Garden visitors

This week in the gardens we had a couple of visitors. 

A sweet piglet

And bunny

It was hard to get much work done but we did manage to add some annuals to our herb garden. 

And we got zucchini and yellow squash planted. 

Because we have had a problem with squash bugs in the past we are trying to do some companion planting. We have planted nasturtium seeds among the squash because they may deter the squash bugs. Hopefully this will work. 

The garden club recently received a wonderful donation of $100 from a local company, Earth Tek, Inc.  We will use this money to help build tables in the greenhouse. 

Additional upcoming projects include a new fence around the K gardens and a trellis for growing crops like cucumbers in our beds. We are hoping to make these projects come true in the next year. 

We have one more meeting for each group this school year. Look for information coming about working the gardens over the summer. 

Thank you to the moms who provided healthy fun snacks for us these two meetings. 

We have a greenhouse!

Last week the first grade classes helped build a greenhouse for the Garden Club!

Along with Mr. Drahms and his crew, all of the first graders worked hard to put the greenhouse together.

Thank you to all of the first graders who worked to raise the money and then build the greenhouse. 

Thank you to Mrs. Drahms for coming up with the idea and making the dream come true. 

Thank you to Mr. Drahms and crew for working so patiently with over 100 helpful first graders.  You always had a smile on your face and you did a great job!

We will begin using the greenhouse in the fall when the weather gets cooler. Until then I wonder...what experiments could we do with this beautiful and functional building we now have at Grange Hall?

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!