Shelby Mathews (she/her): Okay, can you guys see my screen.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): yeah.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): OK cool so we're gonna be talking about sustainability in gardening today.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): and basically just go through a bunch of different ways that you can be more sustainable in your garden and ways that you can like make better use of the resources that you get from your garden and the resources that you're putting into your garden.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So first we'll do a land acknowledgement as an organization within a land grant institution dig the campus garden coalition I UCLA acknowledges the gabrielle Lino and Tom what people's as the traditional and caretakers of to longer, which includes the Los Angeles based and.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So, later on, after the workshop we're going to do a little activity where we talk about.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): ways that we can make the deckard and more sustainable, so I just wanted to like show you guys a map of it first so that you can kind of get an idea of what it looks like you've never been there.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): To start thinking about it later on.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So you're wrong, do you want to talk about this part at all.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): Sure, I was gonna let people guys.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): are like try to remember, I know some of us well that's okay.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): um so someone says never been to that go to some of us haven't me, like all of us hasn't been there for more than a year now a year and a half now so i'm just to gas or remind yourself what is a new garden, I guess, first we can get the left one.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): out in a corner and there needs to tree.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): If anyone know what that is and know she'll be already came to answer.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): Any guessing.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): yeah it's composed.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): We have three compost piles and then the trees, so we can move them from one to another one, and then we started a new one in the vacant space.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): yeah he'll be can click once.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): It didn't it didn't work.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): There you go all right, and then on the very far right.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): At the end, that the right end of our garden.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): there's like two black does anyone know what those are what goes.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): well.
ALEXANDER YAN: The one was like holes in it.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): Yes.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): And allison is partially right to those are the ones that we have on the right.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): We think they're dead, no.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): Okay, last but not least.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): around our garden like surrounding into see like a bunch of parts and.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): Little planters does anyone know what those are.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): Leaders not know either okay.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): Oh yes, he is wild flowers flowers around the garden, because we want to make sure the pollinators have something to go to yeah.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): And the question that we're going to ask, and this goes in the end is what design which ad were added to make the tech harder and more sustainable.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): As we go through the workshop, you can start thinking about it, and also for your own garden at your home and etc, you know give it back to shut up.
yeah so.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Fishing upcycling so essentially upcycling for anyone who doesn't know is like turning old like bottles or jars basically anything as i'll show you, I have a lot of examples.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): into something to grow plants in.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So it's great for like indoor gardening or even outdoor gardening just reusing like plastic bottles and stuff that you have.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So you can really get creative you can use like jam jars from your kitchen or like old yogurt containers stuff like that.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): But when you're doing it you kind of want to consider a few different things you want to consider first like the plants needs.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): You want to consider if they're gonna like thrive in that or if they're just going to survive in that.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And also consider like how much space, the plant needs to grow roots because, like things like tomatoes I don't need a lot of space to grow their roots see what I want to plant it in like a little jar or something for the long term.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then you also want to consider if the plant needs like a lot of drainage, because in that case it might not do well in a pot, unless you like, are able to add drainage holes, so you can add drainage holes.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Like drilling or poking through the material, depending on what it is.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): they're trying probably other ways to do it, but just be safe, about it i've seen people do stuff with like fire, but just be safe, about it.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then it's also good to have several drainage holes, rather than just like one in the Center like you see in pots that you buy from the store.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And another option for drainage, if you want to use like something that you can't put your initials in is to add like gravel or rocks in the bottom.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And that will give like the water somewhere to go without sitting in the soil, because if the water sits in the soil for too long, it can cause like root rot or it can cause mold and stuff like that you also want to use like clean and safe planters, especially if you're going food.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): it's probably safe is not to use anything that could contain like that could even possibly contain like any kind of harmful chemicals, and when I was reading about this, it said that there's like some kinds of ceramic glazes that can have harmful chemicals in them.