Preparing for the Winter

Sounds like a normal thing to do for this time of the year or even earlier, but we are having extraordinary high temperatures and our eggplants, tomatoes and summer squash are still producing a little despite the drought.

But we started to prepare for the winter some beds. In the first few weeks of school the children harvested all the pumpkins, the watermelons, the sunflowers and corn, so we were able to clean up those.

It was looking like a super hard task for the garden volunteers to till all the big crops, but the Cincinnati Slow Food came to our rescue. The 25th of September was the National Slow Food Day of Service and a group of volunteer from the Cincinnati Slow food came to help us till the beds and enjoy some food at the end. For the ones of you who are not familiar with this organization "Slow Food is a no-profit global, grassroots organization with supporters in 150 countries around the world who are linking the pleasure of good food with a commitment to their community and the environment".


Cincinnati Slow Food, thanks for helping our school garden!

Celebrating the end of the harvest season

We had such a good time teaching children about harvesting, seeding, composting, etc.
Our Wilson Garden table had a great success. We were at the Wilson Fall Festival selling: seeds harvested and packaged in recycled paper by our students; tickets to raffle the 8 pumpkins harvested by the students in our garden; very nice gift bows made out of recycled paper by Diana Reynolds; and garden alphabet and message stepping stones with paint donated by GREENER STOCK.

 All of this thanks to the enthusiasm of teachers and students and the time donated by our Garden Committee volunteers (and their patient husbands and kids): Alisha Molloy, Diane Reynolds, Kirsten Stilgenbauer , Jennifer Donnellan,  Rebecca Sievers and Susan Prince.


We also shared the table with Cassandra Farm at the last day of Anderson Farmer's Market, in the company of David Lindquist owner of Cassandra Farm and our gardening knowledge source/main Wilson Garden project helper. People were amazed learning what we have been doing at Wilson Elementary and were more than happy to buy our products to support the garden.

An Art Contest for our Wilson Garden Wonder Logo

Thanks to the Art Teacher Kacey Watkins all the kids from 3dr grate to 6th grade participated in a contest to create the Logo for the school garden.

Each and everyone of the drawings were very tender and passionate. It was very difficult for the Garden Committee to pick one. So we selected 3 drawings and we let the kids chose the one. The winner is a a six grader and as a reward she won a Pumpkin grown in the garden. 
The logo tells you everything on how much the students love this garden.
We will soon post a slide shop of all the other drawings, keep checking on the blog in the coming days.

Harvesting is fun and tasting is delicious

Wilson students are back in the garden. Under the supervision of me, Kirsten Stilgenbauer, Alisha Molloy and Jennifer Donnellan the kids successfully and happily harvested the summer produce (tomatoes, summer squash, basil, pumpkins, water melon, eggplants, carrots sunflowers, lettuce seeds) 

and seeded the fall beds.

Many kids for the first time tried some of the veggies that they always believed to be not interesting to them. They found them surprisingly super delicious.


With the help of the teachers they learned all about corn, pollination, composting, plants needs, good and bad insects, wildlife visitors and more.


This fall the class involved in the Wilson school garden are 1st grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade. The 6th grade will be taking care of composting.

Ohio State University Buckeye Lady Beetle Blitz 2010 completed!

The last week of August we completed the second part of the data collection for the Buckeye Lady Beetle Blitz 2010 in our school garden. This time we were not so lucky. No ladybugs were collected in the August sampler, only many other insects. The researchers of the University lead by Dr. Mary Gardiner, will let us know what insects they will find on our samples besides the ladybugs we collected in June. 
I'm very proud of our little group of young Wilson students being involved in their first University research.

We were also mentioned on the Ohio State University - Agricultural Landscape Ecology Lab Blog, read below and click on the link.


The Agricultural Landscape Ecology Lab: BLBB August Sample: "Volunteer Cathy Roe's garden The Men's Garden Club of Youngstown Youth Garden Wilson Garden Wonder The buckeye lady beetle blitz has two sa..."

Latest update on the impact of school gardening on child education

The National Foundation for Educational Research in UK, recently released a report on a research conducted by the Royal Horticultural Society on the impact of school gardening on learning. The results are amazing and very well explained in this report. It is worth to take some time to read it (click on report to open the document).

Diana Reynolds and her daughter Isabelle built and installed for us a Garden Loom!

I big "Thank You" goes to Diana Reynolds and her graduated 6th grader Isabelle Class 2010. 
Being super helpful during the summer was not enough for them.
Today I went to the garden and Diana was there working on something.

She had this idea for a long time, and sure she put it in place with the help of Isabelle.
They built a Garden Loom for the Wilson Garden Wonder.

We now have a this wonderful Garden Loom where the children can wave grass, weeds or recycled colored strings to produce a beautiful piece of art that can be used by birds in the spring to build their nests. 

The children can make as many as they want weaved pieces that will then decorate the fence during the white winter.


Diana dug the holes for the loom's posts and.......

 ..... a very very young girl put her final touch for a few minutes with tools and why not bare feet, making sure the hole was deep enough and ready for the concrete.


Excuse me! Never miss an opportunity of playing in the mud!