Energy Garden Project
By: Gabriel Espinosa
The promise of many biofuels stems from their renewable nature and seeming ease of production. Often the rigors of agriculture, and by extension biofuel production, are lost upon those that have never gardened or farmed. To truly understand what producing bioenergy entails, one must see the process from the soil to the fuel tank. It was with this purpose that energy crops were planted in a garden to give us a better understanding of what goes into the production of bioenergy.
The amount of land and physical labor required to produce a gallon of oil to make biodiesel was experienced first hand. Two plots were planted to illustrate the variability of feedstocks, one of peanuts and one of sunflowers. The dimensions of the plots were chosen so that each would produce a half-gallon of vegetable oil, and so a gallon of biodiesel could be made from the two plots. These calculations were done according to the values found in Biorenewable Resources (Brown, Robert C.) The preparation of the peanut patch started May 21st, and it took two weeks before the tilling, weeding and planting were completed. Composted cow manure was applied to the patch to increase plant growth and yield. The plot is 15 feet on each side giving it an area of 225 square feet.
The sunflower patch preparation began June 4th and took a week, most likely because of increased familiarity with the process. The topsoil was enriched with composted chicken manure and cow manure, again to increase yield. The chicken manure was used to add even more nitrogen to the soil since sunflowers don’t fix nitrogen like peanuts. The sunflower patch measures 18 feet per side giving it an area of 324 square feet. The sunflowers needed weeding only initially because they soon were taller than the surrounding grass, which gave them a competitive edge. The peanuts, however, needed to be weeded a few times before they could out-compete the surrounding weeds.
This activity has highlighted that there is much work needed in producing oil feedstocks for biodiesel. Taken together, the combined 549 square foot area will hopefully yield a gallon of vegetable oil to make biodiesel.
Energy Garden Video