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): and also some kinds of metals, so you definitely want to like maybe do a little research to make sure that you don't end up eating food that's contaminated in some way and same thing with like chemically treated words or like rusty metal obviously you don't want to use stuff like that.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Or if there's like any kind of mildew or mold on old would like that, so if you're like in doubt about using it it's probably best to just not use it at all, and then I live in decoration never hurts so.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): You might think it's like boring teams like an old yogurt container that's just covered and logos, but you can always like paint them or.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): I do like stickers or glitter googly eyes stuff like that, and like draw a face on it do something fun with it to make it more exciting, but also to be more sustainable and like reuse things rather than just throwing more entering into a landfill.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So these are some examples of things that are up cycled some of them are really weird but some of them are really cool.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So there's like milk cartons or toilet paper rolls but you could use for like little transplants that you're going to plant later if you want to start them indoors.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And these ones are made out of like plastic soda bottles.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And it looks like they cover them in like marshy table paper midday i'm not really sure.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then there's also egg cartons which you could put little succulents in like that i've also seen people do like grow transplants indoors in there.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): or eggshells, which would be cool and our actions are also really good for.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Your garden, I think.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): As like the kind of compost or like adding nutrients to the soil.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): These ones are really cool and they essentially like cup of wine bottle and half and fill the base with water.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then, if you were like holding it by the neck you fill up the soil and put your plant in there, and maybe out of like rocks so it doesn't just fall straight to the bottom, but then you stick it in the bottom, and it was itself, which I think is very cool.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): These ones are made out of old calendars and so they come with their own drainage holes, to which is nice this one's made out of an old spice Rack.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): This one is kind of up cycle kind of not but they essentially just trying to bring back into like also planter which I think is very cool.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): This one's made out of tea pots and teacups and.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And these ones are made out of trash cans, which might be good for things that need much deeper roots like native plants or something like tomatoes.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): This one's a dresser obviously I guess I don't need to save it everything is, but these ones are in boots reminds me of that movie wally an opening on saw that that Disney movie but he has like the last sapling on here's just cute.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): This one might not I don't know how well the plant with do but it's cute.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): As like decor maybe for a second.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And this one i'm not totally sure if it's up cycled or if they just put headboards on the side of garden bed, or if it's like the whole bed that they used but.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): it's cool to and then this one was weird one that I found and never seen this before, but it was surprisingly popular a lot of people apparently up cycled their genes into planters cute.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): This is my personal favorite the bathtub garden.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then, this last song is just some old tetons so there's like tons of different things that you could do and it's also really fun to like get creative with it, and like make weird fun things that are different than just like the party unified storage.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So next year to talk about seed saving.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So there's a lot of different aspects to see tipping that you probably want to think about.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): First, you kind of want to research, the type of plant that you're going to save seeds from and also what's near that plant so there's two kinds of plants there's open pollinated and there's hybrid.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Open pollinated includes like a lot of different things that can include like also self pollinating seeds and heirloom seeds.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): But these basically just require like winter insects to pollinate them.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then self funding lance just need to bloom and they planted themselves and and then heirloom plants are like the ones that have had their seats passed down for like years and years and years.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And the cool thing about that is that they're often like non GMO plants because they were started like before GMOs were around.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So open pollinated plan self pollinated plants hype heirlooms are the ones that you would want to save seeds from.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And some of the easier ones to start out with our self pollinating plants, and that would be things like beans lettuce PS tomatoes.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Those are like really good ones for beginners if you're new to seed saving and you want to try it out, but then there's hybrid plants so essentially it's like.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Two different varieties of plant cross pollinate and then they create a new one, so if you were to save seeds from a hybrid plant it's not going to be the same as the parent plan necessarily because it's two different varieties, so it might just have like a mix of different characteristics.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Unlike the open pollinated ones and the self pollinated ones and the early ones which will grow, just like the parent seed so you'll know what you're getting so hybrid plants are okay, but like you just want to know that you probably not going to get the exact same thing as the plant.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): um but also cross pollination can still occur with open pollinated plants, so there are some ways to prevent that if you're like.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Really wanting to not have hybrid plants, you can plant different plants like far away from each other there's like certain distances that some of them need to be planted so there's no possibility that they could call any with each other.