Seeding on a hot hot day of Spring

Wilson student are very engaged in the garden now. Even a super hot day did not stop them from seeding the big plot.


We planted super sweet corn, giant sunflowers (16' tall), regular pumpkins and giant pumpkins (will grow up to 100 lb of weight).



The children really enjoyed some water "mist" from the hose to cool off.

Many of them are hoping to come during the summer and take care of their summer/fall harvest.



We are hoping we will be able to have a family corn grill out evening when corn will be ready to harvest.

Corn stalks and pumpkins will help decorate the school in the fall.

Open the garden gate and enjoy the Radish harvest

I need to say that our young gardeners have been very patient and quietly visiting the garden since we seeded to check on their little baby veggies.
So when finally we had them harvest they were very happy. Just a little pull on a plant and here was their little new conquer to be proud of, some very nice red radishes. Many faces were visibly amazed.

I tiny seed can grow a plant, that is not new. But then when you pull the plant a brilliant red  root, that usually is sitting on the shelves of a grocery store comes out. And that is amazing.

While waiting for the radish to be washed the children where more than pleased to do some more weeding and edging and of course look for the biggest earthworm ever.

What a surprise for mommy and daddy, some radishes grown at school! 

Almost ready to harvest!

Our beds are finally looking like full of delicious vegetables after 35 days of patient waiting. This time I do not need to write on the picture what plant are they. Can you guess?

      

Composting is a 21st century learning activity

Part of the Wilson Garden Wonder mission is to educate children about the unlimited possibilities we all have to reduce human impact on natural resources in our everyday life. 


Composting is one of the best example. We can show them on the spot how plants start from a seed, germinate grow and eventually die (we eat them, we discard them, they get old, etc). What is left can be used to feed new plants. That is a way to cut costs as we do not need to buy chemicals to fertilize the soil.


We have two plastic compost bins we use to compost vegetable leftovers from the children lunches and vegetable waste from the cafeteria if any. We mix the waste with wood chips to avoid any odors.


We also just recently built a wood compost bin for yard waste (wood chips, leaves, grass clips - only if no chemicals have been used on the lawn). 

I want to really thank all the ones who made this wood compost bin possible, from Hamilton County Waste Management to Susan's Natural World to the Mike Molloy family and their friend Brad Watkins. Thank for donating your time, talents and funding for this exceptional 21st must have educational tool for the kids. 


And I also want to thank all the school staff that made possible our pilot project in the cafeteria, so that we can have a full speed compostable waste collection for 2010-2011 school year.

Eventually we will start running out of close by landfill space - in Italy, from where I'm from, is already happening now! -, and getting rid of waste will be more and more expensive, so we need to be proactive and learn how to reduce, recycle and reuse waste as much as we can at home, at school or at work. Wilson is at full speed in Recycling already and Composting will be the perfect puzzle piece in the big picture of "Reuse, Reduce, Recycle and Remember".

To learn more about Composting here are some great site to go:

Ohio Compost

Our Ohio - What a waste

The Composting Project at Ohio University

Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati- Compost Kids Program

Can I Compost It?

All about Composting

Children gardening: their feedback "That was so much fun!"

 The past week in between a rain here and there, we were able to have children doing some gardening activities. They weeded

 and weeded


























and weeded (everyone with is own style..).

They collected many buckets of weeds and dumped the weeds in one of our compost bins we just started. The best part of weeding was to discover life under ground. The most found living beings were earthworms. One girl discovered a nest of ants that were taking care of their pupa. It was very fascinating observing how those little ants could move pupa, twice their size, to a safer place away from our curious eyes.

We also placed recycled cardboard around the edges of the beds to suffocate the grass that was growing too close to our veggies.













The kids loved to fill up buckets with wood chips,

 then dump the buckets content on the cardboard. They needed to focus on dumping the wood chips exactly on the cardboard, not on the beds (to not kill the vegetables), not on the grass to not waste it.

At times it has been muddy, but we made sure the kids cleaned their shoes so moms and school custodians would not get too unhappy.  

  

Gardening can be better than going to the gym

Last Sunday I had some nice quite time at the garden. We are in the process to create cardboard/wood chip edges around the beds to stop the grass from invading our precious space. I was there working with my tools, digging, talking to people walking by who were asking information about the garden. For about 1 hr I also had a group of 5-6 deers staring at me and at my two dogs. Luckily we have a natural deer repellent on the fence, that for now has been working in keeping those beautiful and regal creatures out of our beds.

