Urban Garden 3
The third year of the urban garden project began early in the spring, 2020.
Inspiration
As mentioned in the previous wiki pages around this project, symbiotic rhizobial bacteria are used regularly by big agrobusiness 'farmers' - providing incredible yields.
Key Aims
With this experiment, we hope to find out if, in ordinary 'urban garden' settings, such symbiotic associations between plant roots and bacteria will also provide better harvests of delicious peas!
To note: None of us are experts in this field, though we have had some advice from at least one, who mainly worked with alfalfa and its symbionts, and we are learning by doing!
Open Science
We want to encourage open science, and are simply using a google drive to collect data still...
(This can be strongly criticised, especially as huge populations, for instance in China, do not have this resource! We hope to work toward a better solution and thank you for any input!)
Sadly, the summer heat wave in the second year of the experiment (2019) killed off many plants, but some data was nonetheless collected.
We discussed all the results at an Open Hackuarium event, 6nov19, and planned for the next round. By around June 2020, the harvests for the 3rd round were almost complete, and we had a big wrap event (Covid-19 allowing) for an #OH evening the 9th of September.
To note: groups of plants marked A and B were given to participants, with no indication as to which were inoculated and which were mock inoculated!
The 4th year was not so easy, in the time of the pandemic, and last year was a 'control' year, with a huge field of peas in front of one member's house, and only some participants really only around 5 or 6 ..
Making cultures, inoculation and growth of plants takes some time, however.
Who wants to take on this project in the season ahead, we wonder (spring 2023)?
RA met with the Echandens gardening group 'The Little Sprouts' on 4may23, and we will see...
maybe controls this year, and a real serious effort the next is our best bet?
La quatrième année n'a pas été si facile, au moment de la pandémie, et l'année dernière a été une année "témoin", avec un énorme champ de pois devant la maison d'un membre, et seulement quelques participants...
La réalisation des cultures, l'inoculation et la croissance des plantes prennent cependant un certain temps.
Qui veut se charger de ce projet pour la saison à venir, nous le demandons (printemps 2023) ?
RA a rencontré le groupe de jardinage d'Echandens "Les p'tites pousses" le 4 mai 23, et nous verrons...
Peut-être que des témoins cette année, et un effort sérieux l'année suivante sont notre meilleur choix ?