prepping for garden check #1

This week was dedicated to preparing for my first graded garden check. A few of the things that my garden would be graded on included bed formation, fertilizer application, and how well my bed was weeded, among other criteria. None of my plants have flowered yet, although since I planted/transplanted a few plants the second week of class I hope to see some flowers on Monday! This week I weeded, hoed the walkways between my beds, and built up by beds. I built up my beds by packing the loosened dirt from hoeing the walkways on both sides of each of my four beds. Building up my beds was extremely exhausting, but doing so prevents bed erosion and gives plant roots plenty of space to grow. Climate conditions were finally favorable here in Gainesville to transplant lettuce plants into my garden this week :)

on a side note, my sunflowers finally sprouted!

After transplanting, I added fertilizer to both my lettuce transplants and my puniest plants. Finally, I sprayed two types of pesticides. The first, thuricide, I sprayed last week. This pesticide helps kill caterpillars and keeps them from munching on the leaves of my young plants. The second, neem, is a murky yellowish color and helps kill aphids and flies. Luckily this week I saw no aphids hiding out on the underside of the leaves of my cucumber plants!

my cucumbers are healthy and aphid-free!

Essential plant nutrients are needed by a plant in order to grow to maturation. Some, such as carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen are present in a plant's environment (air), and comprise 95% of a dried plant's mass. Macronutrients are required by a plant in larger quantities than micronutrients, although both are equally important to a plant's overall health. Macronutrients include nitrogen (1.5% of dried plant's mass), phosphorous, and potassium, to name a few. Several micronutrients include iron, zinc, and manganese. On most of my tomato plants the lower leaves of the plant are yellow in color, while the top leaves are green. This symptom suggests that the older (lower) leaves are deprived of vital nutrients, such as nitrogen from the soil, due to the newer (upper) leaves "hogging" the nutrients.