Morgan Morrigan wrote:I would go all old-timer on you, and tell you to spend the first year "observing" and studying the "edges" of the area you are in.
Start gorilla gardening at your school, and try building some vertical gardens with recycled bits. this will bring together a core of like minded folks, and help keep you tracking forward.
Order a fungi perfecti mushroom bag kit, and see if you enjoy that.
build a worm bin to keep next to the cafeteria door.
get the biology dept to study local soil fungi and bacteria in the leaf litter in different edges around town, and see if any make a big difference to local weed growth.
learn how to harvest and reproduce lichens, and try and grow them on rocks around campus. Turns out they are doing a lot more than we thought, and there is a large group of lichenologists in cali.
We are finding using rocks as surface mulches are working much better than we would think, and if we could find an easy way to get lichens started on them, we might be able to cut out nearly all fertilizers.
study seawater as a fertilizer. try evaporating out different strengths, and finding a output for the chlorides in industry
Believe me if there was room I would try some guerrilla gardening haha. I have grown some mushrooms before and it was fun. But it is also short lived, a majority of their life they were small mycellium then explode with stems and caps in a short time. I'm ready to establish something that will be around for a long time, that I can always retreat to and enjoy once well established.
Worm bins are very much fun and I had a somewhat successful one last year, but I released them all around the end of summer. Thats interesting I'll definitely have to read more about the lichens. Really seawater? I would think the amounts of salt would be counterproductive. I've heard seaweed is fantastic and I have had decent results as well. I also got fantastic results from fish entrails. I assumed it was the worms and bacteria/ fungus that come up to feed on it.