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. 

We took the rest of the time to clean out a couple of beds in the second grade gardens. 

These guys were breaking down a huge sunflower to put in the compost. 

All hands on deck to get rid of the ever bothersome weeds. 

We left it much cleaner than we found it. 

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.