June 7, 2012: Garden Club Meeting 5

Today, we had our fifth Garden Club Meeting.  Having organized the club but unavailable until today because of my own academic schedule, it was a thrill to be able to meet the gardeners face to face.  The experience was an amazing one, because I had been worried that the scholars would not find passion in gardening; however, the moment I got there I could tell how excited they were to plant. First they checked the water level (using the rain catcher we had installed prior) and the temperature. It was 76 degrees Fahrenheit and there was a little less than two inches of water in the rain catcher.  We taught the gardeners about the advantages of planting dill in a garden: dill is a natural, pesticide-free, way to ward off pests. While some planted the dill, others helped create homemade wind chimes, and another helped me thin the radish seedlings. At this point there are no carrots to be thinned, hopefully next week there will be some greenery poking out.

May 31, 2012: Garden Club 4

Happy Birthday Elijah!

It would be a great mistake to forget a ritual that had started shortly after planting the first herbs.  The gardeners discovered very early on the wonderful scents emitted from herbs when crushed between the fingers and it became a habit to pick from each of the herbs at the start of our meetings and rubbed them between the fingers to get the full scent!  The peppermint is a favorite.

There was some hard work today in the garden because it was clear that we needed to thin the radish seedlings that had become very crowded.  This takes a great deal of patience, sorting through the plants, choosing which to pick not only by the closeness of the seedlings but the hardiness of each plant.  We couldn’t bare to simply throw out the plucked seedlings so we attempted to transplant them.  At this writing, it is surprising to report that the transplanted radishes appear to be taking hold.  The importance of thinning seedlings is that without this step, the plants cannot thrive and the final product will be small or withered.  We also began training the peas up their trellises.  And because planting is the most fun, we did some of that as well adding to the herb garden.  We gave the garden a good, thorough watering which, because it was his birthday, included Elijah courtesy of Shawn.

May 14, 2012: Garden Club Meeting 3

The intention was to meet every Wednesday in the Spring but Mother Nature had proven to be stubborn and once again we were meeting on a Thursday.  But what a busy Thursday we had.  Not only were the pea plants making great headway but the radishes had burst onto the scene in the week that had just passed.  After surveying the garden, we hung a thermometer and put our rain gauge in place.  We discussed the kinds of factors that could destroy a crop, from drought and flood to animals, bugs, bacteria and viruses.  We looked at a number of pests common to crops including beetles, caterpillars and whiteflies.  As a side discussion, we tried to remember the ten plagues brought on Egypt by Moses and crossed our fingers that our garden would escape locusts.  To hedge our bets, we planted marigolds whose smell it is believed is unpleasant to bugs attracted to tomatoes.  Some research suggests that this is more superstition than fact and that it is an unhealthy plant that attracts bugs but with no conclusive evidence, better to err on the side of caution.  Happily, all the plants were looking very healthy and we staked the tomatoes and pepper plants in anticipation of their needing some support as they grew.  Despite the earlier sprinkle, we gave the garden a thorough watering, using our gage to determine proper saturation.  Ask your scholar how to test for this!

At the request of the Sixth graders, we planted a jalapeno pepper plant.  We also planted cilantro, sage and culantro in our herb garden.

May 17, 2012: Garden Club Meeting 2

Meeting number 2 was sparsely attended, much like the garden in its beginning stages.  Looking back at these photographs, it is amazing how much the garden has grown under the able care of our 5th and 6th grade gardeners.  But we jump ahead.  The 6th grade scholrs were off on a camping trip and so it fell on the shoulders of those who remained to water the garden and begin our herb garden.  Before getting our hands dirty, we cleared up the question “How do you tell a fruit from a vegetable?”  The week before it had been noted that fruits have seeds while vegetables do not.  Sounded right but a web search was needed to confirm this piece of information.  Of course, this necessitated a pop quiz that revealed some unusual fruits historically held to be vegetables.  With the academic discourse out of the way, it was time to take a look at the garden.  Already the peas were poking up out of the soil but no sign of radishes or carrots.  The more mature peas, tomatoes and pepper seemed to have taken root.  Then Azmir, Kazim, Messiah and Hakim went to work.
We planted basil and peppermint and watered all the plants.

Here are the boxes! They look a little barren now, but I know that they will be full in no time!

May 10, 2012: Garden Club Meeting 1

So marks the first meeting of the TEAM Academy Garden Club.  The club is made up of dedicated scholars willing to give up their lunch breaks to plant, weed and water a collection of vegetables and herbs that we hoped to harvest through the Spring, Summer and Fall.

            Fifth Grade Members:

                        Azmir, Kazim, Messiah and Hakim

            Sixth Grade Members:

                        A’Kayla, Shawn, Elijah, Tyra and Shalisa

At this, our first meeting, we talked about three topics that we hoped to take away from this experience: How to Garden, Sustainability and Healthy Eating.  The first of these ideas was obvious to everyone.  A Garden Club has to do with gardening and we were going to learn how to garden using a mix of experience, patience, and trial and error.  A discussion of sustainability was much more abstract and touched on such ideas as feeding not just ourselves but others, taking care of our environment and the repercussions of pollution on farming along with the effects of Mother Nature on crops with the impact of droughts, floods and pestilence.  And finally we talked about how raising our own food informs our eating habits.  Recognizing that one could grow potatoes but not potato chips, wheat but not Twinkies, we focused our discussion on what is healthy eating and how one can determine if a food is healthy or unhealthy.  Our conclusion, if you can pick it straight from the garden and eat it, it’s good for you!

Then we planted radishes, carrots, peas and tomato plants.