Student Corner: Spring Field Studies!

 The focus of Wavecrest’s Field Studies in spring is “production and reproduction”.  This means we have been spending a lot of time snuggling baby goats and learning about pollination.

This rotation, we decided to focus specifically on flowers and insects on the farm and in the garden.  We have learned about the “three P’s” (pollinators, predators and parasitoids) an intro to Integrated Pest Management on the farm, and native plant strips.

 We visited UCSC’s Life Lab garden classroom, where we were inspired to make a path through our own garden, hiked around the farm twice–once with Farmer Tom to talk about cover crops and pollination and once with Grace and Peter to talk about native plants, IPM and beneficial insects.

 We have decided our garden project will be to design and implement a flower border around the garden, using both annuals and perennials and utilizing all the space we can!

We have also been talking about birds on the farm and would like to put up the owl boxes that a previous Wavecrest class made, and will be visiting a local apiary and Driscoll’s to learn more about pollination and agriculture!  It is going to be a busy spring!