So if you, like me, do not like the gym, but like outdoor activities that do not involve running, I would really suggest to try gardening: it focus your mind on hands activity and relax. Learn more:

Health Benefits of Gardening

Health Benefits of Gardening Impact Entire Body, Family

The digging is almost done, today was trash day in my neighborhood so I was able to collect plenty of cardboard, plus we collected some pizza boxes during a party in the school. A class will help us placing the cardboard and the wood chip and will learn how to kill grass without chemicals.

Recycled potatoes

Did have ever happen to you to find in your pantry some potatoes starting to sprout? I imagine the answer is yes, especially if in a busy life you just do not get to cook them before that happens. In my house they usually go to the compost bin in our back yard. But this time I wanted to try to see if it is possible to transform a loss in a gain.
Me and Kirsten decided to plant our sprouting potatoes. But before going to the garden with a class, we learned on Internet "how to grow potatoes". Let's wait and see if some sun, rain, compost and technology can turn our sprouts in more and fresh potatoes. Waiting time 6-15 weeks depending on the variety. Kids will have fun looking for potatoes underground and learn all about tuber.

Two weeks old baby veggy

I took some time to take pictures of the plants growing. A few days ago I had to "thin" the sprouts as there were too many in one spot. Very sad work. But I was just focusing on the positive outcome for the survivors. Less crowd, less competition for food and better chance to live and grow.

Preparing for summertime Mediterranean beds

The garden is not only an outdoor activity. There is a lot of preparation indoor to be done in preparation for the Summer Harvest season. Here are first graders planting seeds of Eggplants, Tomatoes and Basil in pots made of recycled containers or reused containers. Eggplants, Tomatoes and Basil are basic ingredients for many delicious Mediterranean recipes like Parmigiana, Sicilian penne dish, Ravioli staffed with Eggplant in tomato and basil sauce, Ciabotta Abruzzese (my place of origin in Italy), etc. Gnammy!! I'm getting hungry.

And after about 10 days, here are our little baby sprouts, that will be ready to be plant in the garden as soon as the temperature will become warmer.

Spanish in the garden

The Spanish after school program operated by World of Spanish LLC, was inspired from our school garden, so they dedicated two lessons to "El Jardin de Vegetales - The Vegetable Garden ".
One lesson was indoor due to bad weather and the kids where introduced to vegetable names. During the second lesson they visited the garden and plant some veggie seeds in pots for the kids to bring home. Hopefully families will be inspired to plant a garden in their back yard. The kids of course enjoyed the outdoor hands-on activity in a beautiful sunny and fresh day. They learned many words related to the garden and the produce like "espinacas - spinach, tomates - tomatoes, lechuga - lettuce, albahaca - basil, berenjena -eggplants, etc. Thank Señora Kika for the nice lesson.

A garden can connect cultures and teach kids that there are some basic things shared by humanity, no matter what language we speak and from where we came from.

A nice public announcement about our garden

Thank to Sheila Vilvens, we were able to have a press release on the Forest Hills School District website and the Forest Hills Journal.

They are born!......the sprouts.

The warm weather and the rain gave  a burst to our seed germination. Everyone can be proud of the hard work and dedication to this project.

Reusing and Recycling

As this garden is also an opportunity for the children to learn how to care and respect the environment and what nature provide to us, we are trying to use old items or recycled material.
For example as suggested by Diana Reynolds, we used old metal spoons instead of buying new trowels, and we used milk jars/detergent containers as watering cans.

Diana Reynolds with the Junior Girl Scout Troop 48861 created plant labels from an old venetian blind.
To make a grid on the beds to mark the seeding area for each kid, we used plastic silverware from the cafeteria, that Mrs. Bode gently collected during a lunch session and washed for us, and some yarn.

David Lindquist gently donated his old bunny wire fence and a compost bin he found on the curbside.

Mike Curry donated us a compost bin that was sitting in his back yard, and Mrs Yeatts will donate us her old hose.

To seed tomatoes, basil and eggplants we used various plastic food containers and some old pots donated us by parents.
To feed the plants we are planning to start composting food from cafeteria and yard waste. We will teach the kids all about composting and making a good use of organic waste so that our land-fields will last longer.
So if you are reading this blog and wondering how you can help, go to the "Wish list" and see if you have something that we need and you are about to put it in the garbage.
It does not have to be new, as much it does the job.
Or you could go to the "Calendar" and "Activities" pages to see what are our next projects and volunteer or donate items.
Every little help counts and we will be very grateful!

Fence completed

Thank to the help of David Lindquist, TJ and Angela we now have a 28" wire fence to stop little creatures, like bunnies, from entering the garden to eat our vegetables. We hope that with some deer repellent we will not have too many unwanted visitors.