A Brief History of School Gardens

Over at Kitchen Gardeners, Rose Hayden-Smith wrote a nice history of school gardens.  School gardens may seem like a relatively new thing to many of us, but they've existed in Europe and the United States for nearly 200 years.  In 1906 the United States Department of Agriculture estimated that there were more than 75,000 school gardens in our country.

Cale Spring Garden Party

Saturday, May 28th, 2011


Potluck Picnic and Garden Party


1:00-4:00 pm


Bring a dish to share and we'll sit down to eat together, enjoy the spring weather and check out all of the progress the kids have made in the vegetable garden. While you're here, you can also see the new flower bed on which we've worked so hard.

Spring Is Just So. . . So. . . Great!

The weather's warming up.  No more coats.  We don't get frost burns when we water plants.  It's all really good.

Watering is fun.  Brian was soaked before we were done.
He mostly did it himself.

We had yet another great afternoon in the garden watering, planting beets and weeding.  It looks as if the vegetable garden is full. . . for now.  Once the lettuces bolts (when it gets hot) we can plant some more stuff in their place.  Speaking of lettuce, Mr. V and I were talking about making next weeks snack from the garden.  I'm intrigued and can't wait to see what he comes up with.

Up in the flower bed, we had half the crew putting in a few perennial herbs, rosemary, thyme, oregano and sage.  The rosemary was a gift from Ms. Graff's class and the others came from the Burnsed family.  Thank you all so very much.  It's really great to see more people taking up an interest.

Speaking of the thanks, the Cantu family has given a wonderful gift certificate to Snow's.  It will be put to good use very soon.  Thank you very much.

Don't forget our field trip to Mr. Phil and Ms. Deirdre's farm is in two weeks so permission slips need to be turned in as soon as possible.  I have them for most of you all, but I'm still waiting for just a few more.

Oh, one last thing.  For the couple of people that always ask, . . . strawberry short cake.  Thanks, Mr. V!

Daggone weeds.

Weeding and watering. 

There will be no soaking of grown-ups. . . this time!  

Adaire watering the salad greens.

We watered a lot, actually.

We can grow some lettuce. . .and kale. . .
 chard. . . a few collards. . . 

"Hey Beamer, whatcha thinkin' about?"
"Snack "

Resting up for snack after a lot of hard work. . . er, I mean, fun.

Work On The Flower Bed Continues

I don't know if you all have had a chance to check out the recent work we've done on the flower bed by the basket ball court.  If you haven't, it's well worth the short walk.  All of our recent rain has really helped the new plants plants adapt well to their new surroundings.

It's interesting to me to watch how the kids play around the new plants at recess.  They play hard on the court and often have to chase balls through the garden and out onto the field.  They make these spectacular, gravity-defying leaps over the plants and are very careful to avoid causing any damage.  Despite the loss of a couple of our stepping stones and our bird bath to some local juvenile delinquents (nothing to really worry about since they left their sledge hammer behind. . . teenagers, ugh), the kids treat the garden with care and respect.  They're an amazing bunch.

Here is a link to what Phil and Deirdre Armstrong had to say about their last visit with us a couple weeks back when we put most of the plants in the ground.  We always have a great time when they come visit.  I just can't thank them enough.  Judging from how quickly I've gotten the permission slips back, we're ALL very excited about going to visit their farm on May 24th!

I hate to do it, but. . .

I need to cancel our Garden Club meeting for tomorrow.  There's a good chance of rain, a good thing, and I have to meet a repairman at 3:00 at home, a bad thing.

We'll rock the dirt next week.

Another glorious day in the garden

Waiting to be planted

Phil and Deirdre Armstrong from Harvest Thyme Herbs came back to join us in working on our flower bed today.   They brought some absolutely lovely stuff to plant - irises, a peony, ornamental oregano (it's edible, just doesn't taste like much and has nice flowers) and cone flower.  We've only got about half of the bed prepped, but that half is looking great right now.

We'll be heading over to Phil and Deirdre's farm for garden club on May 24th.  I've sent information and a permission slip last week, so if you haven't gotten one home yet, let me know and I can send another.

In the vegetable be, everything looks fantastic.  Next week we'll have a few more things to stick in, but it's almost done for now.

Aoife and Emma hanging out.

