Caddo Magnet HS students / Valencia Communty Garden / photo Keri Stevenson, a photo by trudeau on Flickr.
Ji’Keeriya Bowden / Our Peanut Plants
Planting peanuts was very challenging.
There were a lot of things we had to do before we could put the peanuts plants into
the ground. First, we had to get the soil ready for planting.
To dig up the soil and get it ready for planting, Haylee, Zaria, Olivia,
and I needed some tools first. We found one of the janitors and asked him if we could borrow some shovels. After he happily gave
us some shovels and a hoe, we started our journey to Valencia Park.
Once we made it to Valencia Park, we met Mrs. Shalon Lewis, manager of the Valencia Community Center. She was very nice and very helpful. She gave us a wheelbarrow and instructions on how to get the soil ready correctly. Mrs. Lewis also helped us set up the bricks around our plot in the garden.
After we were done putting the bricks around the edge of our plot, she said goodbye and went back to the community center.
We had one more task to do that day and that was to get the weeds out of the soil in our plot. We used shovels and rakes to get the weeds out. Since we aren’t that strong and the shovels and rakes were pretty heavy, took us a while to finish.
About a week later, Haylee bought a peanut plant and some peanut seeds. We could finally start planting our peanuts. The soil needed a little tending to since it was a while since we were down there.
Mrs. Lewis told us that we needed to put some compost in the soil. While Haylee and Olivia were getting the soil ready, Zaria and I got a wheelbarrow and put some compost in it. We dumped the compost in our plot and mixed it in. Mixing the compost into the soil was pretty easy.
After mixing the compost in, it was time to plant our peanut plants and peanut seeds. The holes where the peanuts go had to be two inches deep. Putting the peanut plant and seeds into the soil wasn’t hard, and when we were done I patted then soil down
around the plants.
“Planting peanuts will be easy!” Planting them was really fun, but it was far from easy.