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): or.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Sorry i'm reading my notes a little.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Or you can grow, just like one variety of a plant, so that you know that there's not another variety that it could on a list, and then you can also play varieties that like bloom and pollinate at different times so that there's just no possibility that.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): But again it's like it's okay to have hybrids it just depends on like what you want.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So you want to harvest seeds.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Depending on what kind of planted is when it's see parts of dried or when the vegetable is fully ripe and usually, when the vegetable is fully ripe it's not going to be.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): At the point where it's edible usually we harvest them for eating like before they're fully mature, so I don't know if this means you can't eat it later on when you harvest the seeds, or if it's just going to taste different than you're used to it tasting because it's like fully mature.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): You also usually want to dry your scenes like fully and completely because, if he saved them when they're like what they can get moldy.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then it's also good to clean your seat sometimes like if you're taking amount of like a tomato.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Where they're going to be covered in like tomato guts you want to clean them and then store them in an airtight container in a cool dry place and they're usually best if they're used the next spring.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So yeah that's one way that it's really cool way that your garden can kind of become like self sustaining and you don't have to worry about buying CDs anymore.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So next year on, is going to talk about competition.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): yeah.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): So composting definitely one of the best ways to be very sustainable at home and in your garden, basically, if you have good leads that flow our heads and your grass clippings itself turn them away, you can turn them into nutrient rich organic fertilizers.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): On the right there are some photos of different type of compost so first one is Verma composting that is that, then we have in our garden so basically you have those ones who eat up.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): The waist and they will poop and their poop is very nutritious to become compose and then we have aerobic and anaerobic composting the Arabic pictures, also in a deck garden when we.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): Go to Scott from the way and we'll put them into piles and layer tiles and in two to three months filtering to compose and anaerobic is, I think, a very good option if you live in an apartment and you still wanted to it, so you have food waste or.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): You know killings of foods and food, you can just throw it in there and they will turn into liquid form of composting.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): And there's um Community efforts is very important composing as well, so if you recall from our compost workshop which happened so long time ago it was fall quarter week one when we first were some of your.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): We talked about the share waste which the picture of the map is showing you can see, who has composer who is accepting or the people's compost.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): And was was food car pick up and to search our Community composed hubs and programs in your cities so to know more about composed, you can go outside and look at the workshop on campus.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So.
Next.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): we're going to talk about ecosystem, health and also using your resources wisely So the first thing is soil health.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): The soil really determines like pretty much everything about the plant so it's really important to think about plants get pretty much all of their nutrients from soil, not all of them, but most of them.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So it's really important to understand the needs of your soil, like its structure and whether or not it needs like more or less water or more or less organic matter so that you can like.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Use your resources only where they're needed so you're not like buying a bunch of soil and they're not using it and stuff like that.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And you also want to grow plants that are best suited to the type of soil that you have just so that your garden can thrive.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): and
Shelby Mathews (she/her): sorry about someone's at my door and there's also a way to do an at home soil test which i'll show on the next slide so that you can determine like what kind of soil, you have.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): which helps you know, like whether or not it needs organic matter and stuff like that, so that you know how to take care of it.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then there's wise watering there's a lot of different ways to do this, the picture, am I talk radio shows drip irrigation, which would mostly be done if you have like a more large scale garden.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): But if you ever if you have one right now, or like if you have one in the future it's a really good way to use like some minimal amount of water, but still get your plants enough water.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Another option is just using watering cans and so that you can control the amount of water that you're putting in.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Compared to like sprinklers which are okay, but a lot of times there's like a lot of water runoff or it doesn't reach every part of your garden, and a lot of water can go to waste with sprinkler systems.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Another thing is using mulch to help retain water so that would be like the wood chips in the top left picture.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): It can be things like wood chips straw graph or like grass clippings and that helps to not only retain water, but it also prevents like leads from growing and organic mulches can help to like enrich the soil.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And it also regulates the temperature of the soil and it prevents soil erosion, so overall it's a really good option.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Some people use like grey water systems that feed into their garden, which is really cool it'll be like water from like showers and laundry.