Unit II: Soils, Sunlight & Growing Environments
HERBOLOGY GREENHOUSE · UNIT II OF V
A plant is only as healthy as its home, and most plant troubles are home troubles wearing a disguise. In this unit we learn to read the ground beneath the pot and the light above it: what soil is made of, what the numbers on a fertilizer bag mean, how water truly moves, where the warm pockets hide in your space, and how the year turns for a plant. Your Familiar will be watching you learn all of this, and growing better for it.
Take your time here. Every lesson in this unit ends with you applying it to your own plant and your own place, and Lesson 16 gathers it all into a single document: your Growing Plan, the practical promise a thoughtful gardener makes before the season turns.
Unit Learning Objectives
By the end of this unit, scholars will be able to:
- Describe soil texture and drainage, test soil by the ribbon and jar-settle methods, and explain how pH controls nutrient availability.
- Read a fertilizer label, recognize signs of nutrient deficiency, and explain why more fertilizer is not better.
- Set up and tend a small-space compost system, distinguishing materials that belong in it from those that do not.
- Map sunlight across a growing space and explain phototropism, etiolation, and photoperiodism in plain terms.
- Water deeply and correctly, distinguish overwatering from underwatering, and identify microclimates in a growing space.
- Produce a complete, written Growing Plan tailored to one plant and one place.
In This Unit
Lesson 8: The Substrate Profile, Texture & Drainage
Learn what sand, silt, and clay each do, and test your own soil by ribbon and jar.
Lesson 9: Soil Chemistry, the pH Scale
Understand what pH measures, how it locks nutrients away, and how to test and adjust it safely.
Lesson 10: The Nitrogen, Phosphorus & Potassium Matrix
Read a fertilizer label, spot deficiency signs on older leaves, and learn what fertilizer burn is.
Lesson 11: The Compost Crucible
Turn scraps and garden waste into finished compost, even without a yard.
Lesson 12: Photoperiod Dynamics, Understanding Sunlight
Map your light through the day and the seasons, and learn why it is the uninterrupted night, not the day, that tells many plants when to flower.
Lesson 13: The Watering Matrix, Capillary Action & Root Hydration
Follow water from soil to root hair, tell a thirsty plant from a drowning one, and learn why mornings are for watering.
Lesson 14: Microclimate Calibration
Find the frost pockets, warm walls, and wind paths hiding in your own space, and decide whether your plant should move.
Lesson 15: Seasonal Growing Cycles
Annuals, biennials, perennials, dormancy, hardiness zones, and frost dates: the plant's year, all four seasons of it.
Lesson 16: The Unit II Practical Project, the Growing Plan
Write the complete growing plan for your plant and your place, the document a wise gardener revisits every season.
The Unit II Quiz closes this unit. You will find it, with its download, at the end of Lesson 16: The Unit II Practical Project, the Growing Plan.
What Scholars Will Grow, Practice, and Make
Scholars build a substrate profile of their own soil, test its pH, assess their Familiar for nutrient needs, start a compost container, draw a sun map of their space, write a watering plan, map their microclimates, chart their plant's annual cycle, and finish with the written Growing Plan.
With your plant well housed and its whole year understood, we turn in Unit III to the gardener's oldest magic: making more plants, and keeping them all in good health.
From the Greenhouse Shelf
The printed companions to this unit, from Professor Fernfoot’s shelf in the shop.
Herbology — Familiar Journal Pages: Unit II Lesson Pages — Lessons 8–16 (27 Pages)
$4.99
View in the Shop