ABS 360 Southwest Home Gardening

ABS 360 Southwest Home Gardening Creative Assignment –Vegetable Garden Design Objective: The purpose of this creative assignment is for you to have some additional experience in developing a plan for either a warm-season or cool-season vegetable garden. This creative assignment is worth 25 points. There are two distinct gardening seasons in Phoenix. Begin this assignment by first deciding whether you will focus on developing a plan for a warm-season or cool-season vegetable garden. Next, select three vegetable plants that you would like to plant and eat (for example, corn, squash and peppers). All three vegetables plants that you select MUST be either a cool- season or warm- season vegetable. Your textbook, the three videos and web resources in the external link section on vegetable gardening will be helpful sources of information. First answer these two questions: 1. Is your garden a warm-season or cool-season garden? 2. What three garden vegetable plants did you select? 1. 2. 3. Now, accomplish the following four tasks. Task 1. Select two varieties of each vegetable plant (sometimes called cultivars) that you have selected to be a part of your garden plan. You will have a total of 6 types of plants. In the boxes provided below, write what each of these two varieties are and what unique feature(s) led you to choose them and the citation (Website URL, catalogs, bulletins etc.) from which you got your information. For example, ‘Abraham Lincoln’ is a heirloom variety of tomato that is resistant to forming cracks on the skin of the fruit, and ‘Ancho’ is a delicious mildly hot variety of pepper that is heart- shaped with a thick skin making it a great pepper for stuffing when cooked. Note that generic terms such as cherry tomato, bell pepper, and hot pepper are not correct answers for this task. Task 1 Answer…. Task 2. Develop a garden plan. To do this, assume that your garden space is 15 feet wide and 10 long. Use the box below to develop your plan noting the north-facing arrow to help you visualize your garden space’s orientation. The box space provided below is partitioned into three smaller areas to help you visualize your space – this is your garden space! Within the boxes provided, creatively locate where in your garden space you will grow your three vegetable plant types. Do this by placing small symbols representing the approximate placement of individual plants in your garden space. You must use three separate and unique symbols, one for each plant type, to receive full credit. Remember to place plants based on shading patterns (for example large plants planted in the west block would provide shade for small plants in the east block in the afternoon). Some vegetables might benefit from afternoon shade in the summer and others might need full sun. In the winter, maximum amounts of sun are most desirable. One vegetable should be in each planting block. Be creative, you may want to grow some of your vegetables on a trellis or using staking. Task 2 Answer….. Task 3. In Phoenix, warm-season gardens are generally planted when one is confident that winter cold is over and there will be no more frost events at night. Cool-season gardens are generally planted when one is confident that the persistent 100oF days of summer are ending. For this task develop a ‘gardening timeline’ for each of your three garden plants consisting of three calendar dates for each plant type. Those dates are: 1) date of planting your garden, 2) date when you anticipate harvesting your first vegetables based on the ‘number of days to harvest’, and finally 3) the date you expect to finish harvesting your vegetables from this garden. Note: It is most likely that you will plant all your plants in your garden space on the same day, but the days to first harvest and the duration of harvest for each vegetable plant will most likely be different. Task 3 Answer…. Gardening Timeline Activity Plant 1 Plant 2 Plant 3 Planting date First harvest date Last harvest date Task 4. Decide if you will grow your vegetable plants from seeds, bulbs, tubers or transplants in the Phoenix area. Tell us why.