sunflower and three sisters gardens

Our fourth graders have been great at planting sunflowers in their Spanish class with Sra. Melara.  Last year they grew so tall!

And so BIG!

We never knew there we so many different kinds of sunflowers before Sra. Melara taught us about them...from mammoth, to teddy bear, to all different colors, too!

And our pollinators sure love the sunflowers!  Bees, birds and butterflies!  Our sunflowers start off so tiny and look so delicate, but by fall, their stalks are as think as small trees.  And what fun it is to harvest their seeds!

We are hopeful that this year's little shoots will do as well!

Last fall, the fourth graders also planted kale and spinach.  It was barely touched and left undisturbed all winter long.  Look at that amazing harvest!  We decided to let them go to seed, also called bolting.

Did you know the kale flowers could be so beautiful?

But now our fourth graders have taken on a HUGE project....a three sisters garden.  They helped clear out the beds and get the soil ready for planting corn, beans, and squash, a traditional crop of the Native Americans.  

The corn stands tall like the oldest sister, the beans grow up the cornstalk for their support, and the squash provides ground cover to keep out the weeds and prickly leaves to keep out the wildlife.  These crops are great to store and provide food throughout the winter.

It is our first time planting corn and we were very excited to see our first little sprouts appear.  Your advice on planting corn is welcome and appreciated in the comments!

pollinator garden

One of our second grade classes helped put in a pollinator garden this year.  Our hope is to attract all kinds of pollinators to our plants, not just butterflies and bees.  We learned that beetles, birds, flies, and bats (in desert areas) can also pollinate plants!

We chose plants that will flower in different seasons to increase our pollinator traffic throughout the year.  These included coreopsis, alyssum, oregano, aster, begonia, blue star, yarrow, bee balm, lantana, milkweed, and sweet peas.

What a great group of gardeners!

We also added a rain gauge and a thermometer...although the sun seems to be sending our thermometer into the hundreds each day.  It's not that hot yet!

And here is our SHARE sign to make it official.

SHARE stands for Simply Have Areas Reserved for the Environment.  Do you have your own pollinator gardens at home?  What do you see that attracts the most pollinators?

herbs

Herbs are such a fun part of gardening!

This year, we decided to put in a permanent herb garden.  There's rosemary, parsley, oregano, catnip, basil, sage, mint, and lemon balm off the top of my head.

The kids always have a great time digging in to plant.

We started off with a great snack of a rosemary herb bread.  Some kids picked out all the little rosemary bits, but the flavor was still in the bread, and the aroma filled the room.  Many of us wanted seconds.

There are so many lessons to learn with herbs!  Do you know how spices are different from herbs?  (Some common spices are cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and pepper.)

Herbs come from the stems and green leafy part of the plants and spices come from the roots, bark, seeds, or bulbs of the plants.

We did a smell test using a brown paper bag to guess some of the different herbs and spices we had to sample.  Some of us are very sensitive to smells!

Our little strawberry plants were starting to ripen, too.

It was still a little chilly out when we planted, but warm weather was right around the corner!

butterfly garden!

At our last meeting, we created our first butterfly garden.  We used some of the advice found at the North American Butterfly Association's website on how to start a butterfly garden.  

It's not too complicated, but basically we wanted to provide plants that are food for caterpillars, as well as nectar plants that butterflies are attracted to.  We are providing for the entire life cycle of butterflies, hoping that they will stick around to enjoy our hard work.

Here is a list of what we planted.  We used this to plan the layout of our garden so that taller plants will not block out the sunlight for the smaller ones.

This garden is exciting for us, since it is one we won't have to pull up after the season is over, like our vegetable gardens.

The children enjoyed being able to finally get outside and get dirty.

We were even able to find two milkweed plants at another elementary school's plant sale to go along with our butterfly bush.  Milkweed is the only plant that monarch butterfly caterpillars will eat.

 We gave them a good soaking, trying NOT to soak each other.  (OK, some people might not have been trying very hard.)

 We also added some landing spots to our garden, a large rock and a flat dish, so the butterflies could warm themselves in the sun.  Butterflies are cold-blooded insects than need to warm up by basking in the sun.

And just for fun, we added three strawberry plants to our empty wheelbarrow planter.  Veggies are good to eat, but fruits are so much sweeter!  Two weeks later, there are several ready to eat.

recycled crafts

The Garden Club has reached out to the entire school in collecting plastic tops.  There are so many pretty colors!  We are hoping to use these tops to make some garden art like this.

We spent a little time sorting them...

...and then making some recycled crafts.  These butterflies were once 32 oz. yogurt containers.

And here is the flock near where we hope to put our new butterfly garden soon.

Unfortunately, the sharpie markers did not hold up to the weather over that last two weeks!  We need to rethink how we can help these beautiful butterflies keep their colors.

wicked plants

Our garden club took an off-the-books field trip to the Science Museum of Virginia this month.  Have you ever wondered about poisonous plants?  The new exhibit entitled Wicked Plants takes you through a home to show you some very dangerous plants.

This one didn't seem so bad.

But this tree sure did.  I believe it was called the 'sandbox' tree, also known as possumwood.  Its bark is covered by pointed spines, its sap is poisonous, and its fruit explodes shooting seeds hundreds of feet away.

Some of the kids were disappointed that most of the plants were fake.  

(I think it was for our own protection.)

The best thing about the Science Museum is always buttons to push, wheels to spin, and things to touch and do.  Here we are crowded around to watch a plant grow as we spun this mini movie maker.

These boys braved the stinkiest of smells.  If you lift the lid to those boxes, you get a whiff of the plant that is under the glass dome.  My advice....don't do it!

This room had a mystery to solve, using clues from the scene.

Our favorite part was the private cooking demonstration Sra. Melara arranged.  The chef prepared a spaghetti squash using different parts of plants...the root, the leaf, the flower, but no stem in this recipe.

We learned that anything with seeds, biologically speaking, is a fruit from the flower of a plant.  So the spaghetti squash was a fruit!  And so was the long-debated tomato. 

Many kids enjoyed the sample she provided, and some even had thirds!

We had a great time at the science museum!  The Wicked Plant exhibit will be around through May 17th if you are interested in learning more.

And I thought I'd include a shot of the old entrance to the Science Museum.  It is under major construction!  This is right where the giant pendulum used to swing.

birds in winter

Winter can often seem silent, without a sign of life except for random snowmen smiling from our yards.

The next few pictures are from my personal bird feeder.  We decided to fill it with black-oil sunflower seeds just after the first snow.  I have never seen so many different birds at one time!

See if you can identify each of these birds:

BIRD #1:

BIRD #2:

BIRD #3:

BIRD #4:

BIRDS #5 and #6:

BIRD #7:

BIRD #8:

BIRD #9:

(there he is again!) BIRD #10:

And the trickiest of all, BIRD # 11 !!  You may want to try National Geographic's Bird Identifier to help you on this one.

We encouraged the kids to recycle materials from home and put up some bird feeders to help out the birds through this snowy winter we've had.  This one is made from a milk jug.

For our meeting, we had the kids eat half an orange, then they filled it with peanut butter and birdseed.  We set them in the snowy garden outside and within a few minutes, a bird had already found them!

Here are the answers to our bird quiz:

1.  Chickadee

2.  Tufted Titmouse

3.  Cardinal (female)

4.  Eastern Towhee (I think)

5.  Cardinal

6.  Goldfinch

7.  Blue Jay

8.  Tufted Titmouse

9.  Cardinal (female)

10.  Tufted Titmouse

11.  Bluebird! (a juvenile)