterpillars, beetle larvae, ants, and flies. Wasps are seen as more aggressive because they are capable of being more aggressive without dying from having their stingers yanked out, so because they are able to utilize their stingers more often they are seen as more aggressive. The truth is that wasps don’t sting people randomly, they only sting when threatened, similar to bees.
Additional stuff: I chose these three cause they are the only ones I see in my garden and I KNOW there are multiple types of wasps and bumble bees and stuff. I did learn that there are only 8 species of true honeybees. We in Oregon, and like most of North America have Western honeybees which were brought from Europe in the 1800’s. Just remember, bees are friends and don’t kill or harm them unless absolutely necessary. Friendship is magic!
4. Public Presentation https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10pXrN3yA6aiw60MwEbAp0vfWNIKN64guCcQmBbTjVPI/edit?usp=drivesdk
Date: Early to mid July.
ErWho I Presented To: The world, and the garden.
What I talked About: Different plants and cute little details about those plants.
How it went: We’ll find out.
What I learned : Nothing <3
MONTHLY GARDEN SUMMARY
May: Days Worked 11 Days Off 2 Extra Days Worked 0 Days Late 0
June: Days Worked 10 Days Off 2 Extra Days Worked 0 Days Late 0
July: Days Worked 9 Days Off 2 Extra Days Worked 0 Days Late 0
August: Days Worked _____ Days Off _____ Extra Days Worked _____ Days Late______
September: Days Worked _____ Days Off _____ Extra Days Worked _____ Days Late______