Garden Club is work and fun!

This week in the gardens...

Monday was so much fun with a little distraction named Camo the baby goat. He got all of the love and attention. 

He was so soft and sweet. No one could keep their hands off of him. 

But we did get some work done...

We weeded.

In the butterfly garden we weren't sure what this plant was...weed or not?

And we planted tomatoes. 

On Thursday we weeded a bit more.  

And pulled out that unknown plant...

Oops! It was actually Milkweed, something the butterfly garden absolutely needed! Thanks to a wise student for knowing his stuff!

We found a cool critter...any guesses as to what this is?

The kids guessed right...it's a skink!

We planted seeds for zinnias and squashes.  We top dressed the herb garden and butterfly garden with compost. And we watered the gardens since it hasn't rained much in a couple of weeks. 

The tulips have faded so we filled in the spaces with zinnia seeds. Hopefully we will have blooms throughout the summer. 

Looking forward to what next month brings in the gardens. 

Spring

This week we worked on getting the garden beds ready for planting. 

We found some interesting creatures. 

This guy was swimming in a puddle in a garden. 

And this guy was quickly evicted from a hole in another garden bed. 

We received some new tools for our use. One was a donation from a parent and volunteer. He even engraved it for us. Thank you Mr. Drahms and KC!

Another tool is this awesome wagon the kids can use to haul compost to other gardens around school. It was purchased by the PTA and put together and delivered to school by another parent and volunteer. Thank you Mrs. Szabo and Kyan. 

Our snack on Monday was tulip themed to go with our tulip garden. 

Thank you to everyone for your support of this project. And a special thanks to the Thursday group. They worked outside in the rain without complaint. They were serious troopers!

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!