The COW Learning Garden: A Space Transformed

Students in ENVS 230 “Sustainable Agriculture” have the unique opportunity to practice what their professor preaches, as they plant and then manage the Learning Garden all autumn as part of their lab experience. The following photos are from their first lab, when they transformed the garden from one large block of buckwheat cover crop into a tidy set of beds for class experimentation.  Watch the gardenscape change! STAY TUNED TO THE BLOG FOR MORE GARDEN UPDATES.

Pre-transformation: Mostly buckwheat, being grown as a cover crop

Students start weeding by hand….

…. and cutting the buckwheat with a scythe!

The weeds are cleared….

… the soil is raked smooth….

… landscape fabric is carefully laid down…

… and covered in straw. Topsoil is added to the soon-to-be beds, and all the buckwheat residue is piled into a giant compost pile (lower left).

And finally the students start marking out their beds.

Now it’s time to plant these seedlings!