WH GCE Portfolio

In this first unit for Food For Thought, we learned about the history of food, and how food has traveled across the world. For this Action Project, we were asked to take on the persona of a food from our families' history, and write an autobiography of sorts about it. I chose the potato. Below is the audio for my autobiography, as well as the presentation that goes along with it. I am the humble potato. Today, I am the 5th most important crop worldwide. I originated in South Peru, in the Andes Mountains. I was first domesticated by the pre-Inca people of the Andes about 8,000 years ago. I was an originally toxic plant, but over time Andean and European humans domesticated me so that I became harmless. The first Spaniards in the region—the group led by Francisco Pizarro, who landed in 1532—noticed Indians eating these strange, round objects and emulated them, often reluctantly. Within three decades, Spanish farmers as far away as the Canary Islands were exporting me to Franc...

In my Food class for STEAM, we learned about gardening during this first unit. For this action project, we were asked to create our own dream, or hypothetical (we aren't actually going to plant it) garden. The garden that I will create will be in my own backyard, close to the garage out back. It will be 7 feet by 9 feet, or 63 square feet (my walking paths are 14 square feet each). The original soil quality was not the best, so I added Sulfate of Potash, Fish Meal, and Soft Rock Phosphate to control the nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus levels in the soil. For my plants, I chose beans, strawberries, comfrey, tomatoes, spinach, peas, beetroot, calendula, lettuce, rosemary, thyme, yarrow, and nasturtium. This is related to symbiosis because these plants will grow well together, because they have evolved to benefit each other. For example, nasturtium improves the taste of tomatoes, and calendula wards away tomato worms. WH, 2018, My Garden Plan I am going to be inspired by...