From My Garden to Yours

Several school classes, garden clubs and other organizations visit my Sundew Gardens on field trips every year. I feel it is important to show to members of my community where some of their food is grown. In early January, Marc Pooler’s and Jay Getty’s advanced placement environmental studies classes of Hagerty High School will descend upon my gardens. To keep everyone focused, I have written this study guide to reinforce the various aspects of my operation. Are you smarter than an AP high school student?

1. Why is carbon such an important mineral in the soil?

2. Name three locations humus is created.

3. Why is humus such a stable form of carbon in the soil?

4. Why are Florida’s soils so sandy?

5. How is nitrogen fertilizer created naturally?

6. How is nitrogen fertilizer created industrially?

7. What are some of the problems associated with excess use of nitrogen fertilizer?

8. Name three pesticides obtained from natural sources.

9. What is a GMO?

10. How far does most commercial produce travel, and how old is it?

11. What percentage of our food supply do local growers provide?

12. Name four types of markets for locally grown produce.

Answers:

1. Carbon holds the soil life and mineral nutrients in the root zone of the soil.

2. Humus is formed in a compost pile, earthworm’s gut or cow’s stomach by trillions of microbes.

3. Humus is composed of molecular strands of carbon that resist breaking down.

4. Florida’s weather sublimates (evaporates) accumulated plant debris before humus is formed.

5. A symbiotic bacterial relationship in a plant’s roots. Lightning.

6. Natural gas is burned in the presence of an electrical catalyst.

7. Nitrogen run-off causes algae blooms in rivers and dead zones in the oceans. Plants may appear lush and green but are weak and subject to insects and diseases.

8. Bacillus thuringiensis (or Bt) is a natural soil bacteria that controls caterpillars. Pyrethrum is made from chrysanthemum flowers and kills most insects on contact (including beneficial ones). Neem oil is made from a tree seed native to India.

9. Genetically modified organism. Our food is not labeled when it contains these cross-species gene spliced Frankenstein ingredients.

10. The average distance most produce travels is 1,500 miles and is frequently five days old.

11. Local growers in Central Florida provide less than 5 percent of our food supply. (A precarious situation considering Florida’s geographic topography as a peninsula.)

12. Retail big-box grocery stores, Local-rule farmer’s markets, restaurants, U-pick farms (such as Sundew Gardens).

Hope to see you in the garden in 2012!