March clean-up

This month we concentrated on cleaning up around the school grounds. After watering the seedlings and adding to the compost we headed out with our buckets to pick up litter around the school. 

On Monday we found a bird guarding his space. 

This is what we collected on Monday:

And our snack was tropical themed on Monday:

On Thursday we collected a lot more trash. 

And saw our tulips in bloom. 

We had a garden themed snack:

And we feel really good about beautifying our school!

Thank you to everyone for your hard work!

February in the Gardens

Hello Grange Hall gardening families!  Grange Hall students are doing good work in the gardens. This month was still too early to plant in the gardens but the students still worked hard. We started seeds for broccoli, tomatoes and peppers to be planted in a few weeks...maybe mid April. 

The seeds have been planted and watered well. We were surprised to see on Thursday morning that the Monday broccoli seeds had sprouted already. It's an amazing sight to see. Families donated rotisserie chicken containers to us to use as mini greenhouses. The GHES PTA has provided shelving with plant lights for use in growing seeds. Soon we will have a real greenhouse to use to grow our seedlings. But for now they are starting in the Spanish classroom and are doing well. 

We also went out to the compost bin to add more materials. 

And then we worked in the second grade gardens to help clean them out in preparation for spring planting. 

We found grubs and worms. We talked about how grubs are bad and worms are good. 

We have a serious love for worms. 

And for snack this time we had simple sweet clementines. Sometimes the sections are so tiny. 

  

Thank you for allowing your children to help make our world a healthier place to live. We have so much to do in our small space at Grange Hall and we need all of the help we can get. Please know we appreciate you getting your children to garden club each time. And to the volunteers...your help is very much appreciated. Thank you for all you do!

January happenings

January is typically a planning month in the garden. So we planned, and we also prepared. The kids had five stations to rotate through his time. 

The first was making a bird feeder out of a toilet paper roll, peanut butter and birdseed. 

The next item of business was stopping in to check out the seed catalogs for seed planting wish lists for the next meeting in February. 

The kids took it very seriously. We even heard from a parent about a variety of beans that only their family grows. We are hoping to try those in the spring. 

Another important station was to help start a worm bin. Worms produce wonderful fertilizer for the gardens. And they are very helpful to the soil when they are in the gardens. We created worm bins by layering them with newspaper, food scraps, worms and a bit more newspaper. They were sprinkled with water and have been working hard to eat up all of the food scraps and make worm waste for the gardens. 

Then the kids were allowed to try a snack. On Monday we had bird nests.  Granola nests with yogurt, berries and bananas. Of course we used the scraps in the worm bins. 

On Thursday we had dirt cups...chocolate pudding, crushed Oreos and gummy worms. The kids were very careful not to offend the real worms by showing them what they were eating 😉. 

After fueling up we had them write in their journals about what they did and learned that day. Then we went outside quickly to put in the things brought in for the compost. Our students are doing a great job of adding to the compost. This month we got a bunch of egg shells, lots of dryer lint, coffee grounds, food scraps, and some horse poo. We are going to have the best and healthiest gardens ever. 

I want to thank all of the wonderful parent volunteers who worked so hard with the kids to get them through all of the stations.  I also want to thank the special volunteers who have stepped up to provide snacks and work in the gardens outside of Garden Club time. We have  big plans this year and everyone has been so supportive. Even the First graders are working to help raise funds for a special project this year...we want to build a greenhouse that we can use for seeds and plants throughout the winter. 

December in the Garden

This month there wasn't too much to do in the gardens so we added a little bit to the compost.

 

Mr. Drahms worked in some new material and turned everything for us. The kids enjoyed seeing the steam come up and were amazed by how warm it is just putting their hands near the pile. 

We were able to harvest some beets and one more Napa cabbage. 

Then we went inside and worked with the herbs we dried last month. The kids made two things with the dried herbs. One was called Scarborough Fair, named after the Simon and Garfunkel song in which they sing "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme". It is a culinary blend that can be used in the kitchen to season foods.  

The other thing the kids made was a sachet for freshening drawers. They took rosemary, mint, and lavender and put those into an organza sachet to take home. 

But the kids probably had the most fun with their snack. They made Grinch fruit snacks with grapes, bananas, strawberries and a marshmallow. 

 

 

Of course all of the fruit scraps were put into the compost so as to not have any waste. 

Next month we hope to have some more compost to work in...keep dropping off your compostables!