Tuesday, March 28, 2017
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
November happenings in the gardens
This month's meeting started with a crisp apple snack and a sampling of fruit from the gardens.
Another group worked hard in the second grade gardens cleaning out the dead plants and weeds. We cleaned those all up and trashed the weeds and composted the plant parts.
Thank you to Mrs. Szabo for the yummy snack.
We still hadn't had a hard freeze so earlier in the week I harvested the last of the tomatoes and peppers so the kids could try them for themselves. We composted all of the scraps. Most of the kids tried and liked our harvest. Some tried it and didn't like it, but at least they tried something.
Then we started working in the gardens. First order of business was to remove the still thriving papaya tree from the compost pile.
The kids broke it up and we put it into the compost pile, along with coffee grounds, shredded paper, food scraps and egg shells everyone brought from home.
Some friends cleaned out the tomato bed and we composted those plants.
They did a great job!
A few friends turned the compost as much as they could before we had to hurry off to class for the day.
Thanks to everyone, parents and students, for your hard work!
Sunday, October 23, 2016
October is even more work
This week we did a long term science project and tried to clean out some in the 2nd grade gardens.
The science project was to see what happens with decomposition. Each student buried something to see if it will decompose. Some of the things we buried were: a toilet paper roll, part of a backpack, plastic wrappers, fabric scraps, food waste and a drawing.
Each student was given a plot in one of our beds and they buried their item. The 5th graders documented where everything was buried and now we wait. We will check on our decomposing items in the spring.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Back to work
Last week's meeting was a lot of work. We needed to harvest sunflowers and weed.
There were lots of sunflowers and the kids did a great job of removing the seed heads and pulling out the stems without damaging other plants.
They did a great job of separating the seed heads from the stalks (which will be composted) and all weeds were thrown away.
This empty bed will be used for our next lesson...decomposition. Look for details in your reminder email.
After the sunflowers were removed we found these beautiful basil plants.
Removing weeds from the pepper plants. We are hopeful we have enough warm days left to get one more pepper harvest.
A couple of the beds had some garlic coming back up from what was left behind in the spring.
Working hard to get those weeds out without hurting the tulips and zinnias in there.
All of the sunflower stalks were moved to the area around the compost. We are holding off composting them for two reasons...1) we need to break them down a bit smaller before we add them to the existing compost. And 2) look at that amazing plant growing out of the compost. We have determined that it is a papaya tree. It has blooms on it so we are waiting to see how far it gets before it dies. Papaya trees are tropical. They won't survive our cold weather. This one is so big we couldn't even transplant it to the greenhouse. So, once the papaya dies off we will begin adding compostables to the pile...look for an email requesting students bring in items to compost.
After the rain and winds from Hurricane Matthew we had some damage to the greenhouse. We are hoping to get that repaired so we can start using the greenhouse for more than just storage. We have a lime tree to put in there very soon and a project planned for the spring. Be on the look-out for more information coming.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
Garden Club is back in session
Today we had our first garden club meeting of the school year. We have 26 enthusiastic members who are ready to work hard and get dirty in the gardens.
Those are the nasturtiums we planted in the spring to try to help prevent squash bugs. They sure are pretty and healthy looking. The squash bugs didn't touch them. But they devoured the squash, zucchini, melon, watermelon and pumpkin plants. Oh well.
This sunflower is ready to drop its seeds.
Our first priority today was to check out the state of affairs in the gardens. We found many treasures.
And a LOT of weeds. What are we going to do with them?
And we found another one of those caterpillars with wasp eggs all over it. So cool to see. But I'm sure the caterpillar isn't happy about it.
We are trying to figure out what this plant is that's growing from the compost. The compost hasn't been turned all summer so it got cool. Since it's not heating up right now some kind of seed from what we have composted is growing. It's huge. I'm going to do some digging this weekend and I hope to find out what it is soon. I will keep you all updated.
This is an okra seed pod. The okra wasn't picked so it has gone to seed.
We found a garden friend. This praying mantis was minding his own business on the stalk of a sunflower. He didn't appreciate us watching him. But he was cool to look at.
We had a great first meeting of the year. We found so much to look at. Everyone got some kind of herb or pepper or tomato to take home. We cleaned out some weeds but there's still so much to be done. Thank you to all of the kids for your hard work and to the parents for helping out with our group. It means so much to have your support!
Friday, June 10, 2016
Our first big harvest and donation
This week I went to water the 4th grade gardens. I was surprised to see the garlic was beyond ready to be harvested so I started digging.
In the bag is the garlic and in the wagon, the onions.
I found a lot of garlic. And a few extra large ones.
I noticed that the onions needed harvesting as well so Mrs. Friedel came in the next morning and we dug up all of the onions too.
I contacted the Chesterfield Food Bank and they scheduled a pick up from us for Friday.
Naturally we had to have a Garden Club picture.
I also took a few photos of the gardens:
The herb garden
The butterfly garden
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