It's Turning Orange!!

Last time I saw the pumpkins they were big, small and medium. I never knew that pumpkins are green then turn to orange. At our pumpkin patch there was a snake, well Shellie described it was very long and dark color snake. Which she shrieked at and jumped away, making Imani and I mimick her.

What's Bright And Sunny?

SUNFLOWERS! Many or all the planted sunflowers have bloomed, but I have not closely examined them yet because of the snake incident 2 weeks ago. I can say that they are bright and tall looking.

The Pumpkins!

On Saturday, I checked the pumpkin plants and they were growing bigger but not the actual pumpkin yet. There were a bunch, I mean a bunch of a yellow black striped bug like a bee, but small and curved than round, all around and inside the flower. Looking at them, crawling around in the same area and just thinking about this is giving me goosebumps. Shiver.
So I shook the pumpkin flower a few times with me shoes for them to escape. When I was satisfied with the results, I walked away. :]

ready to sell

On Saturday some of us came over to the farm and picked out peppers, ground cherry,potatoes and onion chives in a bunch, we picked them out so that we can start selling them at the farmers market on Sunday which means that every Saturday we pick the fruits and vegetables out and on Sunday we sell them out to people, if you farmers market buyers are reading this come on down to Park Street and buy something from us Madison farmers.

What's Ready And Not, Or Semi-ready

This week Shellie cracked opened one of our 1st ready, yellow watermelon and it was yellow alright and juicy and sweet enough to tasted like a watermelon. It was my first time eating an yellow watermelon.

Some of the tomatoes were ripening so 3 people went, search and than plucked them off. I learned from Shellie that if you let the red tomatoes unpicked than the mice would scramble towards the sweet smell and bite a big chunk of it.

Mr.R picked 3 cucumbers this Monday, I think, and they were long.

We check on how the carrots were doing yesterday, which the area needed hoeing and weeding. They were still small, maybe an inch long. Shellie said they were sweet and they were, kinda.

I thought the green beans were so cute. They were long, skinny, small and most of all they were pale green.

The pumpkins were beginning to grow their flowers.

Lots of peppers were dangling from their stem.

Weeding Weeding Hoeing Weeding Hoeing Weeding

These past weeks we have been mostly hoeing and weeding the onions, carrots, green beans, ground cherries, sunflowers, watermelons, peppers and tomatoes. I was more of a weeder than a hoer. I'm so thankful for the gardening/working gloves we have. If not I imaging our hands would have leave cuts instead of leaving paper like cuts and skin to bug that is like eww.

The Effects Of TLC

On Monday morning, we observed our plants instead of working because the dirt was being soft and muddy. I notice the watermelon plants that were dying became less wrinkly and decaying into a more lively and light green plant that you wouldn't even notice it was a plant that needed TLC. I thought to myself that with the simple ingredients of TLC any plant can grow and live on.

TLC tender loving care

We were all asssigned a plant that was not doing so well, and we showed the plant tender loving care by putting more compost on it and watering it so that the plant can grow well. When we are done with one we can move over to another plant that was close to dying and took care of it

I love working with the students from the P.E.A.T. program because they are always willing to learn new things, they work Great as a team, and they never complain about hard work. Like last week when we got a lot of rain, they never complained once about working in the rain. They we're actually excited to get down to business and work hard as a team. They have set the bar high for the students next year!

Rainy Days

With the help of the rain drops on Monday morning, we finally finished watering the plants from Thursday morning a lot faster. :D

Ruined Radishes

Ok, so on Tuesday and Wednesday we picked a whole lot of radishes that Daniel planted. So me and Leondray rinsed them off for the market then we put them in a bucket and SOMEBODY left them in a bucket of water no fingers pointed. So then the next day we had to put them in the compost and that whole area smelled really bad.

grow out peppers

This week we started to pick are first bunch of peppers. we where amazed of how red and green they were with a fresh smell of many types of peppers.

