Nostalgia

Nostalgia is using the lessons and teaching the things that I learned when I was in High School. Teaching the lessons reminds me of the days of old and energizing me to be re-inspired to be an agriculture teacher. When I was in High School I took a course in Golf Course Design. At that time it was offered at the same time as the Greenhouse class. There were a group of us that were taking Greenhouse for the second time to try out this more advanced curriculum. The golf course was built out of styrofoam and model train set materials. Every class period research was being done on what types of grass were used for the course and how to shape every hole to make it challenging for the right customers. We designed our course to be a golf club so that it wasn’t for the serious professional but not just anyone off the street could come and play the course. The golf course featured a bluff overlooking the holes and included an island putting green. Ultimately the golf course model would be shown at a golf show and compete against other student made golf courses. It was a great experience to apply learning and have a real-world application. The judges of the golf course design contest were real golf professionals.  In the end the team I was in won the contest that year. The golf course still hangs in the Agriculture room along with the others that were built throughout the years.

Another project I did in the greenhouse class was research the effectiveness of fertilizer on corn. I set up one flat of corn seeds with 12 plants for each part of my experiment, 12 control plants, 12 plants with fertilizer put in the soil before emergence and, 12 plants that began fertilization treatment after emergence. I used a standard miracle grow fertilizer that I mixed to the manufacturers recommendations. Every day of class I measured and averaged the heights of the plants. The early fertilization slowed down the growth for the pre-emergence trial. The plants that were fertilized after emergence grew the fastest. Eventually all of the plants got to be the same height. However, the containers that were used for the project were small and most likely slowed down the corn’s growth in each trial until all of the plants were as big as they could get with the containers they were put in.