Garden Cleanup March 2017: Nate Wright

For my March 2017 Ecology Service Learning Project, I helped out with the Garden Cleanup. My group worked on adding fresh mulch to the garden. First, we went over to the mulch pile just outside the garden, on the edge of the parking lot, and shoveled mulch into wheelbarrows, which we transported over to the garden near the shed, where we emptied the mulch into the chickens' section of the garden. We repeated this process over the next two hours, wheeling the wheelbarrow to the mulch pile, shoveling mulch, wheeling the mulch back to the garden, and emptying the wheelbarrow and distributing the mulch around the chicken pen.

The mulch is comprised of mainly wood chips, as well as containing bits of other dead plants, soil, and composted material. It provides quite a few benefits for the garden. First of all, it makes the garden look better overall as opposed to the brown dirt underneath. Secondly, the mulch dispels the stench of chicken manure and makes the garden smell nicer. It also prevents erosion, as it stops the ground from growing muddy when it rains and there is something that you can walk on when the ground is wet. Finally the mulch also contains parts of dead plants and acts as compost when the plants decompose, and it provides food for the bugs and insects living in the soil, which the chickens can eat, so the mulch also acts as an indirect food source for the chickens.