Garden Update 9-25-09

We are so thankful for today's rain, which has been long awaited. The garden seeds have germinated sporadically, and I would infer this to be because of the hot, dry weather. This will be a major topic in the garden journals we are creating. Hopefully next week we will be documenting much more germination, particularly the kale, which has done almost nothing.

We Have Baby Plants!

During 6th and 7th period today, students watered the seedlings and seeds planted last Friday. We observed many sprouts of radishes and mustard, with a few sprouts of Green Ice lettuce, spinach, and Swiss Chard. Pictures will be posted soon...

Maintaining the Garden

Fall gardens are very dependent on cooperative weather. It's unfortunate that we didn't receive any rain from the local storms last week, so on Friday afternoon, 7th period students carried buckets of water to the garden to moisten the soil for the weekend. Solyvien showed his classmates how to pour the water over their hands to simulate rain, as they do in his native country.

Fall Planting

With the help of all of my science classes, on Thursday, September 10, and Friday, September 11, we finished planning and planting the Glenvar fall garden. After the purchase of seeds and vegetable seedlings which should thrive in cooler weather, 1st period designed the gardens' layouts. We then spent the next two days preparing and planting. We planted:

• Dutch cabbage seedlings
• savoy cabbage seedlings
• broccoli seedlings
• pansy plants
• smooth leaf kale seeds
• spinach seeds
• cress seeds
• mustard seeds
• Swiss chard seeds
• radish seeds
• 3 kinds of leaf lettuce seeds

We also covered our new plants with the chicken-wire cages made by last year's students so that the deer, skunks, and rabbits don't eat our garden before we do.

A NEW YEAR, A NEW GARDEN...

Welcome to the 2009-2010 Glenvar Garden. After covering the raised beds with black plastic for the summer (wish I had taken a picture), we left the soil to bake, hoping to eradicate any nasty pests, including the slowly encroaching wiregrass. No doubt the pests are gone, but the wiregrass only thrived in the heat and lack of sunlight. We have spent much time pulling it up by the roots up in hopes to at least get a head start with fall plantings.

This week we will put in German and savoy cabbage plants, and kale, cress, spinach, and mustard seeds. These greens are very hardy, so we'll experiment with a late fall garden to see what happens.

How Proud Can a Teacher Be???

Yesterday, my 7th period science class finished a BIG project. After harvesting over 25 gallon bags stuffed full of lettuce, kale, spinach, Swiss chard, beets, carrots, and radishes, celebrating with a wonderful salad party, and culminating with the long-awaited, much-promised water fight, my students donated the rest of their produce (over 20 gallons) to the Rescue Mission. (yes, Jon, it was your idea a LONG time ago) Miss Scott delivered it for us after school, and we hope they enjoyed it as much as we did. As we said, not everybody gets to eat stuff fresh out of a garden, and ours was really, really good.

What a great class. What a great experience. We left our compost "can" in its special place near the school, with hopes to return next fall to find rich new soil to add to our garden. It makes it hard to leave school and eager to return...
With love, Mrs. Sellers

Boxerwood Gardens

Our 7th period class went on a field trip to Boxerwood Gardens. We took a bus; it was one hour and 10 minutes until we got there, but it was worth it. When we got there we put our lunches in back of a car and then we started our tour. First we saw the crow's nest, then Hunter took us to the angel statue. We went in the greenhouse; it had fish in there and n.e.w.t.s. The other group saw a black snake but not in the green house. After that we had lunch and we saw Uda the boxer dog. Then we saw the zig zag bridge and the great oak. By Shane