Recently we have been harvesting, fermenting, drying and roasting our cacao produce. Once we had then peeled the cacao roasted cacao beans the agricultural students learnt how to add value to the cacao nibs by processing it. This involved setting up an grinding machine used for grinding maize to produce arepas, and then, grinding the […]
In agriculture class today my students and I planted six new banana plants in the cacao plot. Essentially, these will grow to provide more banana fruit but also to provide shade for the growing cacao trees, whilst also diversifying the garden. One of these new banana plant´s suckers was cut from an existing banana plant, […]
The very first thing that was done in the garden, almost 10 years ago now, was to build our two level terrace. We did this by levelling a piece of land and enclosing it with rocks. Since its inception we have grown maize, sweetcorn, beans and casava on the terrace, but we have always been […]
A group of nine volunteers from the school community and members of the Bolivar Garden agreed to help water the cacao plot and new terrace during our hot Christmas vacations. From the 15th December till the 6th January these volunteers came and used a newly purchased tube system – courtesy of the Don Simon Coffee […]
As part of the Agricultural Plant Science course I have always tried to take students on a field trip; I believe it important to expose students to real-life operations of what we are learning and practicing in my agricultural class, especially considering the importance that agriculture still has in Valle del Cauca and Colombia. I […]
Finally as part of sustainability week I worked with all the 7th grade students explaining them how our Davis Weather Station works, seeing it in action and analysing the raw data that it collects. I linked this to an in-progress Walter Leith Climate Diagram that was used to explain how climate data could be shown, […]
This week has been by far one of the busiest yet most rewarding weeks at Colegio Bolivar, especially as we in the science department have been at the forefront of Sustainability activities for our Sustainability Week. The week began with the opportunity to bring in Tomato expert David Bravo, his wife and Luna their dog […]
We are now ready to level the terrace and begin the process of putting posts into place. We are planning on using 18 plastic posts, digging holes and securing them with cement. This process was helped by a number of mingas with the school gardeners helping our students move the project forward. Digging holes was […]
Our Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station has a suite of sensors that are used to measure and calculate a variety of climate data. The sensors incorporated into the weather station are as follows: UV Sensor: a photodiode, that measures UV in the range of 280 to 360nm. It gives values of minimum, low, moderate, […]
We now have a really expensive and highly technological piece of equipment at the school – our Davis Vantage Pro 2 Weather Station. In this post I am going to inform you about the weather station, how you can get links directly to the data, and what this data actually means. If you have any […]
