Do you know how to read a seed packet?

By Khadijah Hussein

Today at MAP, I worked on learning how to read seed packets.  I worked on two different companies, Johnny's Selected Seeds and High Mowing Organic Seeds.  These companies use some of the same words to help you through the gardening process.  The difference of the packages is the way they are laid out.

Johnny's information is step by step, easy and simple, so new farmers or kids can better understand it.  High Mowing does it more of an advanced way.  I've learned that some seeds are smaller than others and some other bigger, some of the packets have few seeds and others have a bunch of seeds.

Ozzy's Farm House

By Osman Sheikh

So I read this cool article, on the Modern Farmer magazine website, about a soccer stadium, in Kenya, that is built to catch water from rainfall for farming. The stadium in Kenya is shaped weird to me, but I like the fact that it's big, cause it looks like it can gather tons of rain water.

We are building a new farmhouse at MAP. If I took the idea of creating a farmhouse on our farm, but shaped it differently, it will function differently and collect a lot of raindrops. It can definitely be a huge factor for our farm. My idea of how this would be is it would be shaped like a round building [kind of like Epcott Center] that collects water from drops of the rain as they slide down the side. Then it would go through a filter that cleans that water and the water goes to underground where the clean water stays. The rain would drop and the water from the rain would fall off from all sides of the farm house and go underground the water would go through a pump and we can use it spray all the crops.

Danielle suggested I sketch out my idea. This is what we came up with.  Ozzy's Farm House!

Are those fish male or female??

By Mariah Waller

Today when I went into work, I saw our farmer, Jesse, had put a fish tank with seven tilapia in it on his desk.  I wondered how me or anybody would be able to tell the difference between a female tilapia and a male tilapia, so I researched it online.

Jesse told Danielle and Rebekah that male tilapia have a rough surface or dent on their face and a female has a smooth surface.  When I researched it, I learned male tilapia grow bigger and yield a higher profit for aquacultures.