We're Back!

Well, after taking a little time away from the blog I have made my way back to recording our garden progress. The difference this year is that I am no longer an AmeriCorps Service Member. I am now working full time as a special education aide at the same school. The care of the garden also shifted over from being a part of AmeriCorps and Boys & Girls Club to our special education classroom.

Today and tomorrow we will be starting our seeds as part of our morning social skills group. We are using egg cartons for our "pods." First we cut the cartons in half to make them 2x3 cells. Then we soaked them in water for a bit and placed three of them in clear plastic containers about the size of a shoe box. Then the students filled the cells with potting soil, planted one kind of seed in each row and watered them.

We started: watermelon, cukes, beefsteak tomato, broccoli, cherry tomato, peppers, and marigolds. Supposedly the marigolds can be used as pest deterrents. We haven't had any issues yet, so it will be hard to tell if it really works that well.

We also "planted" seeds in plastic sandwich bags with  wet paper towel in them to see the seeds germinating.  It will also give us an idea of gap between germination and when the plants start to emerge from the soil.

Should be fun!!

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!

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!