Spring quarter blog post 2

Now, heading into Week 4 of our quarter, we are so excited about the progress being made in our project and where it will go over the course of the next few weeks. To outline the headway we have made this past week, this past Monday, we began to set up our experiment and get acquainted with the Stanford O’Donohue Farm. On Tuesday, we were able to finish the setup process, measuring out by weight the different quantities of potting soil, biochar, and compost we wanted to test in each of our 20 pots. 

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Experimental Setup: Julia Measuring out the Soil Mixtures in the Pots

Wednesday and Thursday consisted of watering the soil mixture. Then, on Friday, we planted okra in 10 of our pots. Okra is a good indicator of how biochar will impact soil health and plant growth as it has similar growing conditions to cacao. The benefit of growing okra in addition to cacao is that okra can be grown outside as it is less sensitive to sun and temperature, but it also can provide more physical data points in a shorter amount of time as it produces yields quickly and will allow us to look at indicators like number of leaves, plant height, blooms, and yield.

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