Learning

This has been a great summer for learning! My students have learned more about where our food comes from, the amount of work that it takes, and how delicious fresh food from their own garden tastes!

I have learned some great things too! First off, I need more space! I started out this year with 5 beds. I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew this year and thought 5 would be fine. It was hard to know how involved the kids would get. It looks like they would be able to handle more gardens. I also struggeled with keeping the tomatoes upright. I did stake the cages, but apparently not deep enough. Because of how fast the garden came together and fear that it might not take, I didn't communicate with our school families well enough to encourage them to come and pick from the garden. This fall I plan on getting more word out through sales or give aways after school and next year encouraging all families to take advantage of the garden.

One thing I need to learn still, is what happened to our cucummbers. I think it was because of too much rain, but the stems started rotting which in the end killed the plants. Perhaps because we didn't till the grass below, the gardens didn't drain well enough. We will have to experiment a bit next year!

Just as I was getting to write this, one of the families came and picked from the garden. The corn is almost ready to go. Some was picked today, but it wasn't quite ready yet. Next year, I will have to spend a little more time working with the kids in learning when it is ready to be picked. We had a few premature pickings due to the excitement of the children which is amazing!

The next update will come once school starts on September 2!

Storms!

Whew! Last night we had quite the storms. We had high winds, torrential rain, and tornado warnings!!!!! After the storm cleared, I drove around and decided to check on the garden. As I approached, my heart sank a little. The wind had bent many things on their side. I thought the smaller stuff should be ok, but my biggest concerns were the tomatoes and corn. The tomatoes were so heavy the prior to today, they were leaning to the north. When I arrived, they were leaning to the south. I would say almost a 180 degree difference! The next thing I saw was the corn. They were laying to the south with no greater than a 45 degree between stalk and ground. I attempted to stand them up, but they just kept leaning back over. I was somewhat successful, but we had more storms later that evening.

I am hoping that mother nature will work her wonders and the corn will straighten up, but I will be preparing for the worst and will begin prepping the children for the loss on Friday.

Wish me luck!

Harvest!

The garden has been growing amazingly! Last time I wrote we had tried our radishes. Since then things have really started growing like crazy.

The kids have been helping keep track of temperatures and rainfall. I have a hi/low thermometer and have currently been relying on the weather channel for rainfall. We try to graph a few times per week, but don't count weekends (except for precipitation). We have had a wet summer, on some of the weekends we have had to spread out our precipitation data because it exceeded the limits of our graph!

We finally had a day where we were able to pick some green beans. The kids loved getting to pick them and eat them right off the vine! Some of them even kept some to bring in and share with those who decided not to join us.

We also got to pick some cucumbers. We picked 8 cucumbers. The kids helped measure them and our smallest was 7.5" and our longest was 11.5". The kids then estimated how many seeds were in the cucumbers. Our guess averaged in the 200's. I then sliced it and gave each kid 4 slices. Before they could eat them, they had to count how many seeds were in each slice. We came up with about 264 seeds! We did pretty good with our estimating! The kids were really excited to be picking!

Knee High by the 4th of July

We are coming up on the 4th of July weekend. Our garden is growing well! Two weeks ago, we were able to harvest our radishes. The kids got to try them and you can only imagine the results! Some kids loved them while others ran to the bathroom! I wish I would have remembered the camera that day!

As you can tell by the title and our picture, Our corn is just about knee high right now. We are well on our way to a good harvest. Everything is looking great! The kids are really excited about how the garden is turning out.

I will try to update more frequently and remember pictures as the kids are trying the products of their work!

First Week of Summer Club

Well, we just finished our first week of our summer program. We have had a lot of rain this past week! We're probably around the 2 inch mark. This has really helped our garden get growing and has helped me to not have to haul the hydrant meter out to the hydrant too often.

Our plants are growing really well! When we were adding fertilizer today, we notice some peppers are growing and we have cuccumbers growing too! Our radishes are starting to bulge out of the soil. Corn is looking nice and should hopefully be knee high by the 4th of July!

To help support our climbing beans, I bought some 1 in x 1in animal cage wire. I created an arch between two beds and the beans are starting to climb right up! The kids love our little "cave" we've started!

It looks like we are in for some decent storms tonight. I hope the garden can survive!

The big problem solved! For now.

