This was taken two weeks ago when I went out to do some weeding

 As many weeds as their were it didn't seem to hurt the plants too much .

 The swiss chard seemed to be the most affected by the weeds so we did some weeding around those first. If you look you can see them there in the middle of the picture.

 I found this little guy out in the plot munching away on some weed leaves.  I watched him for a while and he seemed to be more preoccupied with eating the weed leaves so I just let him be. Munch on little buddy, munch on.

 This is what it looked like after weeding.  Now you can see the chard.

 We were not  as concerned with the clover plant weeds because I had heard that the clovers put nitrogen back into the soil. So it was nice not to worry about those as much. 

 The side closest to the road  recovered some from the accidental herbicide spraying, but the plants were severely stunted. 

The different varieties are all growing at unique rates an our kale looked ready to harvest so last we we harvested it as well, we took measurements of the yield and hopefully will find a difference

Some beautiful purple bok choi

Russel cleaning the dirt off of our first harvest of bok choi.

One obstacle we have encountered is our 4th row on the post transplant fertilizer side of our plot has died.. the transplants never grew. Cornell said he thinks maybe they got hit with herbicide.

Above you can kind of see that there is not much of a difference of the growth between the two sides.Perhaps there will be a notable difference in the production weights.

Erin and our plants!

 This was from when the Swiss chard was planted.

 Weeds were starting to become a problem, but still manageable.

 They all were pretty well situated when we finished planting them.  We were careful not to water them with the hose pointed down because sometimes this can push the leaves into the dirt.

 Last week the weeds really started to become a problem. 

 

 As you can see they are starting to out compete the crops.

This Monday when we came out to the field it appeared that one of our rows near the road may have been sprayed with herbicide.  Hopefully our plants will be able to withstand the attack but we will see.

I would also like to post and record the types of fertilizers we are using, Our plot is divided in half and we have applied a different fertilizer to each side. Our south side has the nature safe fertilizer with 2lbs per row and our north side has micro start with 6.53lbs per row. This provides us with the same amount of nitrogen per side. 

Our plot

Measuring out 2 pounds of fertilizer

One bucket per row.

Baby plants newly transplanted.

Let the transplanting games...BEGIN!

Hello!
Gainesville finally got some cooler weather this morning! We knew it was coming and wanted to get some of our transplants in the ground.  We actually have two sets of transplants, the earlier group that we later realized we didnt plant enough for equal distribution for our research project, and our new groups where we planted 56 seeds of each cultivar.  We decided to not waste our earlier transplant groups and use them anyway! We put in some romaine lettuce, rhubard chard, red choi, and a bunch of kale!

Watering the transplants

Doing some weeding

Corneel put some Rye grass seeds in our center pathway. Here he is watering them down.

Later in week we also transplanted some of our newer set of transplants in the plot. We also fertilized the other half of our plot. The last of our transplants we will put in this week so look forward to that!

 

Russel making holes for our transplants

And then placing the transplants in.

Recently fertilized (the light brown layer on top of the soil)

This week our plot is really coming together, we have our beautiful rows made and half of them have been pre-fertilized. Our plants are doing really well and are almost ready to be planted in the ground! probably sometime this week! Our main man Cornell also cleaned up the field a little removing the grass and laying some hay down in-between the rows. 

Development on our plot!

Hello hello!

We had a garden day in our Organics class to work on our plot! Last time we got Robert to till the plot, and Cornell and I started a new batch of transplants since there was not enough of our original transplants for our research project.  On Friday's garden day we were finally able to make rows in our plot and to check how the transplants are doing.

Some red choi from our original transplants

Corneel carefully thinning our transplants

Our newest transplants

The rows Corneel had started

He may be the hardest worker we have

Just kidding we're all contributing blood, sweat, and tears. There are 4 rows on each side of our center pathway. 

Zoey applying pre-planting fertilizer to the top of our rows.

Who doesn't love fertilizing??

We will update soon with more specifics of our plot, cultivars of transplants, fertilizer application details, and much more soon so stay tuned!