Learning Non-Cognitive Skills While Sheet Mulching

The garden installation date for the Snyder family is under a month away -April 8th! Thank you to those who have donated! We have raised 100 dollars total so far and we have a busy family who wants a garden in their yard! We want to do the project after the last frost day so we can plant vegetable seedling. I’m super excited to design the garden and am working on a budget. Currently, I need to raise $400 to make this project happen. Please support my project by this quick link that will take you to my gofundme page.

My mentor, Shamsa and I went to their cozy home and helped Jenn, Phil, and the 2 sons sheet mulch the front bed. We used (a lot) of extra cardboard, pounds of fresh compost, new soil, and hay to prepare the soil with added nutrients and protection. By doing so, this will cause a more fertile dirt to use in April! Sheet mulching 5-6 weeks before the garden installation date is the perfect time to prepare the soil and thus have a successful summer garden.

This internship has taught me so much more than gardening techniques. The primary goal of my participation in the Student Mentorship Program focuses on project management, communication, collaboration and mentorship.

Managing this entire project and schoolwork does require me to plan ahead and make sure I have all the resources I need to make things happen. Learning to create an online timeline with my mentor, Shamsa, has helped me to stay on track. And in order to do all this I have been learning how to use google docs and social media to communicate the details of my project to all my supporters.

By learning and mastering these soft skills, I will become a qualified candidate for a career in the new future. By sheet mulching, I learned to clearly organize my thoughts, delegate tasks to each helper, work with new individuals toward a common goal, learning from my mentor, and apply my knowledge of soil to the sheet mulching project. To pass on the knowledge, I discussed with my close family how we prepared the soil for a successful home garden.

I would love your support to help me bring this project to fruition. We are still in need of funds to successfully reach our goal of $500. Click here to visit the GoFundMe page.

Feel free to email me with any questions and comments you may have!

Until next week,

Olivia Chadwick