Our first big harvest and donation

This week I went to water the 4th grade gardens. I was surprised to see the garlic was beyond ready to be harvested so I started digging. 

I found a lot of garlic. And a few extra large ones. 

I noticed that the onions needed harvesting as well so Mrs. Friedel came in the next morning and we dug up all of the onions too. 

I contacted the Chesterfield Food Bank and they scheduled a pick up from us for Friday. 

Naturally we had to have a Garden Club picture. 

In the bag is the garlic and in the wagon, the onions. 

I also took a few photos of the gardens:

The herb garden

The butterfly garden

The zucchini and squash plants

The tomatoes

Remember I said the garlic was "beyond ready" to be harvested...well some of it had opened up so much that the bulbs had opened and individual cloves were separated. We will save these cloves for planting our next batch. 

Another year of Garden Club has come to an end

This week we held our final two Garden Club meetings for the school year. 

Monday was cool and rainy but we did get our basil planted in the 2nd grade gardens. We also harvested lots of radishes. 

We rinsed them and sent each child home with one to try. And we talked about parts of a plant. What part of the radish plant do we eat?

The root!

We had a fun snack of dirt cups. The moms prepared pudding and the kids got to add their Oreos and gummy worms (or bears). 

On Thursday the weather was sunny and warm. We planted the last of the basil and the bell peppers in the 4th grade gardens. We also weeded a bit and popped the flower heads off of the onions and garlic. We were given some bean seeds from the Barkers and planted them in with the sunflowers. The seeds have been grown in Mrs. Barker's family for many generations. 

Our pepper bed. 

Our basil plants. 

You can't see them but we planted the beans in this spot. 

We also harvested radishes. One per student. The kids washed them off and some even tried them before school started. But most brought theirs home. 

We only had time for a quick cookie before the kids rushed off to class. 

Thank you to the volunteers who provided snacks and helped with the gardens this entire school year. 

Be on the look-out for a sign up genius to help out with the gardens over the summer. Mrs. Friedel is working on that and will send it out soon. 

I am looking forward to what will grow in our gardens over the summer. Please bring your families out to see them all if you get a chance this summer. We have many great things growing and it's because of all of the work your children have done this school year. 

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!