Starting Plants

This year we tried to start our own seeds to put in our garden. We had some seeds harvested from last year. I also purchased some seeds at Home Depot. We started watermelon, cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes. We tried making our own biodegradable planters. We started by ripping about 4 inch strips of newspaper. We then rolled it around a water bottle leaving about 1 1/2 inches of paper on the bottom and folded that up to close up the bottom. We then added two Dixie cups of potting soil and planted a few seeds in each. In retrospect, we should have compacted the soil a bit better and added more. I then placed them on a tray in our display case with a fluorescent bulb just above the pots and kept them watered.

I am not sure why, but only about half of our plants germinated. The students were kind of disappointed but I explained that not everything works out the way we want.

Winter woes

Happy almost spring!

We are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel of winter. As our snow is starting to melt, I have made a disappointing discovery. Even though we placed our beds about 10 feet away from the sidewalk, the plowing operations have destroyed at least 4 of the 5 beds. The 5th bed hasn't made its way out of the snow yet. To avoid this same problem next year winter, we will move the beds in another 10 feet. We will also make sure to mulch around the beds this year. I would like to learn more about square foot gardening and see if we can make that work this year. I would also like to create a three sisters garden to teach the students about how the Native Americans planted their gardens.

This week and next week we will start some plants inside and hopefully will be able to transplant them in June!

We will keep you posted on our work!