Hello everyone,
To recap what my action project is about, I am making a garden for myself in my backyard. This is in relation to the Global Goals of Climate and Life on Land. By growing my own garden I won’t be contributing to the long fuel processes used to deliver the foods we eat to our local grocery stores, and I get to decide what goes into the planting and growing process, rather than the toxic items regularly put into gardening supplies and contributes to food processes.
The first step that I have completed was building an area to start my plants so that I can begin growing them. I have built a greenhouse kindly given by my grandmother to me, and this greenhouse will stay on my deck where it has lots of sunlight (or, as much as it can get within this season) and I can easily access. I spent the afternoon building the greenhouse and setting it up outside. Here are some pictures:
After having built the greenhouse, I had a sense of accomplishment and motivation. Now I had the area set up to start growing my plants.
Seeing as how this is a cold season, it can be difficult to grow certain plants and you have to make sure that the plants you are growing can deal with frost and cold. I looked at the website https://www.almanac.com/gardening/planting-calendar/BC/Vancouver and downloaded my own gardening guide so that it can help me throughout the process.
According to the guide, now is the best time for me to start growing vegetables like broccoli, Brussels spouts, cantaloupes, cucumbers, kale, lettuce, pumpkins, squash, sweet potatoes, Swiss chard and watermelons. Now that I have done my research on this I will have to see what seeds I already have and which I can go and buy to continue with my project.
As for successes, I believe that so far everything has been successful! I have been able to find reliable, helpful sources to guide me through the process (if I hadn’t found the websites, I may have been growing the wrong foods at the wrong time!) and the fact that I had a greenhouse already made the process have a very easy start, which is great! I don’t believe there have been any real challenges yet – thankfully! I was worried about the weather but seeing how many plants I can still grow is very relieving.
My next step will be to gather my seeds and prepare them so they can start growing in the greenhouse! I am very happy with how this project is turning out so far. I am really excited to see the outcome of it all.
Until my next post,
Jessica O’Brien-Visbisky
Hi Jessica,
I can see that you put a lot of work into your garden so far. I was wondering if you would be continuing this action considering our circumstances. It really just depends if you already have the materials like seeds. It would be great to see this action continue. If not, I think you could do something cool with inquiry. For example, since you are making your garden to better the environment, you could research how much pollution is created by the farming industry or how the farming industry could cut down on their pollution levels. You could even create a hypothetical and ask what would happen if everyone farmed their own food. Hopefully you can stick with the original plan. You said you have some seeds so I hope that is enough for your project.
Good luck!
Also, here are some (hopefully) helpful links to go along with the possible inquiry ideas…
http://www.finalstraw.org/the-real-need-for-gmo-and-industrial-scale-food/
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/industrial-agricultural-pollution-101
https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-facts-about-factory-farms-and-environment
Hey Shieva,
Yes, fortunately I will be continuing with my project! I had everything I needed for the project in advance, so thankfully I won’t have to start over. Thank you for the ideas though, and I will look into the sites you have shown me, just so I can better understand how creating an organic garden is helping our environment.
Thanks for the feedback!
Jessica O’Brien-Visbisky