Growing a garden
How would you grow a vegetable garden?
You’ve learned a lot about plants and what they need to grow. When you did the Discover Activity, you used what you know to grow an indoor garden.
Now think about how you would plant a garden outdoors. Where would you begin? A good place to start would be to collect the items you see here. You’ll also need a garden book. Why? It will tell you what your plants need to grow. For example, each kind of plant needs a certain kind of soil, a certain amount of sunlight, and a certain kind of fertilizer. If you don’t know what your plants need, you won’t be harvesting many vegetables!
Pretend you are going to plant and care for a garden. Then play the garden game on the following pages. Pick the crop that you’d most like to grow. As you read, use the boxes to make decisions about how to grow your crop. Each box has four choices. Pick the choice you think is best for your crop. When you’re finished, see whether your choices helped your crop grow.
Planting(Gardening plant)
The box on a this Croppage gives planting instructions for four kinds of crops. Read about each crop. Then decide which crop you’d like to grow.
Tomatoes were brought to Europe from South America in the 1500s, where they were grown in gardens for their pretty fruits. But before the 1800s, many people didn’t eat tomatoes. Back then, people thought tomatoes were poisonous.
Corn is actually the grain crop maize, which was first grown in North America over 6000 years ago. After European settlers arrived, they took maize to Europe, where it is an important grain crop too.
Carrots are roots of a plant that was first grown in Europe around the Mediterranean Sea. Carrots were among the first plants brought to North America by explorers.
Strawberries that grow in gardens are probably hybrid of many kinds of strawberry plants that once grew wild in North and South America.
Where you plant your crop is an important decision. To choose the best plot for your crop, think about three things. How much sunlight does my crop need? How much space does my crop need? What kind of soil does my crop need?
You should also keep in mind that some plants are hardy-they can grow in places where they might not get all the things they need. Other plants are delicate and won’t grow well in places where they don’t get enough sunlight or space to grow in.
Before you plant, you should do one more thing-test your soil. A soil test tells how acid or alkaline (al’ke lin) your soil is. Some plants grow best in acid soil while others grow best in alkaline soil. Numbers called pH numbers measure how acid or alkaline the soil is. A pH number below 7 is acid. A pH number above 7 is alkaline. Most plants grow best in soil that is slightly acid-pH 6.5. And few plants can grow at all in soil that is more acid than pH4 or more alkaline than pH 8.
Caring For a Crop
You’ve planted your crop. Now you’re ready to take care of it! Part of this job is making sure your soil has enough nutrients for growing plants. How? You need to add fertilizer to the soil. Remember that fertilizers contain nutrients that plants need.
Deciding what fertilizer to use isn’t easy. Fertilizers have different ingredients and some fertilizers cost more than others do. You can buy chemical fertilizers that are special mixtures for certain types of plants. The packages have labels that list three numbers. The numbers tell the percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium they contain. A 5-10-5 label would have 5% nitrogen, 10% phosphorus, and 5% potassium.
You must also decide when to fertilize. Some plants grow better if you add fertilizer before you plant. Other plants need to be fertilized while they are growing. When you add fertilizer, remember this rule: the more nitrogen, the less you should use.
Taking care of your crop also involves protecting it from insect pests, But before you decide how to get rid of your pests, you better make sure they really are “pests”! The praying mantis on this page may not look like something you’d want hanging around your garden, But as you learned, a praying mantis eats many kinds of insect pests, And ladybugs have an enormous appetite for harmful aphids. So keep in mind that you can use other insects to control your garden pests.
You can also use other plants! Some plants make chemicals with odors or tastes that keep insect pests away, Growing these plants next to your crop can help control pests,
Chances are you won’t have to use chemical pesticides, A few insects can’t eat up all the plants! But pesticides may be needed for large numbers of pests, Then, two rules should be remembered, Follow the label instructions carefully, And it’s better to use too little than too much
Harvesting a Crop
If all your choices had the same color box, then your garden grew quite well! Now read about each crop needs to grow. Once you know more about these crops, play the game again. See if you make better choices this time.
Corn is the crop that needs the most space. It also needs lots of sunlight and nutrient-rich soil. Corn plants must be close together so that wind can pollinate the corn flowers. If wind can’t blow pollen from one plant to another, you’ll get no ears!
Like corn, tomatoes need a sunny place to grow. But they don’t need as much space. Tomatoes grow best in soil that has high amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus.
Carrots are hardy-they grow without special care. Carrots can grow in partial sun and they aren’t harmed by many pests. Sandy soil and low amounts of fertilizer are best for carrots. Too much nitrogen can cause carrots to become forked.
Strawberry plants need lots of sunlight, but not a lot of space. In fact, you can even grow strawberry plants in barrels or large flower boxes. Strawberry plants aren’t hardy-they often get diseases.
Fertilizers should be used before planting to prevent ……. damage to the fruit.
What garden wastes do you see in this compost?
Once fall comes, you may think your job is done. But fall is the time to get your garden ready for next year. A good way to do this is by making compost-a kind of natural fertilizer. As you can see, compost is made of the same things humus is made of-dead plant materials. So, like humus, compost is rich in nutrients that plants need.
How do you make compost? At the end of the growing season, pile the dead plants in a big heap. You can also add grass clippings, weeds, leaves, and kitchen scraps, such as apple peelings. Shovel a layer of soil onto the compost heap. Keep adding layers of plant materials and soil whenever you have any garden wastes. As the plant materials decay, compost forms.
When spring arrives, the nutrient-rich compost will be ready to shovel into your garden soil. By adding compost to the soil, you are helping to complete the nutrient cycle you learned about!
