PLANTING VEGETABLES IN 14 DAYS
XINGYU QUAN
05/10/2019
Through first task of INNOVATION STUDIO, my challenge is to plant some vegetables in 14 days. Since in my foreseeing, I’ll do this someday in the future for sure, by considering benefits of improving my-family health, saving money on groceries, getting exercise and relieving stress. The most important thing is to reduce the distance between farm and table, I can just grab it in my home. If I challenge for myself, this is just as crucial.
To begin with, there are several challenges to achieve. Firstly, the planting diary gonna be only conducted in 14 days so I have to find some quick growing vegetables to make sure that I can see some differences of growing. If seeds will be quietly laying in the soil without any sprouts, it will seem that I did nothing in this two weeks… Secondly, I’m a amateur in planting vegetables without any experiences. I don’t know where to buy seeds, soils and containers and also not familiar with how to plant vegetables and what should be concerned through planting. Lastly I have to guarantee the vegetables would survive among this period of time and be healthy and mature at the end. Our team members also talked about cooking them in the end of the semester😂.
To start with, I have done a lot of desktop research to check what kinds of vegetables can be plant in above challenges. In addition, I also asked for some suggestions from some of my family members who are expert in this related field. Fortunately, I’ve found a vegetable which does not require high quality environment and equipments: MUNG BEAN SPROUT. They can be grown by placing and watering the sprouted beans in the shade until the roots grow long. Mung bean sprouts are extensively cultivated and consumed in East Asia, especially in China. They are easily accessible in any supermarkets and only need short time to grow up. Most importantly there is no soil required in planting MUNG BEAN SPROUT. I can just start with a container and some green beans.
I bought 400g green beans in China Town and it only costs 1.5€. 50g green beans will be used in this challenge.
Considering 🤔 there is no extra container in my house, I made a new container of green beans by cutting an used 1.5L plastic bottle. Firstly I clean my hands and green beans over 3 times to make sure there is no impurity (insects/ bad beans/ soil/ other seeds ) inside. Then I put same amount of beans and water into the bottle for 8 hours to ensure beans receive enough humidity. It’s 17:50 now so… I have to face the music that I need to get up at 1:50 a.m to pull the water out…
06/10/2019
⏰1:50 a.m
😴 I got up and planned to pull the water out but it surprisingly all received by beans😳. Thinking that beans maybe need more water, I rewatered beans and back to sleep.
Thankfully, after one night I already can see some small sprouts from green beans.
I took out all beans and tried to pick some rotten beans out to start 2nd step.
I started to open some small holes in the bottom of the bottle with a knife. These small holes help extra water to be easily outflowed to avoid waterlogging. Subsequently, I put back all beans into the container covered with a few wet tissues which could keep beans in a wet environment. Otherwise, beans could die due to lack of humidity.
After I just need to water them every 6~8 hours. Anyway now I’m on the way already.
* Fortunately I got a new idea while I was in Esselunga💡.
