BES Garden Club

This afternoon was the first day of after school garden club, which was great fun and quite productive! We cleared garden bed 8 and mixed in compost.  Then we seeded 5 rows of carrots; yaya and rainbow We harvested greens for club members to take home, and some for Ms. Pike for national secretary's day. We weeded gh bed 2 (which has lettuce and carrots) and transplanted volunteer potatoes from that bed to garden bed 3. Nice work gardeners!

This is a link to the  lacewing lifecycle Today we harvested baby greens for home use, planted lettuce seed in 6-packs that we will transplant into garden bed 1 in a month, and released lacewing eggs.  We have been trying to minimize the aphid infestation by removing aphid infested plants, and releasing beneficial insects which will consume aphids.   We've released ladybugs, and we're excited to find ladybug eggs last Friday!  Today we released lacewing eggs. Transplanting spinach March 28

The days are getting longer, and there've been a lot of sunny days in the past couple of weeks so the Kales, spinach, collards and chard have all grown a lot.  We had gotten used to the winter when there's no growth or hardly any.  Also, there are daffodils blooming in the greenhouse! (Thanks to the 3/4 graders and a generous donation from Cathy Fowler.) The carrot seeds planted in January have germinated.   The aphids are still a problem, so we're pulling out infested plants, and will continue to introduce more aphids as aphid predators.   Today we planted broccoli in 6-packs, which we will transplant out into garden bed 2 in mid April.  Hopefully we'll have a harvest before the end of the school year! Good job, gardeners!

It was snowing and 20 degrees, but there was a big turnout for garden club!  The gardeners harvested chard for the school lunch program, and little bags of baby greens to take home.

Today was another beautiful garden club day in the greenhouse! Freezing cold outside, but sunny and hot in the greenhouse!  The five young and capable gardeners searched for aphids, and looked at them with magnifying glasses.   They pulled all the leaves that were infested to be fed to the chickens (off-site).  The aphids were mainly on the carrot leaves, so they also had some carrots to snack on.  We released some live ladybugs to eat the remaining aphids. We learned about the aphid lifecycle, the way they feed on plants, and that there are natural predators.  A bag of cooking greens (collards, kale, and chard), and a bag of baby salad greens (kale, tatsoi, and mustards) were harvested for school lunches and dropped off in the school kitchen.

January 17: A beautiful sunny day, 31 degrees.  We pulled out the last of the lettuce plants from GH Bed 2 due to aphids, and seeded 4 rows of carrots where the lettuce had been. Garden Bed 1 was cleared and mulched with seaweed and hay. Snacks were baby carrots and baby kale.

click here to view garden map winter '16-'17