PHASE 2

Building, testing, and implementing a garden at Gibson Ek High School for the Issaquah Food Bank.

Summer 2021 Summary

This summer, I harvested around 130lbs of produce. Since I've never grown anything before, I experimented with different vegetables this summer. I realized that leafy greens and root veggies didn't grow well in the heat, so 99% of the weight came from tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchinis which only took up 1/4 of my 500 sq foot garden. Next summer, I will focus on these three vegetables and project about 500lbs of produce.

RUNNING A D-LAB

18 Students Joined

At the end of last year, I planned to implement a garden at the school if my summer growing proved successful. Since it did, I decided to teach a Design Lab at my school focused on building a future for food-insecure individuals through gardening.
I had Kim Skok from the Issaquah Foodbank and my mentor, Terry Bockovich, come in to speak, helping students empathize with our target community.

Click to Read D-Lab Proposal

Building Material Donations

The building materials below were donated by Dunn Lumber Everett, Issaquah Cedar & Lumber, Home Depot, and Anewcareer for a combined worth of >$3000

THE BUILD

FINAL BUILD

Garden layout at the end of 6-week D-Lab

NEXT STEPS

FINISH UP A FEW GARDEN BEDS

ORGANIZE WOODCHIPS DELIVERY + FILL GARDEN

ORGANIZE COMPOST DELIVERY + FILL BEDS

PLANT MID-MARCH | DONATE IN JUNE

GARDEN REMODEL

Advisor, Steven, approached me with ideas to improve the accessibility and aesthetic value of the space. In the previous design, the beds were laid out in a semi-circle fashion but looked rather sloppy.
Steven proposed changing the position of the beds and leveling them out with his help and ideas.

Increase accessibility + aesthetic value

Measuring Garden Dimensions

I measured each side of the garden space to accurately create a scale model in SketchUp to play with designs. Since the garden is five-sided, I knew that I would also need to replicate the angles to create an accurate scale model. Remembering back to geometry, the law of SSS states that if three sides of one triangle are equal to three sides of another triangle, then the triangles are congruent. Thus, I split the garden into three triangles, allowing me to get the angles correct without measuring them. Using a trigonometric calculator, I got the measures of the angles to plug into SketchUp.

Initial garden sketch and measurements_edited.jpg

RECRUITMENT

Since the D-Lab ended, I was working by myself. However, for all the big tasks coming up, I would need a good group of students to help me out and carry on this project once I leave for college.