The Curious Case of the Ruined Radishes

One day we were picking the radishes I planted in the field and Robert gave us bucket to put them in he also told us to water them immediately after harvesting them. And I filled the bucket with water the next day i poured the water out and somebody filled it up with more water and left it in there and they got ruined so we put them in the compost.

smelly radishes

Left them in the water they got really bad. on monday rain we saw watermelons there was 16 of them. cucumbers was growing well.

The Watermelon

Our watermelons started growing this week. It's amazing how fast they grow each day. I'm calculating that within 3 to 4 weeks we will have full grown watermelons. I love the fact that all the plants we have been growing are chemical free.It's all hard labor, strength, and determination that's made these good looking, fresh smelling plants.

week of farming

P.E.A.T.- This past week we have found 16 watermelons we also have pick some of our vegetables that we have grown. We have pick peppers and radishes. we made a mistake and left the radishes in water wick we now know spoils the radishes. This past week we also celebrated a birthday.

Time for Harvesting

This week we began to harvest some of our crops. The crops we harvested this week were radishes and peppers. After harvesting our radishes, I for the first time in my life ate a radish and I thought that they were pretty good. I also enjoyed the hot peppers that we grew because I love spicy food. About a day or two after we harvested our radishes, they became ruined because S O M E O N E.....left them in water. Therefore as of right now we have no more radishes that are harvested. As for the peppers, we have plenty of them and they all are very nice sizes.

A Walk Around the Neighborhood

Our farm is located in a neighborhood of apartments, factories, and trailer homes. We decided to take a walk to explore our surroundings. We found a northern watersnake, two pear trees, a wild plum tree, a dead racoon, and many baby frogs. We saw a community garden with huge onions, bees, beetles, carrots, squash, peppers, lettuce, and way too many Japanese beetles. There were plenty of mosquitoes and huge bees on sunflowers. I was surprised at how big onions get when you don't harvest them!

What is PEAT?

P.E.A.T. stands for Program for Entrepreneurial and Agricultural Training. This program was created to teach today’s youth how to become their own employer. It also teaches teens how to grow healthier food for the Madison community. Starting in late June we have been working from 8:30am to12:30 pm. We go out onto the field to plant different plants and do work on them like watering and doing what’s necessary for our plants to grow.

Where is the PEAT program?

Our farm is located on Moorland Road, on the south side of Madison. It is a rural-urban area where there is a community farm, Apartment buildings, trailer homes and factories.

Why PEAT?

This program is designed to help teach youth about running their own business and doing it well. It’s not only giving them a job and a source of money but also giving teens a chance to be productive with themselves and not being on the streets getting into trouble. P.E.A.T also shows young people the importance of growing and how it affects our world of understanding how a plant grows without any bad chemicals that other companies put on their foods. We’re doing this because we are hoping to spread our business throughout the country. Also we want to make a change by inspiring and spreading the word, to other youths, to do the same.

How does PEAT work?

Before all the planting begins we put the woodchips on the ground and spread them so that they are thick. Then we went out to the field to measure the length in the rows of where the seedlings would go so that when we started planting the plants would be the same in a straight line. We also kept track of weeds so we can take them out and made sure to also water and fertilize our plants to ensure the growth of them. We did all this with the help of Milwaukee's Growing Power which provided us with training.

Who are we?

There are nine farmers in the P.E.A.T. program. They include Abigail, Kenon, Khadjiah, Leondray, Daniel, Imani, and Carlos. Abigail is a student at East High School. She moved from Maryland one year ago. Khadjiah, 15, was born in Madison, Wisconsin. She enjoys playing sports, drawing and hanging out with friends. Kenon is going to La Folette High School and likes to play basketball, framing and growing plants. He was born in Rockford IL. Carlos was born in Mexico and came to the United States when he was 4. He loves to go out the farms and grow to learn new things. Daniel enjoys hard, fun labor and to exercise. He also likes to learn, and listen to people’s advice and opinions. Imani is a student at West High School. Her hobbies include playing basketball, volleyball, reading, and writing. Leondray is a student at La Folette High School. He's from Rockford, Illinois.