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): that's non potable but if it were to go into like a water way, it would be a gluten, but when you use it in your garden, like the nutrients that are in the Gray water actually help your garden rather than like polluting it like they would in a waterway.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So a lot of people use this for like ornamental plants and fruit trees, you can use Gray water for like edible things you just don't want it to touch anything that's like anything on the outside that's edible so like you don't want it to touch like the actual vegetable that's growing.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Because it wouldn't be good for you.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then the other thing is like rain cisterns or rain gardens to collect rainwater and stormwater.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): runoff rain systems are just like big barrels that you can put on your property if you're somewhere where it rains really often to collect water and then you can use it to order your garden later on.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then rain gardens are usually like in a berm so like in a depression in the soil, so that it can collect water.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And a lot of times they like have gutters that run from the roof into the rain garden, and they plant native plants there.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Because native plants have really deep roots and so that helps them to like absorb more water deeper into the soil.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Which like helps the helps you to have native plants and like a native ecosystem, which is helpful for pollinators and wildlife and stuff, but it also prevents flooding which can cause like a lot of pollutants to go into waterways and things like that.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then there's minimizing herbicide use anything like pesticides fungicides stuff like that usually they should be your last resort.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): We did a workshop last quarter on pests and disease or we talk more about this, but essentially will they won't kill the bad pests, they can also harm or kill like the good plants that are in your garden.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And it can also be harmful if it gets onto anything edible that you're eating.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So one good alternative to that is neem oil it's non toxic to plants, but it will get rid of the pests and things.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then there's fertilizer use which.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): You usually should I mean you it's a good idea to use organic fertilizers, rather than chemical fertilizers and these would be things like compost or.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Some other common ones are like bone meal or maneuver because those can like enrich the soil and just make your soil more reliant on like organic things rather than like the chemically manufactured ones.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So, knowing using like a soil test to know about your soils health can help you to know when to use fertilizer if at all, or like what kind of nutrients your soil needs and what kind of nutrients your plants need.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Rather than just like trying a bunch of different ones, to see what works and too much fertilizer can cause like excess plant growth.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): which can make them more susceptible to disease so overall it's a good idea to not have to just like know your soil and know what it needs, rather than going into a block and.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): So this is the.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): glass jar soil test these slides will be up in our archive on our website, if you want to look at this again later, but.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): it's a really easy way you just like add to add soil to a mason jar I think he used a little detergent or like dish so prosper works.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And you just like shake it up and essentially it'll separate so that the sand, is on the bottom than the silt and the clay and.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): You can like determine what the percentage of that are and then you use this chart where they intersect to find out what type of soil, you have so that you know what kind of fertilizer you need to use.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): And then you're wrong, you can you talk about this.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): On our last slide of the contents first don't talk about monitor plans for pests or disease, so we always would prefer to prevent the spread of test or disease early on, so hopefully you won't have to use the chemical herbicides or potentially get rid of the plant in your garden.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): And you know just to eat will always used out my mother to read, instead of trying to use chemicals to kill the weeds and.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): it's very important to save seeds from healthy and not disease plans as well because pests and disease can be carried on in the seeds and when you could plant them they most do exist in a garden.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): And we had a workshop last quarter on pests and disease, if you want to review some of those and then later plans so.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): California plants are always very important We always talk about them, because they attract local pollinators and also support their populations.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): They are already adapted into the environment, either in California or other places, so they don't require much effort or resources that means they're very high tolerance and sometimes they even require less water which.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): makes the garden more sustainable, because we all know how much water it goes into watering our garden every day or every week.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): And they can also support native wildlife, as you can see, on the right infographic they help to restore natural habitat and ecosystem in your area, and they also tend to have deeper and more complex root system in the soil, which is beneficial to the health of the soil.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): And last but not least, on attract pollinators as a good effort to do as well.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): pollinators are necessary for the production of the seeds and vegetables in our garden and also just fun to watch, such as bees and butterflies, and again to connect native plants and partners together they kind of support each other and bring.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): Just make your garden more sustainable.
Yuerong Xiao (she/they): yeah that's the end.
Shelby Mathews (she/her): Yes, so now we're gonna do the activity.