So, if you have read any of my earlier posts, you probably noticed the biggest problem I had was where I would get my water from. Well, my original thought was a rain barrel, but neither the school nor the fire station had external down spouts. We ended up talking to the water and light company to come up with a solution. We were able to rent a hydrant meter to tap off of the fire hydrant. This meter runs us about $13/quarter (three months) and the water cost is about $2.89/748 gallons.

Down falls: the meter is huge! It is quite heavy. The distance from the gardens to the hydrant is about 120'. This is not a good way to sustain the project after grant funding is used up.

Pros: The water will always be there!

We use garden hose to run out to the gardens and fill the watering cans.

Stuff is starting to grow nicely and the kids will be excited!

The garden takes root!

I finally have pictures today. Because I don't have permission to post student pictures, I will need to cover up faces.

Well, it has been awhile since posting...again. But I have some good news! The gardens are built and partially planted. We created 5 3'x5'x6" beds and we placed them 2 feet apart. The lumber and the deck screws cost me about $102 from our local Home Depot. I was able to get compost from the local golf course that I work at so that didn't cost us anything!

We built the gardens on Tuesday and planted them on Wednesday. We planted little gem lettuce, Mammoth melting snow pea, bush garden beans, and radishes from seed. I learned a neat way to get the kids to measure out the proper planting distances. You need to get a roll of toilet paper and roll it out to the desired length. Once this was done, I had the partners (4th grade and older students partnered with 3rd grade and younger students) take a ruler and measure out the proper spacing. Once the students were comfortable with their measuring skills, they took a bottle of school glue and put just a tiny dab on the paper and placed the seed on top avoiding covering the entire seed with glue. We then dug small trenches, placed the seed paper in the soil and gently covered it up. The kids had a blast doing this!

We also transplanted some plants. This year I purchased them from a local green house, but next year I hope to create a cold frame and start our own seeds! We planted sweet million tomatoes, WI 55 tomatoes, green and red peppers, several varieties of cuccumbers (one bush variety), and watermelon. We forgot to measure the height of the plants when we planted, so we will need to remember to do that Friday.

The students also started garden journals/logs. We will be keeping track of rainfall once I get a good rain gauge and high and low temperature.

Looking forward to keeping you up to date!

Getting going...again

I have taken a few weeks off. I have been waiting until I can figure out my water problem. I haven't been able to find a spot to create a rain barrel. I thought I had an area but our building and grounds director said no because the area was right next to a main entrance and exit for our playground. Bummer. :( I put the garden on the back burner for awhile. I am OK at failing at a project, but I just can't see myself having the kids do all of this hard work and be disappointed with having the plants shrivel up and die.
The other night, my principal called me to say that she had contact with someone from the Wood County Health Department who is working with an obesity grant in our area. I contacted the person and she is helping me out by providing funding for materials, and....WATER! Our school is right next to a fire department and we are hoping to find a way to tap off of their water supply so we can pay for it. I have a call in to our water and light company and they trying to see what we can do!
The next trick, I need to get all the supplies so we can get everything put together and planted by Memorial day weekend!!

Pictures should hopefully be coming soon!

Water, Water, everywhere. I can't collect it.

So, I am making some great headway on my gardening project. My downfall....irrigation. The rainwater that falls on my school's roof is immediately divereted (within the walls of the school) to our city storm sewer system. There are no areas that I can find where I could install a rain barrel. Does anyone out there have any suggestions on how I could collect and save some of the water? I could temporarily intsall some old gutters on my shed and collect the water at home and transfer it, but that is a lot of back and forth. Let me know your thoughts please!

Getting the area figured out

Well, the other day I met with some guys from our building and grounds department in our district. They suggested an area between our parking lot and the fire station. We aren't 100% sure where our property line is so they suggest contacting the mayor and the fire chief. I contacted both of them and seem to be interested in working with me to make this a positive experience for our students. Now to get the students to take some initiative to contact area businesses to get donations of wood, seeds, and plants. Pictures will hopefully be coming soon!

Getting Started

I am a service member with the Marshfield Clinic AmeriCorps. I serve at an elementary school in Wisconsin Rapids. I work with the kids during the school day and help out with the Boys and Girls Club unit right at our school. We provide afterschool programming and also have a program during the summer. A few months ago, I attended a training provided by the UW-Extension called "Got Dirt?" about gardening in school. This sounded like a great idea! I have finally gotten the O.K. from the head of Buidling and Grounds to proceed with the planning of the garden! I am hoping to work with the kids tonight to start getting things in motion. Hopefully they will take it and run with it! I look forward to keeping this updated with the progress we are making and get some pictures going!