Gardening in Frigid Temperatures

We covered each critter cage with row-cover fabric,
then last week we added a second blanket over the plants themselves.

It was so cold we had to wait until our "warmest" day to get outside to see what survived.

Amazingly enough, we actually found green plants!

This Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce looked perfect!

Garden Update ll-16-10

Garden Corn Bread

Ingredients:
• Approximately 1 1/2 cup greens, such as kale or spinach, chopped fine
• 6 spring onions, chopped with some of green top.
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1 stick margarine (4oz), melted
• 3/4 cup cottage cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 box Jiffy corn muffin mix

Preparation:
Combine all ingredients in the order listed. Mix well. Spread batter into a 8x11-inch baking dish. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.

First Harvest!

Today we harvested two gallons of fall greens. We cut red Russian kale, dwarf blue kale, India mustard, and southern giant mustard and will use them in a cornbread recipe on Monday. Although only 3 classes are actively growing vegetables this fall, we harvested enough that ALL SIX classes will be able to cook on Monday! (if you are in my 1st, 5th, or 7th pd. class and read this over the weekend..., surprise!) The recipe will be posted on Monday if it passes inspection.

Mr. Rohrback's Class Builds a Critter Cage

We have sprouts!!

Planting the Fall Gardens

Today was planting day, at last! Last fall our seeds baked in dry heat for a month, so this year I decided to wait a little longer before planting. Everything we are growing is tolerant to the cold; in fact, some of these plants thrive only in cold weather. Here is what we are growing:

• Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce
• Red Sails Lettuce
• Mache (lamb's lettuce)
• Red Russian Kale
  
• Dwarf Blue Kale
  
• India Mustard
  
• Southern Giant Mustard
  
• Avon Hybrid Spinach
• Bright Lights Swiss Chard
• Ruby Perfection Red Cabbage (plant)
• Golden Cross Cabbage (plant)
• Snow Crown Cauliflower (plant)
• Jade Cross Brussels Sprouts (plant)

Welcome to a New School Year

Below are the gardens as we found them when we returned to school. Thanks to Mr. Blankenship who spread mulch around them this summer.


















When we removed the black plastic we found lots of white wire grass. As we have observed already, it wasn't dead; it's rapidly turning green again. Our inference about that is that it must be VERY hard to kill wire grass!

Closing Down the Garden

The Final Harvests

GARLIC!!

Lots of Onions


Giant Easter Egg Radishes

Beautiful Harvest

Building New Critter Cages with Mr. and Mrs. Williams

David and Sue Williams helped us build new critter cages today. Mr. Williams designed them and donated the first one several weeks ago. We put the chicken wire on one of the two he built for us this morning, and we will cover the second one on Thursday or Friday.

May Update

On Wednesday we weeded the gardens. Unfortunately, some plants didn't survive the process! :-) However, we still have lots lettuce, mustard, radishes, cress, and spinach that are coming on strong in our warm weather. Our buckets of water don't match the natural moisture that rain would provide, and we've begun to wish that low pressure moisture would make its way into our high pressure days. (That's what we are now studying.)

Planting the Seeds for Indoor Grow Lights

Vermicomposting in the Classroom

We have guests in our classroom until the end of the year; red wiggler composting worms! Mr. Williams, the master gardener who advises us on our gardens, brought them to us yesterday, and we'll keep them until summer. You can learn more about them at http://lewis.wsu.edu/mg/mrc/Vermiculture.pdf.

Planting the Spring Garden

Before we left for spring break, we planted our gardens with lettuce, radishes, spinach, mustard, and carrots. Hopefully the warm weather will encourage their germination and we'll find real plants when we return to school.

Adding Compost to the Garden

Eating our winter cress!

Today we are making and eating the results of yesterday's harvest of cress and spring onions, which grew through and under the snow! In the fall students found a recipe for broccoli corn bread, and today's experiment was to see how it would taste with cress. Here it is with our adaptations:

Garden Corn Bread

Ingredients:
• 1 1/2 cup cress, chopped fine
• 6 spring onions, chopped with some of green top.
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1 stick margarine, (4oz), melted
• 3/4 cup cottage cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 box Jiffy corn muffin mix
Preparation:
Combine all ingredients in the order listed. Mix well. Pour batter into a 9x13-inch baking dish. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.

The verdict?? DELICIOUS!

Cleaning the Garden (Spring is just around the corner...)

