Korean Gardens

There is a garden located right across from my school. It is called Kissena Corridor Park. Lots of Korean people garden there, growing various types of plants ranging fromsquash to egg plalnt.

First day I visited the garden with my class, I was to find a plot that I liked. I picked one near the center of the garden. It was kind of cold so it was hard to concentrate. Still I wrote down what I saw from the plot. The plot had some purple flowers at one spot and some yellow flowers at another side. They had some grass and some green plants as well. Most of the plot was bare ground but there were seeds underground waiting to sprout.

The second day, I didn't hear any sound from the plants nor did he smell anything. I could see some korean elders gardening, each one of them working on their own plot. The day was really sunny so A lot of them had hats on to protect themselves from the sun. Some of them were wearing windbreakers as well. One man was watering his plants with a water hose.

My plot was pretty big. I couldn't find anyone working on my plot. I thought that the plot might be around 30x30. It was divided in half and the left one had green than the one on the right. The left one was divided into 10 little sections, and each section had different plants than the others. The right plot consisted of 5 rows, and most of them were bare except one rwo which had some purple flowers.

Thursday we went back to the gardens. We were to find our own plots and observe what changes have been made. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything different than last time. All I noticed was that the purple flowers were pretty much gone now, and the petals had turned brown already. My friend was trying to interview a Korean gardener and she asked me for help. I went over and interviewed the lady in korean. She said that the plot she was working on was orginially her friend's plot, but she's just helping her take care of the garden while her friend was at work. I asked her what kind of plants she was growing. There were pepper, korean lettuce, eggplants, cabbage, and radish. Her friend had been gardening the same plot for almost 10 years. The annual membership fee is $180, and you pretty much had to follow the rules there. She said that all gardeners were required to plant flowers around the rim of their plot, and she was complaining about it because it cost a lot of money to buy the seeds, etc.

When my friend asked whether she was using pesticides on her plants, she said that she had to use pesticides in order to produce edible crops. She said that she usually tries to minimize the uze of pesticides to only scallions, since they are most susceptible to bugs and other harmful natural substances. She said that it was still much safer and healtheir to grow your own crops than to go to grocery stores and purchase vegetables.

We went over to another gardener and started interviewing her. The lady was also gardening for someone else. It seemed that most people who owned plots there hired other people to take care of their plots for them, since they are usually busy during daytime and cannot take good care of them. The lady whose name we found out was Yang Ro, said that she works on the plot every morning, and when the crops are ready to be picked, she takes some of them home to give to her family. She also said that she doens't like using pesticides at all, but then the bugs would eat everything up if she didn't use it.

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