OUR PROCESS.

February 5th, 2023:

 

We first started building the structure of this project, and laid the groundwork, after careful planning. Our student led team drilled, and installed the rain gutters that would soon hold strawberries, our test subjects for this experiment. Our goal was to compare watering systems. One automatic, watering over a certain period of time, and one testing water concentration in the soil, saving water. 

February 12-19th:

 

Continuing to build and maintain the structure, and beginning the process of planing strawberries. Our team worked every Sunday to accomplish these results, with one team working on fertilization, one team working on transferring the strawberries from pots, to the rain gutters, and one team perfecting the rain gutters, and setting up the watering system. 

We spent the next few weeks continuing to perfect the ratio of fertilizer to soil ratio, and plotting strawberries into the rain gutters. The ratio we came up with was: 

 

Soil mix: 3 proportions: 1:1:1

1: Organic mix from the front garden

1: Pittmoss, 

1: Organic Potting mix

And this ensured that all strawberries grew healthy and strong, regardless of the side of water systems they were on, providing a stable control group. 

March 5th: 

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After creating a stable control group, we were able to implement the point of our project: the two watering systems.One side of the booth will have a regular water dispensing system, where farm workers will manually adjust the amount of water sprinkled using their experiences. The other side will implement the new feedback-controlled water dispensing technology, where digital devices do all adjustments and control.

The drip irrigations ended up having a 90% irrigation rate but the sprinklers only had 40-50% efficiency rate.

April 11th:

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All throughout March, we monitored the growth of the strawberries, gave it extra care and gathered all the information needed to determine the statistics. We realized that installing solar powered cameras are a much more effective way to monitor the growth of the strawberries without personnel present, as well as making sure nothing goes wrong. 

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Around this time, we also started planning for the Earth Day event where we would present all the information we've gathered. 

April 13th, 2023: 

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EARTH DAY! Everything we've been working towards was presented on this day, where parents, all student volunteers, and personnel from outreaches in Little Parrot Farm came to the farm for us to present our project to them. There was a grand total of a few hundred people in and out of the farm from morning to afternoon. 

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We explained our project to groups of families and people at a time, both adults and children, and invited them on a tour of our strawberry hoop, gaining network and connections.

Eventually, our project got noticed by the Walnut Valley Water District, and they invited us to open our own table at their event. Our team put in a lot of effort, brainstorming ideas and creating slideshows to present at the event. Thanks to the effort of our leaders, we were able to present our experiment to the another couple hundred people attending the Water District Event, and expand our impact and ideas. We represented Little Parrot Farm, and Diamond Bar High School in our efforts to conserve water, and spread the word.

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We hope to continue to make impacts on the effort to conserve water with the results of our experiment.