Week 5: Hurricane Helene!!

When we got out to the plot this Wednesday, it was pretty apparent that the weather was going
to get very bad and we needed to prepare for it. We attempted to do all that we could before
the weather was unsafe for us to be out there, there were no plant additions, which we initially planned on, to the lot this week because of the weather. Here's what some of our plants looked like before treating or preparing anything (cucumbers and corn).



One of the first steps we took for hurricane preparation was putting hay down in a hope that it would
create an extra barrier for high wind levels that are projected over the weekend. We only put the hay over our corn and pumpkin plants and are excited to see the difference in protection on these plants vs the others that do not have hay down. The reason we decided not to put hay down on other plants was because they were still so small that the hay would shade them from the sun, not allowing them to reach full growth potential. 


Our pumpkins, pictured below, and our cucumbers (first picture) were looking a little bit dull this week so we put some fertilizer down on these since we knew the rain would activate it quickly. We used a rapid release fertilizer because we want the fertilizer to activate and begin going into the soil during the beginning, lighter rains of the soil as opposed to the heavier rains where they will have a higher chance of leaching and running off. 


AAANNNDDD here comes the rain, we were only able to be out there for about half an hour total this week due to it getting nasty out quickly. We are hopeful that the extra measures we put down this week will protect the plants from the storm, stay tuned!


 

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