Pun Pun Farm: 15. Preparing My Plot

One month here as an intern at Pun Pun, us interns have a lot more freedom to explore and experiment with growing techniques on a plot of land given to us to "play with", at Pi Jon likes to say. It is his enthusiasm and love for working with the earth that makes Pun Pun a fantastic place to learn organic farming. If something is hard to do, observe it, try to learn how to make things easy in life. Good advice.

I decided to prepare my plot in the easiest way possible. Initially, I just used a hoe to scrape off weeds and then turn the soil over. The soil where I am is not so good, so I added some compost to it, then planted seeds from Japan: green soy, yellow soy, pinto beans and purple corn. On the edges I planted Thai melons, which tend to run when they grow, so best kept to the outside of the garden bed.

Preparing the Garden Bed

Here are some pics of the process:

About to begin on my plot, number 5.

Breaking the ground with a hoe

Trying to keep a straight line

Garden bed row tilled and ready

Thai Melon Seeds. Planted at the edges of the beds.

Next Green Soy from Japan

Yellow Soy from Japan

Pinto Beans from Japan

Bed freshly weeded, raked and ready for seed

Planted about one food (30cm) apart

Planting finished. Topped with compost and watered.

I left the bed like that and watered daily. It also rained quite heavily over the next two days, so I think some of the seeds washed away. At any rate, only two things sprouted shoots - one yellow soy seed and one purple corn. The soy was eaten almost immediately, but the purple corn survived:

Purple Corn. The only sprout that survived.

Disappointing. But others who planted the soy had a hard time with it too. Maybe the seed is bad (?).

After the first failed attempt, I decided to enrich the soil with chicken poop, on the advice given by the Good Reverend.

Scooping up chicken poop

Chicken poop throughly mixed in the soil

I raked it into the garden bed, along with some more compost, then covered with rice husks to see if that protected the seeds from pests.

Bed covered with rice husks

About four days later I noticed a few sprouts. This time the yellow soy and maybe a red okra were poking out their green starter leaves.

Unfortunately, it looks like one sprout was eaten, probably by snails. Snails are a real pest since they consume so much during the nighttime.