On Thursday July 13, from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm Michael Zhang and Lily Zhang volunteered at Bayard Cutting Arboretum, 440 Montauk Highway
Bayard is an organic farm that is a part of CSA- commutative supportive agriculture. In order for Bayard to be all organic they don’t use any till in order to protect all of the natural elements of soil, including earthworms. Bayard doesn’t use any machines such as tractors and plows to do farming. The farm contains a number of pollinator gardens to help ensure there are enough pollinators for a good crop.
Today we went to help get rid of the weeds that grow around the onions, garlics and scallions, because these weeds compete with vegetables for water, nutrients, sunshine and space. Our task was to pick different types of weeds such as yellow nutsedge, clovers, dandelions, and galinsoga.
Of these all, we had to make sure that none of the galinsoga seeds fell into the soil. When separating the weeds from the onions we had to be very careful not to pull out any onions.
Additionally, we payed attention to not step on any vegetables. It was also challenging to pull them out all the way because without the roots they will grow back very quickly. In total we took out approximately 20 buckets of weeds. We are proud of the work we put in today and we hope to visit again in the future and volunteer again, as Bayard still has a lot of weeds growing around plants!
Members that participated include:
Michael Zhang (3 Hours) and Lily Zhang (3 Hours)
Reporter: Michael Zhang
