planting Archives - Rural Studio

An update on the basketball court, planting trees during neckdown, and pouring the first section of the walking trail.

Where we left off

Last year we prepped for the holidays by installing the basketball court at the park. You can read about how we prepared the formwork and installed the hoop posts in our last blog. Since then, we’ve applied a burlap finish to the court and cut all the control joints. A design is also in the works for a graphic painting on the court surface—something playful, colorful!

An overview of the order of—PEMDAS

Our project site is 2.5 acres, and we are touching almost every foot of it. That is a lot more square footage than a house! A big design challenge for us in recent days has been the staging and sequencing of construction. We are balancing tree delivery and installation, concrete pours, and more. To walk our readers through the order of events, we can apply a familiar algebra anagram PEMDAS.

Planting trees

The winter months are planting season, and we are looking to plant 115 trees at the park! Our goal is to get them in the ground before the weather gets too hot, so planting is our first priority. The first batch to be planted included seven black gum trees and three willow oaks. Lots of people helped during “Neckdown” Week , our time to maintain properties and make big project pushes. These helpers included our friends in Auburn University’s Landscape Architecture Program, all with their aid, 10 trees were installed in a little over a day!

Excavating the trail: Part 1

After we planted the trees, our friends at C&T Excavating came back and helped us with the excavation and base work for the first section of walking trail. Excavation for the trail is being divided into three parts. This strategy maintains truck access for concrete and tree deliveries while keeping the working area at a more manageable scale.

Make formwork

This part was pretty straightforward for the team since we had lots of practice forming up the basketball court last year. We are using 2x4s on the straight sections of trail and PVC board to form the curves. Our team placed formwork and the rebar cage for the bench in preparation for the first concrete pour.

Delivering concrete

Concrete is in the ground! Again. For the basketball court, a contractor completed the finishing, but the team will be pouring the benches and trail themselves!

Applying the finish

The trail consists of two different types of concrete finishes: exposed agregate and a broom finish. In this first pour, we displayed our skills at both! The bench shows off the broom finish, and the walking trail sections display the exposed ag.

Start again!

Now we are ready to start the process over again! The next few weeks on site will consist of a big delivery of trees, planting, and (weather permitting) many more concrete trucks.

Design work and mock-ups

On rainy days, we are continuing to make progress on the design of the bathroom. We are continuing to mock up and test design options. Our most recent mock-up was at the park, allowing us to look at the size and height of the pole barn pavilion.

Spring is just around the corner, and here on the Farm we are preparing our beds out in the field so that we can hit the ground running with crops once the weather warms.

A smiling student seems to enjoy shoveling mulch

Most organic and conventional farms till their soil in the Spring and Fall, mechanically turning the soil to mix in crop residues and weeds into the soil. Not only is this an effective weed control technique, but it brings carbon to the soil surface where fungi and bacteria feed on the carbon and release nutrients that help newly planted crops grow. However, the surface-level carbon also combines with the atmospheric oxygen, forming greenhouse gases and thereby contributing o climate change. Tilling also makes soil more vulnerable to weed seeds, and it destroys the structure of soil layers, which negatively impacts the delicate ecology of beneficial bacteria, fungi, and other organisms in the soil. Since Rural Studio Farm’s philosophy is rooted in moving toward sustainable systems and regenerative agriculture, we strictly practice a no-till system. This means that we must prepare the soil differently for the Spring.

This process began back in the Fall when we cleared out the old crop residue and sowed cover crops that would overwinter in the field.

A process sketch of bed preparation: clearing crops — First, remove crop residue.

A process sketch of bed preparation: cover crop broadcasting — First, remove crop residue.

Two students pick carrots in the field, an alternate view

Cover crops help build healthy soil and protect against erosion during the long rainy winter. Once students returned in January, we spread large silage tarps over the cover crops to begin to break them down without needing to turn them over with the tiller. Next, we used a tool called a broadfork, which has long tines that push deep into the soil and open it up for water, air, and organic matter to reach deeper down, allowing for root systems to develop more easily.

A process sketch of bed preparation: tarping — Step one: tarping the cover crops.

A process sketch of bed preparation: broadforking — Step one: tarping the cover crops.

Two male students prepare to push the tines of the heavy broadfork into the soil

After broadforking, we added pine bark mulch and other soil amendments to the bed before tarping it again. The final step was to smooth out the soil surface and then transplant out the new seedlings.

A process sketch of bed preparation: shoveling amendments — We started by adding amendments.

A student, standing before the dawn light, shovels pine bark mulch from a wheelbarrow into a bed

A student shovels a load of pine bark mulch onto a bed

While the bed preparations have been going on in the field, we have been busy in the seed house starting all sorts of new seedlings: lettuces, spinach, beets, kale, collards, cabbage, broccoli, chard, onions, leeks, shallots, herbs, fennel, celery, turnips, mustard, and more.