Organic Garden Training – 2013 Autumn

On October 20^th 2013, volunteers from Roots & Shoots Organic Garden Program headed to BioFarm to study the concepts of organic farming.

Nowadays, health issues caused by genetically modified vegetables have become a subject of much discussion. While touring the farm, Ms. Song from BioFarm Shanghai gave her opinion: “It is inappropriate to make quick judgments about genetically modified foods, the safety of which has been debated over in recent decades. However, an organic farm will never use such technologies.” After witnessing how the farm removed pests naturally, volunteers were led to a pond by Ms. Song. To everyone’s surprise, it was through six purely organic methods, including taking advantage of the absorbability of the lotus, that the pond had become so clear and clean.

Coming up next was the volunteers’ turn to farm. While the volunteers were working in the field, Ms. Song shared her opinion about growing vegetables according to the season. In Chinese history, the twenty four Solar Terms (Jie Qi) were established to guide agricultural work. Ms. Song integrated this knowledge into organic farming. It was White Dew when the volunteers visited, a good time for sowing seeds. Also farmers should not forget to rid crops of pests.

After an organic lunch, Roots & Shoots staff gave two workshops for the volunteers: “the life of milk” and “earthworm composting”. In “the life of milk” workshop, volunteers learned through a simple game the reason why organic farming requires a closed and sustainable ecosystem. Because of the eutrophication effect, even if a pollutant was absorbed in small quantities by an organism on lower food chain levels, it would accumulate in organisms on higher food chain levels. “Earthworm composting”, on the other hand, taught volunteers how to utilize earthworm feces which have the highest nutritional value to make organic fertilizers for the organic vegetables grown at school.

The training ended on schedule at 2:30pm. The volunteers learned a great throughout the day and were confident to grow organic gardens in schools.

(Translated by WFLMS Crunchy Zoo Language Club)