If you're at school, it's well worth the walk the building to check it all out.  Or. . .  come on out on Saturday, May 28th from 1:00 pm until 4:00 pm for our Spring Garden Party.  More details will be coming shortly.

The weather today was great.  The clouds kept things from getting too hot and the rain will be welcome when it comes.  Days like today don't get much better.  We planted.  We laughed.  We ran around.  We got a bit wet (that hose seems to have a mind of its own).  Thanks, everyone!

Leah

Nice lilies!

Shane

Kayla was actually very sensible with the hose.
I was impressed with her restraint.

For some reason, this picture of Darius reminds of that old
superhero show, "The Mantis."  Not sure why. . .

Apparently, watering is so fun, once you get the hose,
you don't want to share.   Hmmmmmm

This is how people get soaked.

Michael starting another hole.

Stay away with that hose!

I wonder what's for snack?

Cale School Garden News

A few items of interest:

1)  We’re going to have our Spring Garden Party on May 28^th.  We’ll get going around 1:00 and end around 4:00.  Bring a dish to share and see what we’ve been up to in the garden.  More information will be forthcoming.

2)  Phil and Deirdre Armstrong from Harvest Thyme Herbs in Staunton will be joining us again on April 26^th for Garden Club.

3)  Speaking of Deirdre and Phil, they’ve invited the Garden Club to come over to their farm to check out what they do.  We’ll leave right after school on Tuesday, May 24^th and be back at school around 5:30.  We’ll be traveling by school bus.  Although I can certainly send the kids to After School, we will be back pretty close to when they close up shop for the afternoon.  I'm sending a permission slip home with the kids tomorrow.

Flower Bed

Sadly, no nifty pictures this week.  I'll try to get out and take some in the next couple of days.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon half the group had the opportunity to dig up some lamb's ear and cone flowers from Ms. Kozella's garden that were taking over her class bed.  We transplanted them to our new flower bed.  We'll be placing two or three of the stepping stones we made back in the fall at recess today.  The other half of the group spent some time watering the vegetable garden.  We noticed that the green leaf lettuce and the kale were not too happy about the hard frost we had Monday night.  They're okay, but I'm going to try to get them covered today so they don't get hit again.  Thanks to Mr. V, Brian's dad and Emma's mom for coming out to help.  It was a great time.

For those keeping track of these things, the snacks were the richest, butteriest chocolate cookies I've ever had.  They were awesome.

Springtime!

I love spring.  It's the season I don't even have to think to come up with something for the club to do on a Tuesday afternoon.   There's just so much that needs to be done.  Today we finished planting the scallions, brought a bunch of compost out to the bin, did some weeding and finished turning our last bed.  In just a few weeks we'll be planting pumpkins there.

Alex, Isador, Jason and Mr. V finish planting the scallions.

Inside we've got cucumbers, jalapenos, sweet peppers and three varieties of tomatoes started.  They've all sprouted and are under the grow light for now.  We'll put them out in the cold frame to toughen up in a few weeks and put them in the ground around the first of May.

Speaking of May. . . I'd like to do a spring garden party.  Which is a better Saturday for folks?  May 7th or May 14th?

Thanks to Angelo and the kids for another great Tuesday!  And thanks to Beamer for being photographer for the day.

Michael's serious look.

Meanwhile, in the other bed. . .

Just a few more to go.

Some sort of pupa we found in our pumpkin bed.

Brian's serious face.

Alex's "satisfied with myself" face.  Either that,
or he got a whiff of a compost bucket.

Beamer's dad's "Give me the camera, I'll show you how it's done." face.

Some of the guys.

We are THIS happy about snack!

Lunch Line

There will be a screening of this documentary on Friday, March 25th at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center (at Charlottesville High School). Doors open at 6:30 pm and the screening starts at 7:00 pm. There will be a panel discussion following the film. Unfortunately, I'm going to miss this, but I encourage folks to go check it out. Here's the blurb:

"Lunch Line: a film by Uji Films

The documentary Lunch Line takes a new look at the school lunch program by exploring its past, its current challenges, and its opportunities for the future. The National School Lunch Program began in 1946, and now, more than 60 years later, the program feeds more than 31 million children every day. In the film, leaders from all sides of the school food debate, including government officials, school foodservice experts, activists, and students, weigh in on the program and discuss ways to continue nourishing America’s children for another 60 years."

The trailer can be seen here.