Garden Update

And the latest garden news is...
The gardens are unsightly, but fine, but the deer covers are in bad shape from excessive snow. The great news is that our official “Critter Cage” prototype from the Square Foot Gardening Foundation emerged unscathed! The secret was the fact that it was held together with twine. Unfortunately, the chicken wire cages that my classes built last year are ruined. We must either re-build them or start from scratch. As has always been the case, something will work out.

We will be growing a themed garden this spring; a "salad garden." With that in mind, students are suggesting, researching, and selecting vegetables that can be grown in the number of days until our end-of-year salad party, which will happen the week of May 24th. That was 88 days from yesterday! We have found some interesting plants, such as "Deer Tongue Lettuce," an heirloom variety dating back to the 1700's! Stay tuned for our selections...

February Garden Update

Our Email to Victoria Boudman with the Spare Foot Garden Foundation:
Critter Cage Update:

The Critter Cage arrived late last fall, and we did not get it together until after exams were concluded and time permitted. I required the students to re-write your assembly directions, and the group with the "best" directions got to be the assemblers. I'll attach the revised directions that also contains our pictures. Since that time the gardens have been overwhelmed with snow. First, the snow plow driver made our SFG Critter Cage his target, then he made sure that during every subsequent visit he piled on more snow. I'm sad to include the latest picture of the poor cage.

The good news will probably be that the critter cage will survive. Before the snow got piled deeper, it was obvious that the strings holding it together broke, saving the wooden panels. For that reason, we think using string to hold it together was a good idea. We have great hopes that it will be OK. Prior to the snow we were still growing fall/winter vegetables, with a cabbage harvest on January 7! After the first snows we could see the deer and rabbit tracks coming up to the gardens to see if we had left them unguarded.

We will send more information after the spring thaw!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Sellers' Sixth Grade Science Classes

The Critter Cage is Built!

The Last of the Fall Garden

December 7, 2009


January 7, 2010

Who could have predicted the change in weather in a month? Although there is no picture with which to document the ice and snow that surrounded our gardens upon return from Christmas break, suffice it to say that before I could saw through the frozen cabbage heads to harvest them, I had to saw through frozen snow just to get our critter covers off .

Here is what we did: after I cut each solidly frozen head, we put it in a plastic bag and put it into the freezer. Each class had one frozen head of cabbage to cook before their exam. Students researched and selected cabbage recipes, and each day I took a frozen head from the freezer, cut out its core, and placed it in a pan of water. As the leaves separated we washed and dried them. Those were then chopped and used as directed. Delicious!

Our favorite cabbage recipes:

HOT CHINESE CABBAGE (LA PAI T'SAI)

1 head of cabbage
2 chili peppers, shredded
2 tbsp. oil
3 1/2 tbsp. sugar
2 1/2 tbsp. vinegar
1 1/2 tbsp. salt

Cut cabbage into 2 inch strips.
Heat oil. Add chili pepper and cabbage. Fry over high heat. Add seasonings. Mix and serve cold.

POTATO, LEEK, AND CABBAGE SOUP

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 head cabbage, finely chopped

1 leek (white portion only), finely chopped

1 medium onion, sliced

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

1 large russet potato, peeled and diced

3 (14 1/2-ounce) cans chicken broth

1/2 cup cream

4 oz. sharp cheddar cheese

1 bay leaf

1/8 teaspoon dried thyme
3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Salt, pepper to taste

Melt butter in a large pot or Dutch oven on medium-high heat. Add cabbage, leek, onion and celery. Cook until onion is translucent, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add chicken broth, bay leaf and thyme. Bring to boil. Add diced potato; simmer until potato is fully cooked.
Add cream and cheddar cheese (may substitute blue cheese in place of cheddar).
In a saucepan, make a roux with the butter and flour to thicken. A roux is a mixture of equal parts of flour and butter used as the basis for a sauce or as a thickener that is cooked gently (the flour should be added gradually) until it takes on a very light brownish color and the flour has had a chance to cook a bit. Just keep stirring and don't let it burn, and you have a roux.
Add the roux to the soup and stir to combine; cook until cheese melts and soup is hot.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.

January Harvest??

Now that Christmas is over and a new year has begun, we have one last thing to be harvested from our fall garden. The onions and garlic that we planted this fall will wait, but the savoy and dutch cabbage will not. It will be interesting to see how (and IF) they made it through the snow and extreme cold. What better example of a true experiment. Updates will follow soon...