BES Garden Club

Summer's here, and so is garden camp! The morning of the solstice, that seemingly eternal spring fog cleared and our summer gardeners showed up for the first day of what will be a summer-long gardening & literacy program here at the Brooksville Elementary School garden. This week, we began at the beginning - by studying the soil that grows our fruits, vegetables, grains, herbs, and flowers. The gardeners started out in a circle around Bed 1 with its sunflowers, peas, and volunteer garlic, drawing and writing about what they saw in the soil. Then the younger group went to read about soil and explore the "-oil" word family with Mrs. Lepper while the older group set up an experiment about the effects of soil composition on lettuce seedlings. For our snack break, Anna made us hummus to dip carrots & cucumbers in! As we munched, Anna talked about how root vegetables like carrots are the plant parts we eat that are in most direct contact with the soil, th...

     Boy, what a hot day to work in the garden!  Nevertheless, we had a very productive afternoon. We harvested the rest of the spinach (out of greenhouse bed 1) for the school lunch program, pulled out the old plants.   Lots of the spinach looked great, but we discovered some aphids on some, and some leaf miners on others. We then transplanted some cucumbers, since we didn't have great germination of the seeds we planted- only two had come up.   We also planted a zucchini plant.      We transplanted basil into greenhouse bed 2, where there are already tomatoes and parsley.   This will be the "pizza bed".      We inter planted  strawberry plants in garden bed 4.  A few radishes were eaten in the process!      We also weeded garden bed 1, leaving the peas that had germinated, as well as the sunflower volunteers and garlic volunteers, and planted some more peas.

The gardeners finally ate the carrots! We planted brassica seeds: kale, cabbage, broccoli, and Brussel sprouts,  for a late summer and fall crop.   We planted provider bush bean seeds in garden bed 7. We planted caribou russet seed potatoes in garden bed 3.   We harvested lettuce for the school lunch program, for Ms. Pike, and for gardeners to take home. We added compost and organic fertilizer to gh bed 2 and transplanted tomatoes and calendula. And there was plenty of time to play!

Gardeners harvested every last bit of kale, broccoli, and kale rabe from greenhouse bed 3.  They either ate it or took it home.  They then pulled all the plants out of the bed.  During the next couple of days the 5/6 graders will remove the soil and demolish the bed.  The wood is rotten.   The sills of the greenhouse are also rotten and are due to be replaced with lumber that was sawn up on site during discovery week.  Once the sills are replaced we will rebuild the garden bed.

Garden club was busy today! First we all harvested greens: lettuce, spinach, chard, kale leaves, and kale florets (which look like mini broccolis).  Gardeners who wanted to take greens home did so, and others harvested for our snack! We had a special guest, Anna Wind, who taught us how to make fresh spring rolls.   So we washed, chopped, tore and cut the greens, plus radishes, cilantro, mint, and chives from Mil's Farm just down the road, and some carrots.  Then Anna showed us how to roll up all these into a rice spring roll wrapper.  Yum! The kids can't wait to make them again! (If you are a parent reading this, it is a super easy, super healthy, delicious snack that kids could make pretty much by themselves!) We also pulled the chard out of greenhouse bed 1, added compost, and planted cucumber seeds! Good job, gardeners! And thanks, Anna! harvesting and grazing preparing veggies for spring rolls eating spring rolls, YUM!!!!

We prepped and direct seeded radishes into garden bed 4, and weeded greenhouse bed 2. The carrots are starting to germinate, the daffodils are beautiful, and the gardeners enjoyed a beautiful afternoon in the garden and playing nearby!

This has been quite a rainy stretch of weather!  Luckily the rain broke just in time for garden club. Gardeners started flats of flowers: zinnias, alyssum, Indonesian (orange) cosmos, and sea shell cosmos. All the overwintered greenhouse spinach, which was bolting and under aphid attack, was pulled out of greenhouse bed 1.  We have some nice spring planted spinach left in that bed. We planted snap peas in garden bed 1.  We inoculated the peas with rhizobia which will fix nitrogen from the air in root nodules and thereby provide nitrogen to the plants. We mulched the potatoes. There was also time to play!